Fish expel live white worms

[hywaydave]

When I feed my fish, sometimes I'll notice one expel a little white worm. It literally wiggles in the water. I never can tell which fish it is and the worm is quickly eaten by another fish. I've had fish all my life and I've never recalled ever seeing one expel a worm.

I've tried Expel-p for a couple weeks and never really see any dead worms on the gravel as I vacuum. Any suggestions on how to get rid of these? The tank is mostly live bearers and I have bought a new fish in over a year for the tank, mainly because they just breed and a few young survive. I do seem to lose more guppies than I should, they'll get dropsy and eventually die. It's a 53 gallon and I change 20% every 1 to 1.5 weeks. How can I get rid of these worms. They don't seem to affect my pearl guaramis or bristlenose plecos and I've had both of those species in the tank for a couple years without losing one.

 

[Colin_T]

Where do the worms come out of (what part of the fish)?
If they are coming out of the fish's butt, deworm all your fish with Levamisole or Flubendazole.

Section 3 of the following link has info on deworming fish.

What to do if your fish has Stringy White Poop.

Fish do a stringy white poop for several reasons. 1) Internal Bacterial Infections causes the fish to stop eating, swell up like a balloon, breath heavily at the surface or near a filter outlet, do stringy white poop, and die within 24-48 hours of showing these symptoms. This cannot normally be...

www.fishforums.net

 

[GaryE]

White worms fallen from the butts of the fish will be in the tapeworm group, and can be cleared with praziquantel. But white worms in the tank can be harmless, non parasitic creatures that pop up with overfeeding. A deworming treatment won't harm the tank either way, but it would be interesting to see where the worms came from directly.

Expel P states it won't treat Cestodes (tapeworms), and white worms coming from the fish would be them. So you would need another treatment. Fritz has one, and Praziquantel does a great job as Prazi-Pro.

If they are detritus worms (non parasitic), the meds do nothing. That's solved by more careful feeding and siphoning up debris.

 

[Sleeveless]

Definitely follow @Colin_T advice. I'm treating my tank currently with Flubendazole. I don't know how many fish were affected, but going through the whole tank to cover my bases. About to start another dose tonight.

 

[hywaydave]

These are definitely not detritus worms. When feeding my fish I sometimes see almost like a liquid expelled from a couple fish downward, like they're peeing. That's when I'll occasionally see a white wiggly worm in the water shortly before it's eaten by another fish. It doesn't just hang there from the butt while a fish is pooping. So what does everyone suggest based on what I just described? Levamisole (Expel-P) or Praziquantel (PraziPro)?

 

[hywaydave]

I have a lot of other young platys and guppies I've been growing in a separate tank (and not born in this tank) that I need to move into this tank soon but don't want to until I'm confident these worms have been killed off.