Leeches

[whitneyturk]

I had a couple of very sad fish bowls as a kid, but other than that, I'm new to the hobby.

I now have two tanks: the little 10L Dennerle tank from the Wabi-Kusa workshop and a 22 gallon long rimless I bought online. My Wabi-Kusa effort was not what you'd call a success if you measured by such factors as (1) plants staying alive and (2) not smelling like a hobo, but I bought a bigger tank nevertheless. I ordered some plants and manzanita and shoved them all in there and some aspects of it are definitely not a raging failure. I think it's mostly pretty.

Somewhere along the way, I acquired leeches. Also, the fissidens I ordered from Buceplant was about 90% hair algae and is now about 170% hair algae, and I'm not quite sure what to do about that, but it seems a petty concern when the tank has LEECHES.

I have two dozen neocaridina in the tank (thanks, Nick). At one point, all of the mature females were berried, but they seem to have changed their minds about that over the last few days. What can you do? It's a woman's right to choose to drop all her eggs and swim around like you didn't have your heart set on being a grandma to dozens of teeny little waterbugs. Regardless, they're the reason I don't want to bomb the tank with chemical dewormer.

I tried two DIY planaria traps. They're both glass seasoning jars, one where I covered most of the holes with silicone and used coffee stirrers in three holes. For the other, I used the solid plastic lid and cut a big hole in it to accommodate a piece of glassware I had lying around from my...uh...reefer tank (if you search "screened glass bowl," you'll find something similar). I baited them with frozen bloodworms, and the leeches stuck their heads out of the substrate and moseyed over to the two different ends of the tank, but none went into the traps. I left them overnight, and still no dice. I removed them to keep the rotting bloodworms from causing an ammonia spike my filter can't handle, and I'm not sure what to do now. I might order one of those planaria traps that look like test tubes, as I've read people have had success with those.

In case that doesn't work: I was originally planning to stock the 22gal with otos, green neons, and chili rasboras; would the tetras eat leeches? I've also been considering pea puffers, though I'm hesitant to mix them with the shrimp. I was not originally planning to stock any fish for the next couple of months, just because I want the shrimp to breed a couple of times first. I wish they'd eat the stupid algae; my next steps there are probably overdosing one of the meshes with fertilizer (I've been using ThriveC once a week with my 20% water change), and if that doesn't work, trying H2O2 on one of the other ones.

Any advice would be most welcome.

[Cristy Keister]

Some fish do eat planaria. Chilli rasboras and green neons might be too small to eat them, and don't often eat from the bottom of the tank. Otos might. Puffers will kill your shrimp.

[Becca]

Fenbendazole

[whitneyturk]

Does anyone breed otos?