[MrBobby]

I recently had a hydra outbreak in my crs tank and I was trying to find a way to eliminate them. There has been many mentions of Flubendazole and Fenbendazole being used successfully as treatments but unfortunately these drugs aren't commonly available in Canada without a vet prescription. However one medication is readily available, Mebendazole, which I found out after some research is one of the two drugs in Fluke-Tabs.
My main concern was sensitivity of the shrimp and snails in the tank so I followed a similar very low dosage as is done with Fenbendazole to great success!

The tablets I got were 100mg Mebendazole per 310mg tablet, so 1mg of Mebendazole per 3.1mg of tablet. I've read that people were successful with a dosage of about 22.2mg per 10g of Fenbendazole in shrimp tanks so I decided to dose approx 20mg of Mebendazole in my Fluval Ebi which is approx 8 gallons. To dose 20mg of Mebendazole I needed 62mg of a tablet, so I just kept cutting a little bit at a time off the tablet until I had 0.06 g on my scale. After that I just pulverized the chunks of tablet in a small plastic cup and filled it with tank water and tossed it in the tank. Mebendazole doesn't dissolve very well just like Fenbendazole but after 24 hrs the white specks were almost all gone.

There was no immediate reaction from the hydra, nor any of the shrimp or snails in the tank, but after 24 hours the hydra were all shriveled up obviously being effected by the drug. Again no reaction from the shrimps or snails, they were all active and happily moving around looking for food like normal.

After 48 hours I dosed a second dose of 20mg just to make sure there are no hydra survivors that may start to develop some resistance and again absolutely no ill-effects on the snails or shrimp (babies and adults) but no signs of hydra survivors either. roud:

So Mebendazole seems to be shrimp safe, like Fenbendazole as long as it is dosed in low quantities. This has just been my experience with lower grade crs (C to A grade) so take extra precaution if you have more sensitive shrimps and watch them carefully for any signs of stress if you choose to try Mebendazole.

 

[MrBobby]

Just a bit of an update, the shrimp are still doing fine after a week following the treatment.
On the other hand the pond snails are all dead, which would have been a good thing if snail removal was my goal.
Unfortunately the snails mostly went under a large piece of drift wood to die so there was quite a bit of ammonia buildup before I noticed all the snails were gone.
Thankfully it was nothing a few 50% water changes and gravel vacs couldn't clear up.
So now I have a snail and hydra free tank with happy CRS roaming about. :thumbsup:

 

[chiefroastbeef]

Sorry for bringing up an older thread.

I currently have a slight planaria problem, I can see 3-4 planaria in my 18G tank. I've searched unsuccessfully for fenbendazole here in Hong Kong, so I too picked up some mebendazole which is available as human deworming medicine.

After reading additional success stories from Taiwan and Hong Kong users (not much can be found on google with mebendazole on planaria, while there is plenty of info on fenbendazole), I decided to give mebendazole a try. I just put around 50mg of (half of the 100mg tablet) mebendazole, mostly dissolved into the tank.

Fingers crossed, I will see how it goes!

 

[Salvanost]

Bumb this thread
Using vermox 500mg
The tablet weigh aprox 900mg

Choose to use 200mg
Divide to
Aprox 50mg for 14 gallon about 27mg menbedazole
And
Aprox 75 mg for 30 gallon about 41.5mg menbedazole

Will report the update here later
All tank got first week born snail and shrimplet

Got some result from 1 tank, tried to 2 more tank
No reaction from 12 hour, planaria still active
The first one i will give more shrimp food and see if there any new planaria
2 adult shrimp dead and 2 adult snail dead too,
no reaction to fish tetra, pygmi and guppy
Otto seems restless, but no problem
Red lizard fine like other fish