What is Planaria? Where does it come from? These are questions aquarium enthusiasts have asked themselves. Planaria worms are tiny, long and have a milky white appearance. They are evenly shaped and move using slime. They are flatworms and are members of the Platyhelminthes phylum. The presence of Planaria is usually a sign of too much uneaten food in an aquarium and lack of proper gravel maintenance. These slimy white long worms are viewed as being harmless to aquarium habitants. This is often true depending on the size of the Planaria. During their initial stages of development Planaria are often small and happily go about their business of roaming the tank. As their size becomes a little bigger they become a menacing presence in an aquarium setting.

Some have speculated that the Planaria are harmless yet their presence is annoying. This assessment is false. Planaria tend to prey on fish fry and shrimp. Their stings are lethal and any victim that has been stung will likely die. The Planaria do not just bite and let loose instead they maintain a grip on their prey until it is dead. Once a shrimp has been bitten by this worm it lifelessly drops to the ground until all life force has been drained. In some instances, shrimp are lucky enough to shake off the Planaria.

Failed Attempts at eradicating the Planaria

These menacing worms tend to multiply at a rapid growth and seem to do well in warmer water parameters. In our effort to eradicate these worms we tried various methods and some of them seemed to work yet at the same time there were some side effects.  

• It is difficult to siphon the gravel especially if there are shrimp and snails living inside the tank. Instead of siphoning the gravel we decided not to feed the shrimp because they tend to feed comfortably on algae and this is enough for them to live on. This approach did not seem to yield any successful results so we tried another approach.
• We tried squashing them every opportunity we got and this was not very productive as we got out hands in the water more times than we wanted them to be in there. In some cases we successfully squashed the Planaria that we encountered and in the other instances we found out that if we squashed a Planaria worm and it split, it would not die but instead would redevelop and this meant one Blanaria became two. The less human interference in aquarium tanks the healthier they are. So we completely abandoned the squashing method.
• We turned off the water heater and this seemed to slow down the movement of the worms. Inadvertently, the movement of shrimp was reduced and some began to die slowly. It took a little while to notice this so we immediately stopped this method as it was killing the shrimp and not the worms.
• Another method we tried was putting some sea salt in the tanks in hopes of killing the worms. The Planaria worms were irritated by the sea salt and they would go deep into the gravel. A teaspoon of sea salt was applied directly close to the presence of the planaria. The irritation was an indication that sea salt might work if applied in bigger proportions. Such proportions would have meant changing the freshwater equilibrium thus killing all the plants, snails and shrimp. So we stopped using this approach altogether.

The Solution

Despite the failed attempts at completely eradicating the Planaria infestation we continued doing some research to find out if there were any successfully documented attempts on aquarium forums. Under our failed attempts we never tried using chemicals as some of them contain copper elements and this is toxic to any shrimp. We found some information about a dewormer called Canine Dewormer and it contains fenbendazole which is effective in getting rid of worms such as Roundworms, Hookworms, Whipworms and Tapeworms. Planaria are distantly related to these worms. In proportionately conservative measurements, the Canine Dewormer has a rather lethal effect to getting rid of Planaria without killing any shrimp, fish or snails. The effectiveness becomes evident in a day or two after the Canine dewormer has been applied. Because small measurements are required and there was no easy way of doing this. We opted to use a tooth pick to scoop the Canine Dewormer which was in a powder form. We used one tooth pick scoop and applied it in a 10gallon tank. The results were astounding as we noticed that all the shrimp and snails were healthy and feeding on algae whilst the Planaria worms were becoming lifeless and seemed to be loosely attached to the aquarium glass. In the final stages of the Planaria before dying as a result of the Canine Dewormer application, they looked like a wilted small round white patch. As a result of this tremendous effect that the Canine Dewormer had on the worms, we applied it in all our tanks were Planaria was present. In some cases were increased the dosage depending on the presence of the Planaria. After all the Planaria were successfully eradicated we conducted a 25% water change.

 

We hope this information will be useful to those who are having a difficult time dealing with Planaria.