Re: worms

[Sarah LeGates <slegates@yahoo.com>]

Hello all,

I have a few points to add to the lovely worm discussion, having
recently gone through the eradication process myself: 

1) Levamisole HCl in a liquid form is the easiest to use.  I had to
use the oblet version, in the form of a sheep de-wormer (oblets being
very large tablets), since no liquids were readily available to me. 
It is possible to overdose this medication, so be careful with how
much you add.  I can't remember the figure that was quoted as being a
"good dose"; I accidentally dosed at 10 mg/L, which will kill your
fish if you don't monitor it carefully or if you leave it in too long
(which I did, and it did kill the fish, yikes).

2) Camallanus are highly communicable.  Within 2 months of the first
signs of infection of a fish in my tank, all the other fish were
carrying the worms.  When I added new fish, they showed signs of
infestation within two to three weeks.  In your case, I would assume
that all the fish that were in that tank are carrying the worms, and
you should treat the tank, not just the fish.  From what I
understand, there is some stage of the life cycle where eggs or
free-swimming larvae are released into the water, and that is what
the other fish ingest to pick up the parasite.  The worms in one
infected fish can infect all the other fish in the tank.  Also,
practice careful hygeine when using common equipment (nets, tubing,
etc.), as they can carry the worms from one tank to another.

The sooner you treat your tank, the better.  You may want to plan on
re-treating in 2-3 weeks to be certain you've eradicated the
parasite.  I was successful in removing the worms from my tank (the
fish loss was a bummer, though).

Sarah LeGates

--- steev ward <steevward@mac.com> wrote:
> Bonny;
>      Cammallanus worms were a hot topic a while back. I noted
> this page:
> http://www.thekrib.com/Diseases/nematodes.html#11
> The general opinion seemed to be that Levamisole was the best
> treatment.
> Piperazine SEEMED to work in some cases from what I've seen,
> though  others have been less enthusiastic about it's
> effectiveness (I think you need to keep the treatment up for a
> considerable period of time and possibly retreat after a month
> or so).
>      I recently tried Fluke Tabs® on a case with disappointing
> results.
>      The idea that the worms REQUIRE an intermediate host or
> that the likely source of infection would be a crustacean does
> not seem to hold true for infections in the aquarium and
> transmission from fish to fish through ingestion seems to be
> the most common mode (but only in my opinion).
> 
> 
> 

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