Worm In Snail!

[Bekahsa]

Hi,
 
Is anyone familiar with worms in snails?  I just extracted a worm by mistake from one of my snails.  All I did was hold a spinach leaf to one of my snails and onto the spinach leaf a worm came and I immediately took it out of the water.
 
Is there anything or something I can give my snails to get rid of any worms they made be carrying?  I have done some research on the net and frankly no results on how to remove them.  It's a brown worm, small one, the top body is a little wide and than it has a long string.  It kinda looks like a small leach.

 

[guppiegirlie]

It sounds like the same little horrors I had in my tank a while ago.

I don't think they'd harmful, just a case of over feeding. It has more than likely came from your snail and if there is plenty of food for them they will multiply, quickly.

To get rid of mine, I upped my weekly water changes from 30% to 50% and had a good root around in the gravel with a gravel vac. I also cut back on feeding for a couple of weeks, only feeding every other day rather than everyday.

I hope this helps and you get rid of the awful things!

Good luck

 

[Baccus]

By the sounds of it I would say the hitch hiker on your snail was a leech, I have heard of leeches being on snails but I can't say I have heard of worms infesting snails.....apart from that weird one that infects land snails and affects the snails brain and makes the snail go out in full day light where a brid will likely find it and eat it. The parasite needs the bird to complete its life cycle, but that is the only parasite aside from leeches I know about involving snails.
 
To remove any parasites from your snails its going to be very hard since almost everything that is designed to kill parasites is also going to be toxic to the snail. When I had some shrimp invested with leeches I had some luck putting the shrimp in a saltwater dip until the leeches dropped off. I'm not sure how this would work for most aquatic snails since in general salt and snails don't mix so well.

 

[Bekahsa]

Thank you guys!  I really hope there was only one leach, which I was able to retrieve with luck, but just in case I will keep a close eye on my snails.

 

[Bekahsa]

It sounds like the same little horrors I had in my tank a while ago.

I don't think they'd harmful, just a case of over feeding. It has more than likely came from your snail and if there is plenty of food for them they will multiply, quickly.

To get rid of mine, I upped my weekly water changes from 30% to 50% and had a good root around in the gravel with a gravel vac. I also cut back on feeding for a couple of weeks, only feeding every other day rather than everyday.

I hope this helps and you get rid of the awful things!

Good luck

 
So, remember when I said I hope that there was only one leach? Ha, I spoke to soon.
 
I was adding a cuddle bone pieces to my aquarium and in getting one of the snails to go on the cuddle bone, I notice a small speck of brown thing on the snails shell, so i pulled it away and sure enough, it was another leach, ugh.  I will defiantly follow your directions now.  The only thing is that I also have fish in this aquarium and will have to remove all four snails and put them in a separate aquarium from my fish.  Don't want to put my fish on the same treatment, not fare to them.  I really hope this works.

 

[guppiegirlie]

If it is the same leechy things i had, they wont harm your fish, or your snails they're just unsightly.

Just give your gravel a good clean each water change and cut down on how much you're feeding.

If there is no food for them to eat they can't survive.

I had them in my 90litre set up with guppies, platties, neons, loaches and a little bristle nose and no harm came to my fish, if anything they're likely to eat them! In my case it was a case of me over feeding the fish.

After a few weeks of good gravel cleaning and less food they seemed to dissapear. I've not seen any for a very long time anyway!

Good luck and let us know how you get on

 

[Baccus]

If you can please try to get some pictures of your invaders, at least then we might have a better idea on what exactly your dealing with. I would not take any drastic actions on the snails until the intruders on the snails can be identified.
There are many harmless critters that can end up in our tanks, just as there is plenty of nasties that nobody wants.

 

[Ch4rlie]

I have a feeling this may be well be planerian rather than leeches but cannot know for sure without seeing a picture if you can get a half decent close up shot which will certainly help or perhaps you can have a look online, google planerian and then perhaps aquarium leech, and see what pics most closely resembles what you have seen on your snails and let us know, then we may be able to advise further.