Plan arias
Plan arias are also told Dugesia gonocephala (triangular head whirl worm), are carnivores and appear both in marine and also in the freshwater.
Indeed they prefer cooler waters with strong movement they can also occur in tropical aquariums. Mostly they are brought in like other pests through the purchase of new plants or by the transportation water of again acquired animals or frost feed in which eggs are contained. Therefore it is also necessary to water the new plants before bringing them into the basin.
Plan arias could be recognized very well. They have a smooth, slimy skin surface and they are snail-like flattened. Mostly they have one or two pairs of eyes and they have a clearly recognizable three-angled or arrowhead-like head. If they are pulled together they appear clearly shorter and plumper. They crawl or move themselves pulling and stretching out again. During the day they live rather hidden under roots or in the grit and come back at the twilight from their hides.
If you discover a plan aria in your aquarium, you should remove them as fast as possible with the own hand and you should pay attention to the amount of given feed. So they aren't able to increase extremely and you are able to control the population.
With an excess supply of feed the worms reproduce very quickly what is very difficult to be controlled if they appear in masses.
They rest the aquarium equipment in rest, however masses of plan arias are able to bring litter skinned shrimps and cancers into danger or even eradicate the whole tribe.
What to do against plan arias?
You can find numerous methods how to go on against plan arias in the internet. But what really helps in fact against these pests?
Following methods turned out to be most effective:
• Compiling: This helps to reduce the number but you will not be able to catch all plan arias and you can repeat the process 100 times.
• Economical feeding: This prevents an explosive increase, however, your shrimps or fish rather starve.
• Macropodes / Thread fishes as enemies: It is told that they eat plan arias. This likes to be. However, pay attention that they first have to starve before they start to pick up the adult parasites as feeds.
• Heat: Plan arias die in high temperature water but this method isn't feasible in an established and filled aquarium.
• Salt: No success with salting the water. The animals only die if they come in direct contact with the salt grains.
• Stream: Stream always searches the shortest way. If you hold two wires into the water, what you can read often, you can only get the animals that swim through the two wires.
• Vinegar into the water: This method is recommended as successful on various pages. But you only decimate the plan arias in the aquarium.
Suitable treatment possibilities against plan arias:
An effective treatment persisted itself with Flubenol 5%. Here 5g Flubenol is solved in 100 litres of water. 1 week treatment duration. The medicine itself is not poisonous for shrimps and cancers but the plan arias give a cell poison to protect themselves what can be dangerous for the shrimps or cancers in greater amounts. Because of that you should suck off as many plan arias as possible in the days before starting the treatment. The more plan arias you such off before the treatment the more shrimps could not be damaged by the cell poison of the plan arias. Apple- or other snails should be removed before you use the Flubenol because they can not take the medicine. The medicine can not kill plan arias that are well hidden for example in the grit. Because of that you should repeat the treatment after 2 weeks.
A treatment with garlic is recommended by other aquarians. The experiences of a reader with this method can be read here. |
