Nemerteans a potential cure?

[Stu&Shaz]

Phil i know you don't care for other forum links,but if there is any substance in this,it's gotta be worth keeping

http://www.gifkikkerportaal.nl/Forum/ta ... fault.aspx

I haven't yet read through the whole of it(little time just now),plus relying on a translation isn't ideal ,but nemerteans are such a PITA,I thought worth getting it out there to see what you guys think. Rich(Frye) if you read this,I would be very grateful for your thoughts,with one of the best herp vets stateside as a brother,I would presume you would be able to make more sense than I on this. i'm personally wary of using drugs without a vets involvement,but have to say this has sparked some curiosity.

thanks all for any input

must dash

Stu

[RichFrye]

Hi Stu,
the drug spoken of is called Levamisole (here) and is a good de-wormer for frogs. However, I doubt nemerteans were effecting or infecting darts. Other worms quite possibly could have infected the darts in the post.
My concern would be that the frogs are not over-dosed from 'random' and /or repeated mistings of the drug.
I am not a vet , so I don't have numbers on dosing safely.

Rich

[Stu&Shaz]

My concern as well Rich,repeated dosing,that is, even at lower strengths. I'm grateful for your thoughts though. Would just love to find a method to clobber nemerteans.

thanks

Stu

[RichFrye]

I have not talked to my brother in depth concerning this method, but I will soon and I will pass along his thoughts .

[Stu&Shaz]

Rich I would really appreciate that,thanks. I'm sure you'll remember us chatting about Onisius acillus,(sp?) but it seems that method doesn't seem to have worked,my preference would be something like that in all honesty,a natural born predator of nems.,that wouldn't have implications for using man made drugs,or carry other potential pathogens to my frogs. My froggy exploits seem unhampered by nemertaeans,but I just want them clobbered!!

best

Stu

[Philsuma]

diligent hand removal....same for slugs and snails. Just keep on it day after day and the population will become very small and most likely even peter out.

Centipedes are the only pest that 'broke' me when I attempted hand removal.

[RichFrye]

diligent hand removal....same for slugs and snails. Just keep on it day after day and the population will become very small and most likely even peter out.

Centipedes are the only pest that 'broke' me when I attempted hand removal.

Yup, pick, pick, pick and repeat.
All time baddest, moth flies.

[Stu&Shaz]

diligent hand removal....same for slugs and snails. Just keep on it day after day and the population will become very small and most likely even peter out.

Centipedes are the only pest that 'broke' me when I attempted hand removal.

Absolutely Phil,you are right of course,We seem to have been more effective with snails than nemerteans though,I guess the capacity to bait,has aided us there. It's my very earliest vivs that I see them in. We got wise fairly quick. I wasn't microwaving my leaf litter long enough,all a learning curve me friend.

thanks both

Stu

[RichFrye]

After a rather short talk with my brother, he pretty much said what one would expect from a medical professional. No, he would not suggest spraying drugs into a viv for deworming purposes.

[Frogman955]

I`ve not been on for a little while but thought I could add to this thread of Stu`s.
Recently I stupidly infected a new viv that I set up.
It was my own fault so had to find a way to deal with it.
Fortunately stripping the viv down was only a few minutes of my time if I had to go that route, which was down to the way I had put it together.
Anyway what I did was to grab a few nemerteans and put them in a small container and added a few drops of Levacol.
The effects were instant, they all died.
The next day I tried a weaker solution by adding a little water, and again they all died.
I left the container on top of a large viv where the top gets really hot because of the lights and everything dried up.
After putting some more worms in the container I rehydrated the solution with a few drops of water, and again the worms all died, the solution had reactivated after being rehydrated.
So I`m thinking that I could make up a spray to use in the viv but I was very concerned on the effects on the frogs, so never did it.
Eventually I decided to buy a worming liquid based on Levacol/Levamisole and made a solution to spray the viv after removing the frogs.
It didn`t work.
In the end I removed everything except the peat which I use for my substrate and used boiling water out of the hot tap.
Now they are dead.
I say that because I`ve not seen any in a while.
They really are a pain to get rid of and Levacol would seem to be the answer, but to make up a spray strong enough to do the job would work out rather expensive.
Needless to say that everything that I removed has been left out of the viv and I`ve put fresh wood and plants in and only the peat substrate remains.


Mike