Help Identifying Fish Parasite Or Fungus On Neon Tetra Please

[johnhutch2000]

Hi Guys,
I've tried to identify whats happened to 2 -3 of my neons in my community tank but can't I have tried to photograph it with limited success (see below).

Description:
The fish have transparent growths circular in shape on the outside of their bodies with a thin loosely curled white worm like thing inside. The worm thing doesn't move or react to being touched so could be part of the fish reacting to a bacterial or fungal infection or could just be a still parasite.

One fish has 1 of these and a very pronounced worm but otherwise seems fine. The other is covered in these round sores each with its own worm like thing and is now having difficulty staying the right way up with his mouth chattering all the time as if feeding or gagged. I have no doubt that he has had it but I can't determine what to treat them with. Please help, I love my fish and don't want it to spread.

I have done a 15-20% water change to try to rectify any chemical problem that this issue may be causing. The only thing that is out of the ordinary is that last week I missed my standard water change due to being out the city so water parameters may have nudged away from normal but other than that there has been no new fish introduced or changes to diet or substrate or anything.

Thanks in advance for any helpful suggestions. I will try to set up an isolation tank today but depending on its condition it may not be possible.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/781733/SAM_0907.JPG
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/781733/SAM_0905.JPG

More pictures as maxed out the media limit:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/781733/SAM_0904.JPG
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/781733/SAM_0903.JPG

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/781733/SAM_0902.JPG

 

[johnhutch2000]

A video of the affected fishes. It's not very good but it's the best I could capture with my not so hot video camera.
Youtube Video of fish issue

 

[johnhutch2000]

Well I took some advice from the vault of knowledge that is the internet and moved these guys to a quarantine tank with 20 litres of the same tank water from the original into it. with a mini internal filter from the main tank that runs in addition to the external so that it can be transfered in such an emergency.
The closest thing I could identify these things to was anchorworm. Then as I had read that treating anchor worm can be done with aquarium salt I added 300g of salt in acordance with the ratio I read online of 10-30g of salt per litre of water.
This promptly killed all 4 quarantined fish within 3hours. (I should have monitored this more closely but failed to do so)

So as the fish are already smoked I'm looking for any advice I can get. Obviously my salt treatment wasn't right but what should I have done? And what should I do to the main tank to kill off any traces of the parasite/fungus to ensure my other fish don't suffer a similar fate.

Please help guys, I'm on my own

 

[colleen0309]

I wish I could be of more help. It doesn't look like anchor worm to me. It definetly looks like a fungus, but it could be a fungus caused by a parasite. It doesn't look like it has affected the glowlites, just the neons.

 

[johnhutch2000]

I wish I could be of more help. It doesn't look like anchor worm to me. It definetly looks like a fungus, but it could be a fungus caused by a parasite. It doesn't look like it has affected the glowlites, just the neons.

Thanks for the reply. I'll focus a bit more on fungus then. If anyone has any ideas I'd be really greatful to hear them. I really don't want to loose any more fish if it can be prevented.
Thanks,

 

[colleen0309]

How are the neons doing? Better, I hope.

 

[johnhutch2000]

How are the neons doing? Better, I hope.

Unfortunately as above, I tried to treat them with salt in the Quarantine tank and killed all 4.

 

[colleen0309]

So sorry to hear you lost the neons! How are the rest of the fish doing?

 

[nehpets81]

These look really odd - the strange thing is, I have seen a picture very, very similar to yours somewhere else. It may actually have been yours posted somewhere else bit it was very similar, and it was also affecting a Neon tetra. I think that person only had one worm like thing that they were actually physically able to remove from the tetra and I believe that was the end of it.

Did they all get affected at roughly the same time, was the infection quick? Sorry I'm not much more help but would be interested to know what they were.

 

[johnhutch2000]

So sorry to hear you lost the neons! How are the rest of the fish doing?

Thanks Colleen, the others seem to be doing fine. I haven't noticed any more worm like things on the other fish. The really stupid thing is that the other 3 were behaving normally and so I feel bad that I managed to knock their chemistry so bad that it killed them with my rubbish attempt to treatthem.

 

[johnhutch2000]

These look really odd - the strange thing is, I have seen a picture very, very similar to yours somewhere else. It may actually have been yours posted somewhere else bit it was very similar, and it was also affecting a Neon tetra. I think that person only had one worm like thing that they were actually physically able to remove from the tetra and I believe that was the end of it.

Did they all get affected at roughly the same time, was the infection quick? Sorry I'm not much more help but would be interested to know what they were.

Hi Nehpets, I haven't posted it anywhere else and so if you could find it that would be really useful! Just out of curiosity if nothing else I'd like to know what it was. I hope that it doesn't happen to any of the others.
One had a white dot for a while which I didn't pay much attention to so may have been unrelated but then within a week I noticed that 3 had these worm things. When quarantining I moved a 4th just on precaution as it looked like he that the beginings of one. At least I hope it stopped further infection. I just wish I had more facility to have segregated them further with a treatment tank aswell. Then maybe at least I'd have been able to treat one at a time.

If you find that picture in your history please let me know where it was. Thanks for the interest all the same

 

[nehpets81]

Yup, I found it - it was on this forum and is actually Cardinals but this looks to me like your second picture - the post isn't very conclusive though.

http/www.fishforums.net/index.php?/topic/367082-cardinal-tetra-with-worms/

 

[johnhutch2000]

Yup, I found it - it was on this forum and is actually Cardinals but this looks to me like your second picture - the post isn't very conclusive though.

http/www.fishforums.net/index.php?/topic/367082-cardinal-tetra-with-worms/

Thanks, they do look mighty similar. Mine have the added bulge but I still think that may have been a reaction to the 'whatever it was'. If I get another I shall isolate again and try to treat with the de-wormer mentioned in the other post rather than toxicate them with salt