Treatment of bugs, snails and worms within the tank

warren

Method 1: Introduce small fishes (boraras), reduced feeding and water change
In order to prevent bugs, snails and worms from population explosion, if its rotifers and copepods you can add any boraras family of small fishes if there is any in your area around 1-2 boraras for a 2ft tank and reduced feeding. The sudden population of these bugs often indicates there are excess food around and its time to control feeding and water change. I personally tried boraras they are shrimp friendly and so far I didn’t see any of them attack a shrimplet even new born ones. Please inform me if you see any such behavior.

Unfortunately boraras does not eat all worms and bugs even my hungry guppy dare not touch planarias and hydras. In order to reduce planaria, carry out some gravel cleaning if possible find those hot spots with lots of debris and siphon them out during a water change and stop feeding for a few days to control the planaria population. There are successful cases where starving get rids of the planarias in their tanks. In my case it doesn’t work at all, perhaps the planarias are feeding on something else in my tank.


Method 2: Manual Removal
My equipments used to control planaria population.

Attach a raw liver with blood or a small piece of meat secure it with a metal clip and weight to prevent yamato from grabbing the meatl and running away with it. After a few minutes you will see the planarias starting to swarm around the meat. Manually remove the planarias with the plastic dropper to suck the planarias and deposit them into a cup. If you are lucky you might catch all the planarias in with a few rounds. But sometimes the planarias might deposit eggs in your tank, causing it to come back after a while.

Another way is to use a PET, cut into half as shown below and put a dead fish or raw liver inside.


Method 3: Last resort (Chemical warfare: Try this at your own risk)
There are many products in the market, so far I only managed to test a dewormer product which works and is fit for human consumation which contains some diluted fluebendazole. It’s so effective it seems unbelievable. After 1 week introducing it into my planaria infested tanks, all planaria, nematodes and rotifers disappeared. There is no shrimp casualties I didn’t even need to do any water change and beneficial bacteria are not affected. Please be careful with these products overdosing maybe harm any live stocks in your tanks. I heard many people feedback saying that (Pure form) Dimilin containing Diflubenzuron is very effective too but it seems to have an instant reaction on the pest stronger than fluebendazole.

Note: Planarias, nematodes, hydras and snails will dissolve away in when come into contact with both chemical. If you have any pet snail please remove them first