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BOOM! Hydras in my shrimp tank.

3K views 34 replies 12 participants last post by  jasonpatterson 
#1 ·
I went for a short holiday, my shrimp tank is in total darkness (except in the daytime where some sunlight gets in) for about 3 days.

I came home today, switched on the lamps and there are a few tiny white planaria, and some HYDRAs. Googled and found that to remove the hydra, I just need to manually net them out. I spotted 4, but instead of netting them, I just use a metal thingy and squash them on the wall.

Does Hydra cause harm to adult shrimps? or just babies?
 
#3 ·
No problem, we share the same question, bump it all u like. As I read around google, there are no comments on squashing them. I guess it is worth a try, since putting fish that eats hydra, and putting chemicals are not viable for me since the shrimps are super sensitive to water parameter changes.

They can breed easily though, they pop out spores and other hydras will come out. I think the ones in my tank is introduced when i bought 1 more shrimp the other day. :angryfire
 
#8 ·
FixxYurFace, I don't know how to tell you, but over at youtube, i found a few vids of hydras stinging and killing the shrimplets. I am lucky since I haven't got shrimplets yet. My tank is a harem of shrimp chicks. But this hydra infection really demotivating to have a shrimp tank. I am contemplating to turn it into a danios tank instead.
 
#11 ·
james, they regenerate after being smooshed??!! AAAAAAAA crap! (is "crap" ok word to use here? im sorry if its not, but Im feeling down today)

Anyway, I have another problem in my shrimp tank though. My shrimps are turning into cannibals. Just now one shrimp is molting, and still alive, but while in the process, 2 other bigger shrimp came on her and start grazing her back... she was teared to pieces and died few minutes later.

I feed my shrimps every 2 days with fish food, and there are plenty of mosses in there for them to graze, so I have no idea why they are eating each other. I'll wait and see how it goes, if more shrimps died being eaten by their own sisters, I will put Danios in there and end my shrimp tank tale. Meh.
 
#12 ·
What could've happened to your female is that she might have gotten stung pretty badly by the hydra so she was already a goner. Shrimps will eat other shrimp that are dying so this is highly likely. Another thing that could have happened is that you were feeding too much protein and this led to trouble molting, which leads shrimp to die as well.

First things first, I would buy some dog de-wormer and treat the tank. People have used it with CRS and RCS and both were fine. Consider doing this before giving up your shrimp tank!
 
#13 ·
Where would one find dog de wormer or Flubendazole? This is horrible because within past couple months my shrimp have been mating and producing babies like crazy. I went from 4 parents to about 50 babies or more. Any quick help on how to get these products would be amazing. Sorry your going through same Don.
 
#14 ·
Where would one find dog de wormer or Flubendazole?
Dog dewormer with Flubendazole can be purchased at any petstore. You want the 1 gram caplets. Serve 1/10 of 1 gram per 10 gallons of tank water. The tablets do not easily dissolve in water, so you need to really grind it up into a powder to help with it dissolving.

The other route, is to buy Flubendazole "Goat Dewormer" on Amazon. This is a liquid suspension, so you don't need to worry about grinding it up. You'll have to do some googling and some basic math to figure out how much to use for treatment, since the concentration is different between the tablets and the liquid.
 
#22 ·
I've never lost a shrimp to Panacur-C. If you can't find it locally, here's a link to Amazon that has 12 grams for less than $10 plus shipping.

If you have shrimplets or about to have shrimplets, dose your tank for 2-3 days and you won't have any hydra or planaria. I just wish it would take out scuds.

It's not the ones you can see that you have to worry about...
 
#29 ·
If it's fenbendazole and it's formulated at 22%: I split the gram into 10 roughly equivalent portions. The first tank (an Ebi) I did 1/10 on the first day, but still noticed squigglies on day 3 so I dosed 1/10 again. I did it again 3 days later just to be sure. No problems with my shrimp at all, but I did a 20% w/c before (and 2 days after) the third treatment, just in case.

My second tank (10G), I just dosed 1/10, every other day for a total of 3 doses (i.e. Mon-Wed-Fri) and did a 20-25% w/c on Sun. No probs, no squigglies, piece of cake...

Dissolve as much as you can in a small bit of tank water, before adding to the tank. I use a shot glass and my finger as a poor man's mortar & pestle. There will still be granules, but its okay. Pour the solution into the tank's filter output flow, or distribute it around the tank manually. Your tank should get somewhat cloudy from it... like a little skim milk was poured into the tank. I've seen shrimp chew up and spit out granules without problems and the specks will dissolve in a day or so.

If you use carbon in your filter, remove it before dosing the tank!
 
#24 ·
Fenbendazole also works. I believe one of the two (flubendazole or fenbendazole) become inactive after a day while the other is more potent. In either case if it is a shrimp only tank you'll have no problems.

Make sure to use only .1g per 10 gallons! Crush it up as much as you can and then dissolve as much as you can in hot water as well.
 
#25 ·
Cool thank you. Currently in tank I have about 50 or so various sized fire red shrimp, quite a large amount of either European or German blue ramshorn snails and 1 albino bristle nose pleco all in a 29 gallon tank. Gonna start dosing in like 5 hours, hope all planarian and hydra die a fiery death.
 
#33 ·
Thank you and same congrats to you doncityz. Seems my planaria and hydra problem went away but for some reason two of my golden mystery snails passed away a day or so after. Noticed a few ramshorn deaths too, hoping it was just a random act but have eerie feeling dog dewormer may have played a roll. Either way shrimp are alive and growing and thats all that matters to me. Good luck to anyone else who has this problem.
 
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