They are meet eaters, maybe even canibalistic and eat their own dead as well. But eat anything that contains proteine. If you don't see them in the light they don't do harm, they do cleanup.. If you see them on the glass can be an unsightly look. But as said, than you have a huge number in the substrate. Than be carefull with using chemicals or what so ever to kill them.. A treat will leave you with a ton of dead worms in the substrate, fauling and rotting away. This can cause ammonia issues leaching from the substrate and maybe some bacterial issues, bacteria living of rotting meet is nasty stuff. Than after a succesfull planaria genocide it's advisable to do a lot of extra water changes for quite some time. Using a vacuum bell syphon to give the substrate a good clean will definitively help. It’s important to know which is which because rhabdocoela do not respond to many treatments that will kill planaria outright. What causes planaria to appear in your aquarium? Image Credit Planaria are possibly the weirdest worm that will ever visit your aquarium. Their unusual traits make them widely studied in the scientific community… Warning: DO NOT treat your plants in the tank! Only outside! Potassium Permanganate is a very strong oxidizer and can kill your bio-filter (and any organic in the tank). Wear protective gloves. Potassium Permanganate can burn your skin.

Dispose of the captured Planaria on the dry ground outdoors where they will likely get eaten by other animals or wither away. Basically there are only 2 ways to 100% eliminate hydra without breaking down tank and starting again: At this dose (as per my original post above), I noticed that the hydra had withered and fallen from the glass within an hour. However, I can recommend a couple of methods that I’ve successfully used to completely eradicate the pest from my tanks.

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My 'incident' with the heater caused the new trial to not work and I don't really know why to this day? I don't think there was anything wrong with the setup or tank, it worked before the incident well and I used all new stuff except the tank. It has put me off trying again so that tank is still empty and I keep looking at it thinking I should try again (then I think of what that involves), but after the last attempt failing for some unknown reason I can't get the incentive to try again as it is such a long, expensive, time consuming process which may just fail again! It is very frustrating, as you know, when you can't work out why it fails and everything seems 'ideal'. Aha, thank you for that, I do want to avoid agressiveness in the tank! They do seem very peaceful all together, but I suppose they balance out when there's lots of them. I'll call up my fish shop and see if they can source some wild types, I've seen the normal yellow kind in their shop though, which are quite charming.

Many Macrobrachium shrimp species are eating snails too. Some species of Macrobrachium shrimp (for example, Machrobrachium Lanchesteri (Whisker shrimp)) can be so aggressive that it is not advisable to keep them even with small (slow) fish. Obviously, they are not compatible with dwarf shrimp as well. Though if you’re able to source some wild type colouring honey gourami, you could add 1M 2F (in your 60l)

If you want more drastic measures, you can use 3% Hydrogen peroxide to kill the snails. However, be very careful! To know the safe shrimp dosage you can read my article “Hydra in a Shrimp Tank. Treatment”. Hydra outbreaks need food, but this is not necessarily because you overfeed the tank as many people will initially accuse you of. In a fishless tank there are probably lots of minibeasts that the hydra can feast upon, even if you don't feed the tank at all.

They are fast reproducing and hermaphroditic, with the ability to regenerate if chopped into segments. Cut a planarian into five and days later you’ll have five fully formed flatworms! You see, these pests are master hitchhikers. They are tiny enough to hide and travel on a wide variety of objects. They often get added to fish tanks by way of live plants. Anyhow, set up your Planaria trap in the evening and wait until the next morning. If you don’t see many worms in the bottle, wait a total of 24 hours.That includes new fish as well. Planaria can also hitchhike on fish and inverts! Infested Substrate Or Filter Media

First, let me point out that you could always add predatory fish to the system but that is not always a practical solution in a shrimp tank. Even the smallest carnivorous fish could be disastrous to your shrimp colony as well as the Planaria. Although this is not a fast way. Eventually, the numbers will shrink to reflect how much food you actually have to support all the adults (the young snails will die out first). Add two or three different types of food in small amounts inside of the bottle. For example, fish flakes work great. Do not add too much because it can cause an ammonia spike.Thanks for reading my post. I attached some pics of the subject shrimp currently living in my neo tank and my new little empty aquarium. There’s no arguing that they work, but it relies on your planaria being hungry. If the planaria are not attracted to the bait you placed inside, then it’s as good as useless.