How To Effectively Remove Planaria

Upon visiting my local petstore I checked out behind a older gentleman who purchased several boxes of Safe-Guard 4 Canine Dewormer. The female cashier inquired if he ran a kennel or something thinking it was odd that he had several boxes. He kindly replied that he had Planaria in his freshwater shrimp tank and used the Canine Dewormer to erradicate it being this particular product contained Fenbendazole.

Interested I pardoned myself, and stated I was having the same issue with my 20gL (thread-like worms, Planaria, wigglers, whatever you want to call them...I had 2 types that I noticed) and that I too was trying to figure a way to remove them as I had read that they can kill "sting" shrimp and I had noticed a couple CRS that were deceased...which was odd because they looked fine/aka weren't missing body pieces like if the cpo's were to possibly "get" them.

He told me for my tank size to grab a box of the 8 in 1 Safe-guard 4 and to add a couple granules to the tank and once the nastys are gone to perform a 25% partial, he swore it wouldn't harm anything living within the tank as he had used it in the past with just about everything that can swim in freshwater...including shrimp.

So I grab a box (expensive! $18.99 for a box that has three 2 gram pouches, which the box states each box will treat 20lbs..of dog that is), take it home...open the pouch and shake about 10 or so granules in. This is the Purple Box, the store was out of the 1 gram pouches that would have been $12.99

Almost immediately I notice the 1 grain of rice size planaria falling off the glass and swaying to the bottom! Yay!

Thus far I haven't noticed any negative effects to anyone in the tank (Shrimp, CPOS, BNP, snails that were probably present as eggs on one of the plants --ugh!).

I also do NOT notice any wigglers in the water column carrot

Of course, it's only been about 1 hour since I added the product so I will post an update if I find the results to be any different.

 

I have chubby brownish colored ones that look like the tip of an earthworm and move similar to such along the glass wall & white thin ones that look similar to a piece of thread and wiggle in the actual water column itself but they don't have the hydra looking head that splits into 3.

 

Hmm...I didn't think it could look so different?
Then I have no clue what happened to a couple of the CRS, maybe age? Because the ones remaining are definatley active with most being full of eggs.

 

Greetings!
I used this in a 20gallon long invert setup & eventually I did end up getting them back after some time and would simply follow the instructions I was given which was basically add a bit of the Safe guard and wait until the nasties die...then perform a 25% partial.