white translucent slug?

[checkerboard]

Hi all,

I recently found a tiny 1 cm slug like organism in my tank.

it is white and translucent. I had never encountered it before. My fish do not eat them.

I have not added new plants nor fishes to that tank for 2 months but this organism appeared out of nowhere.

1)what is it?
2)Is it harmful to fishes or plants?
3)how do you get rid of it?
4)if you have an idea, how did it get into the tank in teh first place, given that all i add to my tank is tap water.

many thanks in advance for the help!

[vinz]

Most likely it's planaria. I'm not sure how it gets in, but it usually multiplies quickly when there's uneaten food for them to feed on. Usually plagues fish tanks that use raw food like market prawns, beef hert, etc.

Not harmful to fishes or plants as far as I know.

Salt is one treatment, but not possible for a planted tank. Meds are also unsuitable if it's a planted tank.

I had a breakout sometime back in my planted arowana tank after I started leaving a piece of market prawn for the SAEs after feeding the arowana. Stopping the habit did nothing to dent the planria population. I tried picking them out with tweezers, but that's not effective. In the end, I introduced some tiger barbs for some other reason and the planaria dissappeared practically overnight.

I'm not sure if the barbs ate them. From what I've read:
- No fish will eat it.
- Fish seldom touch food that planaria has crawled over.
The barbs could have been hungry enough to stomach them as I do not specifically feed them at all.

One possibility is that the barbs effectively removed their food source by picking up all the scraps from the arowana's meal.

One way of removing them is to tie a piece of meat to a string and leave it in the tank... after some time, you should find them infesting it. Remove them by lifting out the meat.

Search the web for more info and also how to remove them.

[checkerboard]

but i only feed flakes! i thought of trying puffer fish, havent got down to doing it because i am afraid it will attack my boraras urophthalamoides in the tiny tank!

i have quite hardy plants in there, like java fern and cyperus helferi. the most sensitive would be my balansae i think. Hence, i do not mind removing my boraras. hence, should i use the salt treatment, how much should i add for a 40 litres? i will trying searching the web in the meanwhile.

thanks!