Re: Levamisole treatment

["Chris Jewell" <chris@jewell68.freeserve.co.uk>]

Thanks for the reply steve.

The worms are certainly not the type of nematodes that are resident on the
aquarium glass etc. They are protruding from the anus of the two angels,
about 1mm diameter, semi translucent / white and up to 100mm in length.
Since the worms appeared yesterday, both fish have stopped eating. They dont
break off in sections, but as whole lengths.

Yup, bloodworm are red mosquito larvea - I generally feed frozen  bloodworms
( in adition to many other frozen foods + dried foods) for maintenance and
conditioning. For live food I mainly stick to white worms ( allthough I
currently dont have any)/ brine shrimp (adult and newly hatched for smaller
fish), however local stores stock live bloodowrm, which the fish have
occasionaly recieved to add a little variety. I have never fed live
tubifex,mas I am quite aware of the dangers, I stick to me gamma iraditaed
frozen food. I have now stopped feeding live bloodworms. Over here "black
worms" anre a form of black mosquito larvea, not Limnodrilus worms, or not
that I have seen marketed in the last 17 years.

What do people reccomend feeding to  appisto's other than dried food?

I appear to have sporadic outbreaks of disease thats hard to cure, such as
these worms and the still "unknown" appisto problems, in well kept tanks
with good water conditions. It is getting rather infuritaing that on one
hand I can keep and breed fish at the harder end of the scale ( wild discus,
choclate gouramis, wild caught corydoras etc) but appear to loose fish such
as my appistos / angels through no diagnosed problems, and not much I can do
about it. I may just be picking at straws, but the live blood worm is the
only thing I can think of. I would dearly love some really nice appistos,
after looking at some of the lesss common fish that are out there, but
untill Ican find the cause of these problems.

Chris
----- Original Message -----
From: steev ward <steevward@mac.com>
To: <apisto@listbox.com>
Sent: Wednesday, October 10, 2001 8:16 AM
Subject: Re: Levamisole treatment


> Chris
>         It is still possible that the worms you are seeing are not
parasitic. Other than the Camallanus worms I mentioned most parasitic worms
would remain strictly internal. They may be some harmless oligochaetes
(white, about 1 mm long, inching along on the glass or wiggling about in the
water). These worms feed on fish waste and uneaten fish food. They are
common in the aquarium and are easily introduced with live plants, live
foods, etc. Occasionally some may be seen on a fish, but only inadvertently
and tempoarily. Often they will live happily in the filter and then be seen
in other places after the filter has been cleaned or when gravel is
disturbed.
>         You mentioned feeding live bloodworms. We usually use the name
Bloodworms in reference to Midge fly larvae and buy them frozen or
freeze-dried. Around here (NW U.S.) when people sell "Live Bloodworms" they
are often not insect larvae at all, but aquatic worms such as Tubifex or
Limnodrilus (also called blackworms). Feeding these worms can occassionally
cause problems very much like those you originally described. That is why
people on the list asked if you'd fed live Tubifex to your fish lately. Also
as you described in your experiences, some fish are very susceptible to
these gastric problems while others rarely show such signs.
>         Back in the seventies, when it was common to feed Tubifex to all
fish and Malawi cichlids were at the height of their popularity, someone
figured out that a syndrome we had named "Malawi Bloat" was related to the
feeding of Tubifex. I can now remember killing many fish that way but it was
an occassional thing and I don't think I would have believed you if you told
me it was the worms. What would happen was that the fish would eat a lot of
worms (some of them dead even) which would decay inside the fish and their
intestines would fill with rapidly reproducing bacteria. Similar to food
poisoning and it doesn't HAVE to be worms that are fed in order for this too
happen. From there it could get into the bloodstream and overwhelm the
immune system and you'd see the fish stuggling for oxygen at the end.
>         It could well be that you could correct your problems by changing
your feeding practices.
>         (Not that it couldn't be something else)
> -Steev
>
>
>
>
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