So I decided to try some to kill the hydra and planaria in my shrimp tanks. I still am not convinced one way or another that they do harm to shrimp, but better safe then sorry I guess. Once you have planaria I have found them very hard to rid yourself of them. I have tried not feeding the shrimp, but it did not seem to have any affect after a month. Finally, I removed all the shrimp from the tank, but after another month with no shrimp and no food there were still planaria all over the place. More drastic measures were clearly needed
After doing some reading online I have decided to use fenbendazole. All reports I have read said it is safe for shrimp but deadly to planaria and hydra. I plan to use .1g of fenbendazole per 10 gallons of water. Because fenbendazole is not easily disolved in water I got a liquid form. The brand name was Panacur 100. Panacur 100 is used on cattle, other forms of fenbendazole are used on dogs and other animals to kill various kinds of intestinal worms. The Panacur 100 came in a 1L bottle and contains 100g of fenbendazole, and therefore I will dose 1ml per 10 gallons of water to reach .1g of fenbendazole per 10 gallons.
The Panacur 100 was purchased from http://equine-mega-store.com/default.ehtml
I will update with my findings. I will first try it on a tank without shrimp and then will try it in a tank with shrimp.
One Comment
In your post about Planaria…. I’m not sure really what I had. Your planaria, what did it look like and what were the characteristics of its movements? I had the same problem, and couldn’t get rid of them at all!! I finally used the dewormer and it did OK but didn’t get rid of all of them. It did a good job for a day or two, but within the second day, the number grew back again, as if the babies survived and grew (no feeding of any sort of the shrimp). I gave a stronger dose for a few days and all of my CRS had died, but the RCS were still kicking. I finally said screw it and tore the whole tank down, put a light bleach/water solution in for a few days and let it rip. Cleaned out the external filter system and now I am ready to start again. Those little bastards WOULD NOT DIE!! I saw them eating the leaf litter that I had in there for the shrimp. They would hide in every hole, every plant, everywhere!! I still don’t know what they were. My critters were very small (maybe 1/16th” or a little bigger), white and jerky in movement most of the time. They were out in the day, night and all the time.