Jared Andrews

While nitrate levels have begun rising since I began my increased feeding experiment, they hadn't reached critical levels until this week. With the nitrate in the 20-40 range we are reaching a shrimp danger zone, which I especially don't want because there are at least 4 berried shrimp in the tank right now. I did a 2 gallon (~15%) water change after testing. On the other hand, I suspect the reason all of these shrimp are getting pregnant suddenly is due to the excess food. I'm going to reduce feeding by 50% this week and possibly bring it up depending on the results next week.

There is another reason to decrease feeding as well, I found Planaria in my tank this week!

It's hard to say when this planaria was introduced. The last time I added any new plants to the tank was on June 1st when I put in the Monte Carlo pot which I have been slowly transplanting. It's possible the planaria hitch hiked into the tank on that. But it is also possible that they have been here for a long time and only emerged when I started to increase feeding levels.

Another interesting factor to consider is that I was away from my home for 4 days last week. For this period of time, aside from a friend stopping in once to feed the tank and top off the water level, there was basically no movement in my house. Arriving home late on Saturday night and looking into the tank with a flashlight revealed planaria to me for the first time. After this initial sighting I didn't see them for another 36 hours.

Once I got good at looking for them, I was able to pull 8 out of the tank with a pipette. There has to be more. They are not very big at the moment. The max size I have found is about 2mm. I believe the specific type of planaria in my tank is "schmidtea mediterranea".

Normally, I don't mind invaders to the tank. I have welcomed with open arms scuds and ramshorn snails. But with planaria it is a bit different. If you search around on the internet, the presence of planaria often causes extreme reaction. They are capable of killing shrimp, tho I haven't found much information on how this happens. The population levels and size of planaria I see causing issues for people online is much greater than what I am currently dealing with. It seems like the planaria in my tank would be too small to attack anything but baby shrimp. This could be an issue soon, but we'll see.

Fortunately, my population is quite small at the moment and I have seen no evidence of them attacking the shrimp.

For the time being my plan of attack regarding the planaria looks like this:

• Continue capturing any that I can with a pipette
• Deploy a planaria trap with egg whites as the bait
• Reduce feeding

If the population continues to grow I will deploy "no-planaria" chemicals but I would rather not. I also see claims online that fish, like mollies, will eat them. I have never observed my mollies eat a scud or attack a shrimp. But I do see them pick up ramshorn snails and samples of sand from the ground all the time. So it's possible they will do a little population control.