Planaria, Detritus, Internet Answers

Planaria (actually Detritus Worms) and other Internet Aquarium Answers

Detritus Worms (below)
This post is somewhat a departure form the more news related posts here at Fish as Pets in that this post was not inspired by news per say, rather by news that am generating.

The purpose of this post is to bring attention to readers (who keep and maintain aquariums and ponds) to be careful about believing everything written, blogged, ect. here on the internet when it comes from aquatic sites.

What have noticed being in the maintenance and also research side of this business is that someone will write and anecdotal article with no research behind it and then others will pick this up and run with it. This is especially common with information spam sites like about.com which were created purely for advertising revenue.

Besides experience I have gained in the maintenance business, research, seminars, I still do not assume that what I know is correct and re-research often and I often research out side the aquarium industry in areas such microbiology, the lighting industry, medical, and other research and outside industry sites.

Planaria (below)
In the case of Detritus Worms, no one has bothered to check with any zoological, biology are similar research site. These article mills (and some department store type pet shops as well) just keep pumping out repeated misinformation built upon other misinformation. In the case of Detritus Worms (AKA Planaria) I checked several sources to confirm what was a baffling amount of poor information in aquatic sites, yet all the biology sites confirmed the rather obvious difference between Planaria and Oligochaetes Worms (the family of worms that compost in water that includes tubiflex, naidid, and similar worms.
For further information about this subject, please see my Aquarium Answers Blog post: “Aquarium Answers; Trematodes and Nematodes in Aquariums” which includes information about these worms near the bottom of the article.

There are several more subjects with vast amounts of poor information, such as nitrifying bacteria, what they are, can they be packaged and whether or not antibiotics will kill them. The fact here is that true nitrifying bacteria belong to the family Nitrobacteraceae and REQUIRE oxygen and are gram positive while most pathogenic bacteria in aquatics (freshwater and even more so in saltwater) are gram negative. This means that these bacteria can live short periods at room temperature in a liquid. Admittedly there are new packaging innovations and cool storage that can stretch the life of these bacteria, Bio Spira by Marineland certainly has been better than most (although shelf life and poor handling certain impacts the quality of this product as well). Unfortunately most products use Heterotrophic Bacteria which store and reproduce much easier, however they do not have nearly the same ability to remove ammonia and nitrites as true Nitrifying bacteria.
The other poor information aspect to this is many sites, forums, blogs that state that most all medications will kill your nitrifying bacteria, while this is certainly true of Erythromycin or Tetracycline which are gram positive this is NOT true of Kanamycin or Nitrofurazone which are primarily gram negative (these antibiotics do have some gram positive abilities as well and so overuse can and will harm nitrifying bacteria).
Finally it is often amazing how many persons will recommend a primarily gram positive antibiotics such as Penicillin or Tetracycline for gram negative disease such as Aeromonas, Septicemia or Columnaris.

For further information about medications and treatments, please read this article: “Aquarium Medications and Treatments and how they work” .