Planaria???

Discuss planted aquarium inhabitants
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150EH
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Real Name: Tim Haut
Location: Churchton, MD

Planaria???

Post by 150EH »

I was looking closely at my shrimp tank after a death in the tank and noticed some tiny white specs moving around pretty quickly considering their size, I think they are Planaria but I'm not certain. The only thing I know to do is go to GLA and buy the No Planaria baggy, can anybody give me more information?
Sincerely,
Tim
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jweis
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Re: Planaria???

Post by jweis »

Planaria look more like little worms with triangular heads. Sounds more like water lice to me. I have them in one of my shrimp tanks too. The other than I took out and rinsed all the plants and used a fine net to fish out as many as I could. That was a pain though and there are still some left. :(
Julie
37g planted, 11g planted, and three 5.2g planted shrimp tanks.
JLW
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Re: Planaria???

Post by JLW »

To most people, planaria look just like leeches. What you're describing sounds a little too small.

It could be some sort of copepod or cladoceran. If so, they're benign and I wouldn't worry about them at all.

What are "water lice?" If they're fish lice, they won't show up in a tank without fish (at least not for long). You can google.com/image search 'fish lice' and get a pretty good idea of what these buggers look like. Daphnia are sometimes called "water fleas," and are a type of cladoceran -- they're completely harmless and an important fish food. They'll show up in plant tanks regularly. There are some genera of cladocerans that look similar to Daphnia, but kind of "crawl" on the glass or plants (Simocephalus is one of the more commonly encountered ones). Many types of cladocerans can lay a persistent "winter egg" type cyst that will hatch ... some significant time ... after being released. In other words, they can spontaneously appear in a tank they were wiped out from a year later! :-)
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150EH
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Re: Planaria???

Post by 150EH »

After getting a better look these things are incredibly fast, they are white in color, and just slightly elongated but other wise resemble a spec of dust. It's good to know they are harmless to the shrimp but other than the manual removal is there anything I can do to help get rid of them? It's so funny that there was nothing in the tank until I started feeding the shrimp more than once a week.
Sincerely,
Tim
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150EH
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Re: Planaria???

Post by 150EH »

From what I'm reading at other forums it would be wise to use my feeding dish to reduce leftovers in the substrate.
Sincerely,
Tim
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jweis
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Re: Planaria???

Post by jweis »

Tim,

I think (but I am not certain) they are cyclops. I had read somewhere they were commonly called water lice, but since that appears to lead to confusion, I'll stick with cyclops. Here's a good theread from TPT: http://www.plantedtank.net/forums/showt ... 545&page=2

In the picture with the Tangerine Tiger the cyclops is the little light blue blurry dot. There are other cyclops in the tank that are much smaller.

I want to get rid of them too because I just think they look creepy. The common advice seems to be to add fish to eat them. Since I also have the TT fry in that tank, I don't want to risk them being eaten. I don't think I feed my shrimp too much, but it is difficult to know for certain. Since it is a shrimp tank I only have a sponge filter in this tank. My other two shrimp tanks do not have this problem.
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Julie
37g planted, 11g planted, and three 5.2g planted shrimp tanks.
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scientist0724
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Re: Planaria???

Post by scientist0724 »

That looks like Daphnia to me.

Arlene
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150EH
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Real Name: Tim Haut
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Re: Planaria???

Post by 150EH »

Julie that's kinda what I was thinking or else one of these, but the look very similar in the photos but are tiny and just specs with the naked eye, I don't want them but if they are harmless I'll just try less food and more cleaning.

Image

Size: 0,1 - 0,2 cm, 0.04 - 0.1 inches

Seed shrimp are tiny seed shaped crustaceans. They are usually a bit bigger than Copepods. They move in a same fashion as Copepods, eating all kinds of nice things from the glass/plant/etc. surfaces and you can see them walking inside the substrate too. Sometimes they swim in open water looking like drunken bees. Here's a really young CRS baby looking at a seed shrimp. Really cute, harmless.

All the above was borrowed from TPT
Sincerely,
Tim
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jweis
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Re: Planaria???

Post by jweis »

Tim, I think you are right. That certainly looks like what I have.

I moved over then chili rasboras to the shrimp tank that has these mysterious bugs. I don't plan on adding any food to the tank and I will see is the chili rasboras eat them. Hopefully the shrimp fry won't take too big of a hit. After a couple of weeks, I will move the fish out.
Julie
37g planted, 11g planted, and three 5.2g planted shrimp tanks.
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jweis
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Re: Planaria???

Post by jweis »

Tim,

Here are two DIY seed shrimp catching methods:

http://www.aquaticquotient.com/forum/sh ... hrimp-Trap

A thin slice of cucumber left to float when the light is off will be covered in them in a few hours. Put a fine net under it and scare away any shrimp, take out the cucumber in the net and shake it in a fish tank. Repeat as required, you won't get rid of them completely but you should get rid of most of them

Also, the chili rasboras are making a dent in my seed shrimp population, but they can't get the ones in the substrate and the seed shrimp hidden in the plants.
Julie
37g planted, 11g planted, and three 5.2g planted shrimp tanks.
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