Camallanus

[beachfishymama]

Has anyone experienced the battle with camallanus?  I think that may be this weeks problem.  

I had my guppies (2 fem, 1 male) in a five gallon hex, fully cycled.  My male began to darken and lay low at the bottom, and the smaller of the 2 females gravid spot disappeared (no fry to be found) and now she is very thin (last 7 days) and seems to have a long dark spot running througout her body.  Larger female (who looks pretty pregnant) seems find and doing well.

I treated the five gallon with Tank Buddies fungus (all I had on hand), removed filter and after a couple of days the male looked worse.

I moved the male to my 10 gallon 3 days ago on the advice of another forum (it had just finished cycling - have had it set up cycling for a month) - male seemed to perk up and survived a couple of days so I moved the girls over to the ten gallon, where it is 79 degrees.

As I was gravel vacing out the 5 gallon, noticed some fat round red worms in the bucket.  Other forum suggested it might be camallanus, and that's where my confusion lies.  I see lots of different treatments, but unsure what to use next.  I can't get to the store until Monday (I am trapped over here in Crystal Beach - well, not really trapped, but I can't get to Galveston.)  I have some dog/cat wormer on hand and am wondering if anyone has used this with any success?  I have found some references to it googling, but nothing that says "hey use this it works and here's the dosage."  

So I thought I would ask the forum in case any of you have been through this. :evil: CAMALLANUS!

[Mzungu]

Re: Camallanus

Wow, I have never been through this (or even heard of them until now). I just spent a few minutes on the web looking up these worms, so I am in no way saying I know anything about them! However, if I were you, I think I would do some more research before you medicate. Or, alternatively, try to figure out where these guys came from, and from that you can determine whether or not they are camallanus. Did you feed your fish any live foods? Did you recently add anything foreign or new to the tank? Just a couple questions to maybe ask yourself. Wouldn't want you to put some medication in the tank if it's not necessary.  :(

Sorry to hear you're having troubles. Oh, and do you happen to have any pictures of the worms? Or of the fish? That might help, as well.

[guppymax]

Re: Camallanus

I do not have personal experience. I understand that you can look very closely and see very small worms dangling from the anus. The wasting, thin appeareence could be tuberculosis or parasites ( possibly camelanus nematodes ). The dark spot under the skin if I understand you correctly sounds like a bacterial infection like the molly here at the HFB a while back.

http://www.flippersandfins.net/flexibacter.htm Tetracycline is good for that.

BE CAREFUL TUBERCULOSIS IS CONTAGEOUS. Wear latex glove if you handle the fish. The treatment for camelanus nematodes is to feed the fish levamiosol. That will work for other internal parasites as well. If the problem is some other parasites maybe something less than that will work. Levamiosol is used to worm cattle and is available in feed stores or from a vet. To get it into the fish you need to feed the levamiosol to artemia, daphnia, or moina and let the fish eat those after they die. I think there used to be something called Jungle Guard for fish with levamiosol that worked that way.

The red worms in the gravel might be microfex worms, a smaller version of the tubifex worm. If so they are about 1/4 inch long full grown and red. In some countries they are a popular fish food but they have a reputation for carrying diseases and often feed on sewage or detris on the bottonm of your tank.

If you cannot see the camelanus worms at the anus the safest thing to do is to destroy the fish. I would destroy the red worms as well. Bleach the tank and contents. Arrrg. You might save and treat the one male and female but be careful and if you see wasting and no camel anus worms I would destroy everything to be safe. You can treat if you really want to but for me its not worth the risk.

There is a fellow at the goodied website that got TB form the fish if you want to discuss that with him. If you can see the worms at the anus it should be safe to treat the fish. The camelanus worms are bad news.

Sorry.

max