Fenbendazole dewormer in my tanks ( Bad and Good Experience)

[ShrimpMan]

Well here is my experience...

I had a little problem with planaria maybe 3 months ago... and I used the Fenbendazole system as described here on my 10g tank.... after 3 days, all planaria was gone but it had taken with if most of my brigs snails and ALL of my nerite snails also died. All I had in the tank were Ottos and Cherries (plus the brigs and nerites) and some MTS and a few plants.

I had a 2 or 3 shrimp dying on me which was ok but not the snails . But at the time I taught maybe they died because they were fairly new additions to the tank (about 2 weeks)...

So I switched foods because I had heard that Tetra food could contain planaria and that was what I first taught I had got it from... and restocked my tank and I added more MTS, Brigs and Nerite snails and also some more plants and 8 CRS and a 3 more Ottos.

And as the time went by I was infested again with LOTS of planaria and LOTS of Copepods... so I decided to give the fenbendazole another try since it had worked so well...

This time, 3 months after last time, I decided to take my time and pulverize it into the finest powder I could... after maybe 45 mins to an hour of smashing I was glad with the results, than I parted it all out and added it again to my 10g and also to my 40g which was overcrowded with planaria...

The powder was so fine it mixed way way way better with water this time and my shrimp were not able to nibble on the dewormer since it had dissolved almost completely, so I taught that was a good sign.

So the first 24hr everything looked normal... the 48hr passed and all the critters and worms were fine... and I noticed the planaria were swimming around a lot more than usual, it looked like they were trying to get out of there or something. So I decided to leave it one more day to see if the planaria and the Cyclops would die... in the morning I checked and everything looked ok and no signs of the "bugs"... So I went to work and than in the afternoon my wife calls desperate...

10g Tank death totals:
7 of 8 my CRS were dead
1 of 4 my Ottos was dead and one had lost its color (stressed)
3 of 100s my RCS was dead (which I was ok with since I had so many)
5 of 5 Olive Nerites were dead
3 of 3 Brigs snails were dead
1 of 1 Red Ramshorn Snail was dead
5 of 5 MTS was dead
Plants were fine and water parameters were the usual.
This time, all of the dead guys were in the tank for at least 2 and 1/2 months so I don’t think it had anything to do with acclimating or getting used to the my tank water.

40g Tank death totals:
12 of 12 Olive Nerites died
12 of 14 Brigs died ( and all babies , about 45 - 50 3 weeks old were dead too)
3 of 3 Ramshorn Snail were dead
all of the MTS were dead and I had about 40 of them
Some guppies were sluggish...
But my crayfishes (blue and canjun) were ok and so were the crabs (fiddler and red claw)
I have so many RCS in that tank that I don't know if any died but they seemed happy and doing fine... the Ottos and the SAE didn't seem affected at all.

Now, not all is bad news.
It completely took care of the planarias and the copepods and plants didn't react to it at all neither did it affect the water parameters.
That same night (72hrs after the fenbendazole application) I made a 50 -60% water change on both tanks, and no more deaths occurred nor have I seen any worms since... ( it’s been 1 week now)

Conclusion:

Maybe if you want to use fenbendazole you might want to keep your snails, specially, out of the tank.

Also I noticed that my shrimp start getting their bodies white when there are too many planaria. And as soon as the planaria are gone they become their regular color again.

Maybe they get attacked by the planaria or have some type of role in their reproduction or something like that.

And I guess crayfish, crabs and most fish also don’t care about Fenbendazole.

Oh and I used the Safeguard brand.

If anyone wants to donate me a few nerites I’d appreciate it since I just went broke again buying a new eheim 2217… or will have to save up for a few more months to get my crew back again.

Ps. I hope this is in the right forum. Mods please feel free to move it around.

[southerndesert]

Planaria are a result of too much food.... try feeding a bit less and they should not be a problem in the future. Same with the Copepods....

[sewingalot]

I have recently read over at Arizona Inverts that dog dewormer does have issues with killing nerites. I am sorry to hear about your loss.

[mach_calamity]

sorry to hear about your loss. how much did you use in your 10g? i used a little less than 1/10th of the safeguard in my 10g and it worked very well. no RCS and CRS deaths, and all the panaria and hydras were gone. i haven't had to do a second application yet.

also what kind of filter are you using? i suspect that the media in my filter (carbon and some other stuff) may have absorbed the toxicity of the fenbendazole a bit.

[ShrimpMan]

I have an eheim 2217 running with no carbon as in the thread they said I should not use it.
As for over feeding, well I feed them once and sometimes twice a week with either a cucumber or such veggie or a quarter of an algae pallet or some other bottom feeder pallet, which usually gets consumed within an hour... just the cucumber stays in for a day and removed the other.... and for the amount of fish and shrimp and snails I have I think it ain't too much.

The real bad news now is that last night I saw one big planaria swiming around on my 10 g tank, and it's been just 10 days since the last application.

I am thinking of using TNT or maybe C4 this time, or maybe just give it one more shot.

Oh and yeah I used .1grams of the stuff on my 10G

[southerndesert]

Originally Posted by ShrimpMan

The real bad news now is that last night I saw one big planaria swiming around on my 10 g tank, and it's been just 10 days since the last application.

I am thinking of using TNT or maybe C4 this time, or maybe just give it one more shot.

Oh and yeah I used .1grams of the stuff on my 10G

Careful the C4 may crack the glass...

[rasetsu]

Fenbendazole killed off several of my nerites as well, but not all as I did a water change and ceased treatement after 24 hours. Shrimp seemed unaffected.