Planaria Infestation!

[Laki]

There's no section here for inverts/tank bugs so...
I woke up today and looked in at my assassin snails' hungry noses and noticed their little snail only tank is INFESTED with planaria. Long ones, short ones, baby ones, crawling on my snails and on everything. It turned my stomach (that and running around after my cat making my dizzy) so I don't know what to do!

[shellieca]

My understanding is that they are harmless & are due to overfeeding. A couple of my tanks always seem to have a few, had more but I feed less & make sure to do better vacuuming with my water changes. Added an extra water change & vacuum for the one tank when it was somewhat bad.

[Laki]

I'll up the changes but I don't feed them that much! The small tank only has 3 assassin snails in it. They eat bloodworms once or twice a week. I leave the worms in there for about an hour to make sure everyone had some and then I suck them out with the baster. I have been doing this for a few months, then last time I changed the water I added some salvinia from the betta tank (the betta tank sometimes gets planaria but I have them under control). I think they hitchhiked. Anyway. I think I'll just up the changes, I just noticed the planaria have taken the bloodworm bait! lol

[FishFriend9292]

Do you have any moss balls? I have heard that they are inside the mossballs and cannot be removed without tearing apart the mossball. They are harmless but are a pest.

[jeaninel]

A couple thorough gravel vacs and reduced feeding should take care of them. What size is the tank? You mentioned using a turkey baster, but do you have a gravel vac?
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[Laki]

Thanks :)
It's a .5 holding only 3 assassin snails so I only use a turkey baster to clean and siphon. I cleaned it today for about an hour (disrupting the sand and vacuuming them all up). No there was no moss ball in with them, the only live plant is salvinia and I know they were on salvinia in my betta tank which is why I think I transferred them to the snails.
So, the snails ate today and I'll try to starve out the planaria. I'll bait them in a few days with the bloodworms again. They seemed to ravish those today! It was gross to watch the snails and worms eating together lol

[homegrown terror]

you could always harvest and sell them for a few bucks, i've heard some breeders will use them to supplement BBS and other fry foods.

[Laki]

How could I harvest them?? They're so small

[sunstar93]

Ive had an infestation in my 10 gallon for nearly 3 months now...and my new betta Toby is the only one that will eat them! He likes to slurp them up lol. It makes my skin crawl when I see them hanging out on the glass as the water level goes down...as far as I know, it can come from over feeding or (like in my case) Tetra brand flake food...I've heard extra vacuuming will help but in my case it hasn't...so I've just let them be and hope that Toby will eat them all lol