Unexpected Death

How long has the fish had the white spot on the tail.
You need to improve there diet with more frozen foods like brimestrimp and veg.

Cook some frozen peas for a few minutes, let cool down and pop out of shell. Mush into small peices and add to the tank.

So the cory just bending its spine. its not bent all the time.
The white patches do they look fluffy or just bleaching beneath the skin.



If the they have a y shaped tail it sounds like anchor worm.

Here a pic of anchor worm.

I will do the peas. They looked a lot like anchor worm. They were VERY tiny though. Will my anti parasite kill them? The corys spine wasn't always bent, he was just bending it but it looked very unnatural. I looked the platy over in the pet shop and he looked great, I noticed the spot a day after taking him home. So he's had it for a little over a month. It's located at the base of his tail. I checked with the pet shop and it turns out I bought him the same day he arrived so I bet the stress opened him up to infection and what-not. He eats well though and is more active than the other platy. But he does have clear poop. The white patches look to be underneath the skin. At certain angles the spot looks like its underneath the skin too, like there are scales overtop of it - it didn't look that way when I first noticed it a month ago.

Its not whitespot then if he had the spot a month. Other fish would be infected by now if it was whitespot.
It could be a bacterial spot.
Your fish have anchor worm and bacterial infection due to the anchor worm.
Get you some info.

Anchor Worm (a.k.a. Lernaea)



Symptoms:

Infected fish can be seen with whitish red worm-like threads, about ¼ inch long. Trailing at the rear of female parasites are two long, tube-like egg sacs. The parasites can be found anywhere on the body of the fish, including the eyes, gills and fins. Raised ulcers may appear at the site of attachment. Consequently, secondary bacterial infections may occur. The tale-tale sign that your fish is infected will be if you notice it rubbing or scraping against objects in the aquarium. It does this in an effort to remove the parasite.



Cause:

The parasitic crustacean Lernaea. Lernaea burrow into the muscle and gill tissue of fish, often times reaching as deeply as the internal organs, causing severe damage. Heavy infestations can cause significant weight loss and death.



Treatment:

You should kill all visible worms by dabbing them with a cotton swab, dipped in Potassium Permanganate or an anti-parasitic medication. Then you should carefully remove them from the fish with tweezers. You should kill the parasites before removing them because if they have burrowed deeply, removing them alive could cause the fish pain and significant physical damage. Once you’ve removed the parasite, you should then dab the wounds with Methylene Blue to prevent secondary bacterial infections from occurring. It is highly recommended that you feed the fish with medicated food. The tank will also need to be treated to kill any unseen, free-swimming juvenile parasites. You can use Fluke Tabs, Clout, Paragon or Trifon for this.

The box says that the medication I am using will kill the anchor worm. So at least I have taken the right step I don't see any on the other fish, but I'll keep looking. How long do you think I should treat the tank. The box says for anchor worms I can repeat the treatment up to 3 times, using once a week with a 25% water change. So if I am reading it right I can treat the tank one time for the next three weeks. I've already done one treatment so next week I will do another and then the following and then I am done with worms (the instructions are weird.) The ingredients are Prazequental, Diflubenzuron, Metronidazole, and Acrriflavine. Should I complete this - then treat the tank for bacteria.

Okay. I've finally witnessed the fish rubbing up against objects. I know this isn't a good thing to see but at least it helps us even more. i still haven't been able to see an actual anchor worm on any of these guys.

Also, according to jungle labs. You can give the fish anti bacterial food AND treat the tank with their anti parasite. I don't know if anyone has had any luck with this but they claim it is safe. So if no one objects I will do it.


Thanks again for all the help.

jen87 said:

Okay. I've finally witnessed the fish rubbing up against objects. I know this isn't a good thing to see but at least it helps us even more. i still haven't been able to see an actual anchor worm on any of these guys.

Also, according to jungle labs. You can give the fish anti bacterial food AND treat the tank with their anti parasite. I don't know if anyone has had any luck with this but they claim it is safe. So if no one objects I will do it.


Thanks again for all the help.

Click to expand...

I use Jungle labs parasite clear all the time for external treatments. it is perfectly safe to almost all fish, (though my corys don't like it that much, though I've never had one die from it.) and all beneficial bacteria. One of my platies had anchor worms once, and it killed those very quickly. The hardest one to treat, in my opinion, are gill flukes, because you have to treat the week after to kill the eggs.

Yes, you can give the fish the anti-bacterial food and treat with the external treatment at the same time. That's what I'm doing. My fish had a horrible case of internal parasites, so I started treating with the Jungle anti-parasite food, while using the external Jungle water treatment.

Your tank will turn around soon, I wish the best of luck to you.
-fry_forever!

Okay. I've finally witnessed the fish rubbing up against objects. I know this isn't a good thing to see but at least it helps us even more. i still haven't been able to see an actual anchor worm on any of these guys.

I thought you said the cory had hair like threads with y shaped tails on him.

he did. I've been trying to keep an eye on the other fish to see if they have them. The jungle medication says it will cure the anchor worms as well as a handful of other parasites so I'm hoping that if they're in the tank I will wipe them out and take care of the bacterial infections with food. I haven't seen any other little hairs on the fish... yet. they could be rubbing themselves to get the anchor worms off and I just haven't been able to catch the worm in action.

I guess the little threads could be something else but hopefully this medication will just wipe everything out no matter what. The threads did look Y shaped however, from the pictures I have seen they were smaller than what anchor worms appear to be. which may mean nothing because it is hard to judge from a picture.

Ok.
What does the parasite med course finish.

The directions for this medication are strange. It says: Treatment may be repeated up to two times with 48 hours between treatments and a 25% water change. For Anchor Worms repeat treatment up to 3 times, using once a week with a 25% water change.

So I would say in order to kill this parasite I will have to repeat the treatment once a week for the next 3 weeks if I am reading that right. The anti bacterial food I feed to them for the next 5-10 days. and jungle says these medications can be used at the same time. The parasite must have something to do with the platys white spot because the tank has been treated for 48 hours now and the spot he's had since I brought him home is gone. So that's a good thing! I don't see anything else wrong with the other fish at the moment but everyone is being treated anyway.

The ingredients for the parasite medication are praziquantel; N-[[(N-Chlorophenyl)amino]carbon 1]-2,6-difluorobenzamide; metronidazole; acriflavine. Just for curiosities sake would this anti parasite medication kill ich as well? I know they make ich clear but I have two boxes of this stuff and I am putting together a fishy medicine cabinet because I don't want to be caught off guard ever again.

Any signs of improvement yet.

So far so good. The fish are more active than they've been in a while. The platys origional white spot is gone! I think we might make it out of this okay.




Thank you so much for your help. I appreciate it! And so do the fishies!

Sounds alot better.
Don't cut the med to short.
Good Luck.

I definitely won't The parasite meds have to continue for the next couple of weeks. The bacterial meds have to be fed for the next 5-10 days. I will probably use them for the full 10 days just to be safe.