The Puffer Forum

Was looking in my snail tank this morning and noticed these small white larva things crawling all over the place. Dont want to take any chances so I broke down the tank. Sucks cause i had a TON of babies. Going to clean out that tank and maybe set up my 10g instead

sounds like it was just planaria....common in snail tanks...nothing to worry about IMO

oh well LOL, the freaked me out and I didnt want them in Bloats tank or worse in Bloat. Next time Ill know better. The tank was a pos anyways and I wanted to set up a nicer one for my betta to go into

why would planaria be eating the snails?

normally they exist because of over feeding. if the feeding dropped off then they would starve and reduce the numbers. I can't see then wiping out a snail population.

If anything it is under feeding.

I dont know if they were eating the snails or not, i just saw them crawling around the tank and it freaked me out. I didnt want to take any chances so I broke it down. Plus it was ugly as sin anyways, Im going to set up my 10g and make a nice home for my betta(get him out of my cray tank) and start up some rams in it too

IMHO & IME, excess planaria and nematodes are purely upkeep issues. they are in fact normal tank inhabitants and if the population becomes large, it indicates that the tank - particularly the substrate - has excessive organics. That is nothing more than an indicator of insufficient substrate vacuuming and/or too few water changes for the tank population.

It is very easy to under-maintain snail breeding tanks, as overfeeding is all but standard there. These free-living inverts are not harmful unless the tank should go foul and crash, but that is uncommon. They are not parasites, although there are parasitic members of both groups - but those would be in or on the hosts, not free-living in the tank.

Snail breeding tanks should be given the same care as fish tanks, but may require more than fish tanks due to over-feeding.

HTH