Jestersix

Vermited snails cure ?

Here’s something interesting.
Top shelf aquatics feeds deworming flake food to kill vermited snails. I don’t know if it works but this is what I hear. This is the flake food.

There’s a YouTube service guy that I follow. He’s trying it on one of his customers aquariums. He feed the aquarium and the vermited snails ate the food. I’ll let you know in the future episodes if the snails die or not. He’s documenting it.
 
Last edited:
Here’s something interesting.
Top shelf aquatics feeds deworming flake food to kill vermited snails. I don’t know if it works but this is what I hear. This is the flake food.
It would be intresting if it does. Let us know if someone tries it out.
 
use all three [fenben dazole,prazi quantel, levam isole HCL] or a specific one ? will it also negatively affect snails, spaghetti worms, etc? i might be willing to try, worst case if beneficial snails/worms die off, change a bunch of water and get replacements. am i missing any other potential issues?
 
use all three [fenben dazole,prazi quantel, levam isole HCL] or a specific one ? will it also negatively affect snails, spaghetti worms, etc? i might be willing to try, worst case if beneficial snails/worms die off, change a bunch of water and get replacements. am i missing any other potential issues?
Destroying your biome? Allowing stuff like dinos re-entering the tank due to a weak biome. Overdosing the meds due to a lack of control how much you add to your tank and their side effects?
 
Those are some dangerously powerful meds to add to a tank. Dose matters of course, which I don’t know in this case. Fenbendazole is sometimes used to eradicate clove polyps, but it also kills a lot of other stuff like snails, bristleworms, and other soft corals. And some reports that at doses that kill a lot of other stuff in your tank and possibly cause a crash, it doesn’t fully kill the vermetids. Which are usually pretty easy to control by other methods.
 
Last edited:
When are vermetids ever so bad you need a last resort though? I have seen some beautiful SPS tanks where every square inch is vermetids. the little ones really don’t seem to bother anything.
And unlike most other pests you can just go in and relatively quickly take them out with some clippers. They don’t spread as fast as other pests.
 
Meckley uses ivermectin to kill off all vermetids, but he also thinks blue LEDs are causing depression so take that with a grain of salt.

Not sure about, blue light but what causes depression in me is his recommendation to everyone to use Kalkwasser as he does on his farm, ignoring to mention the fact that he also uses big calcium reactors to counteract the impact of Kalkwasser, and assuming everyone is aware that he has a massive density of corals and very few rocks or surface area relative to the volume in his tanks and on top of that performs regular cleaning which all cannot be replicated the same way in a smaller tank.
 
Last edited:
And unlike most other pests you can just go in and relatively quickly take them out with some clippers. They don’t spread as fast as other pests.
I was waiting for someone to make the joke/real suggestion to use needle nose pliers.

I've never seen it, but I hear bumblebee snails help a lot. I keep them in my tank, because why not? They look cool.


Not sure about, blue light but what causes depression in me is his recommendation to everyone to use Kalkwasser as he does on his farm, ignoring to mention the fact that he also uses big calcium reactors to counteract the impact of Kalkwasser, and assuming everyone is aware that he has a massive density of corals and very few rocks or surface area relative to the volume in his tanks and on top of that performs regular cleaning which all cannot be replicated the same way in a smaller tank.

Yeah, other can cost constraints on dosing elements, which I still don't really buy, I don't get the love for kalk over soda ash and calcium chloride. And maybe ato dosing instead of having a dosing pump.
 
And here is a recent literature quote translated from the German book ‘Trojaner im Meerwasseraquarium’ - Trojans in the marine aquarium (3rd edition, 2020), Daniel Knop (you can research his credentials but I would suggest they are very (!) solid): ….fighting Vermetidae is simply nonsense….(p. 131).

I still fight them, by manual removal and supervising BB snails in doing their job. With the recent addition of approx 35 BB snails, I do feel they are at least trying to be effective since they sit where the vermited snails are. I will most likely continue to add more of them slowly if needed, and see if this can lead to close to an eradication (risking other snails dying in the process).
 
I had a massive infestation of vermitids 9 months or so ago. I literally had thousands in my 110g display tank, mostly on the bottom portions of my rock scape. It took 4+ months but this is how I got rid of them. If you looked in my tank now you will see zero sign of any vermitids. Even their pointy tubes are gone.

1. Reduced my pellet feeding significantly. You basically want as little stray particulates in your water column as possible. I still feed pellets 4x a day but each feeding has been sized so there is essentially zero waste.

2. For frozen food I switched to either pure mysis or pure brine shrimp only. Previously I used a frozen food that had a bunch of stuff mixed in. For each feeding of frozen food, the cubes are thoroughly rinsed in tap water then rodi. I do this by using a small metal strainer. The rinsing reduces the particulates in the frozen food significantly.

3. Every day for a month I would blow off the rocks and stir up the sand a bit to get the vermitids into feeding mode. I would turn off flow to the sump, dose coral snow (ie, calcium carbonate mixed in RODI—search on Youtube if you have never made it), and let the coral snow swirl around the display tank for half an hour.

4. Bought 10-20 bumble bee snails at least four different times. Whenever I saw these snails around locally I bought them. If I was ordering other livestock online, I would add bumble bee snails to the order.

5. I also bought 4 peppermint shrimp but I am pretty sure they got eaten by the other tank inhabitants since I never saw the peppermint shrimp them after the first day.

6. I pulled out every single piece of rockscape and scraped it down with a wire brush. I unfortunately did this on two separate occasions. This reduced the vermitid snail population significantly but it is impossible to get them all due to the crevices in the rockwork. This is also the quickest way to get rid of those tubes after the snails are gone.

Of the above, I am pretty sure #1-#3 in combination can decimate the vermitid population. Those steps are also easy and cheap to implement. Bumblebee snails are hearty and seem like hard workers so I plan to periodically refresh their population along with the rest of the CUC.

I also had an infestation of vermitids in the drainage area down to the sump as well as inside my RedSea Reefmat which sits in the sump. The steps above solved those issues as well (or at least I have not noticed a massive infestation in those areas like before). The key is to starve the vermitid snails via very controlled feedings + coral snow. Then let the bumblebee snails hunt the vermitid down. Now I dose coral snow once a week after each water change.
 
Last edited:
Here’s something interesting.
Top shelf aquatics feeds deworming flake food to kill vermited snails. I don’t know if it works but this is what I hear. This is the flake food.
There’s a YouTube service guy that I follow. He’s trying it on one of his customers aquariums. He feed the aquarium and the vermited snails ate the food. I’ll let you know in the future episodes if the snails die or not. He’s documenting it.

I am excited for more people to try it out and see how it goes. Maybe it can kill the verms that line our entire plumping pipe walls, and other places bumblebees can't get to?

I have also heard of some stories using the flake. In one case, they fed the food once a week rather than daily.
 
Back
Top