Re: NANFA-- planaria

Travis Haas (madtom15_at_hotmail.com)
Fri, 24 Mar 2000 16:21:41 PST

My only word of advice is to NOT try to DECAPITATE, MINCE, JULIEN FRY OR
OTHERWISE DICE your little friends.

Not that its in anyway reasonable to try to kill hundreds of tiny organisms
with a knife, but it is rather comical to picture the population explosion
after the animals' regenerative capabilities kicked in :)

Travis Haas

>From: DasArm_at_aol.com
>Reply-To: nanfa_at_aquaria.net
>To: nanfa_at_aquaria.net
>Subject: Re: NANFA-- planaria
>Date: Fri, 24 Mar 2000 12:34:44 EST
>
>In a message dated 3/24/00 12:07:22 PM Eastern Standard Time,
>BR0630_at_aol.com
>writes:
>
><< So....I'm wondering what's the best way to rid my aquariums of the
>planaria.
> Any solutions out there? Thanks in advance for any insights &
>suggestions.
> >>
>
>Bruce,
>In my old aquarium book I got from my mom and dad (written by Innes) it
>states "Placed in clean water they presently starve. In an immaculate
>aquarium they do not last long. ...their exit can be hurried by the
>permanganate treatment for disinfecting plants. Fishes should be
>temporarily
>removed, but may be returned in about 12 hours without changing the water.
>...they may be trapped overnight on a piece of raw meat, but of course it
>is
>necessary to in some way shield this bait from the fishes. Repeat until all
>are gone. Some small fishes eat planarians. Certainly guppies and dwarf
>gouramies do."
>I'm guessing that you could substitute the gamnbusia for guppies since they
>are so similar (but then again the Heterandrias look at least superfically
>similar in their basic body shape and you stated that they wouldn't eat the
>planarians). Of course you would probably want to temporarily remove the
>Heterandrias from the tank as the gamnbusias would make their life a living
>hell I imagine (don't know if you have the space or inclination to do
>that).
>You were correct in your observation that they appear to be carnivorous.
>The
>Innes book says as much, and also states that they live on microscopic
>organisms.
>Hope this helps,
>Richard Hopper
>Burt, Michigan
>
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/ nanfa_at_aquaria.net. To subscribe, unsubscribe, or get help, send the word
/ subscribe, unsubscribe, or help in the body (not subject) of an email to
/ nanfa-request_at_aquaria.net. For a digest version, send the command to
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/ For more information about NANFA, visit our web page, http://www.nanfa.org