PROBLEMS!! Please help!!

[Brendt]

Hi Guys relatively new to all of this posting in forums and fish tanks. FOREWARNING IM SO SORRY FOR THE LONG READ but here it goes So if I’m not posting this right please let me know where I can and how to post it elsewhere. Now I’ve dabbled in fish tanks before growing up but by no means would I call myself experienced or even semi experienced. All fish I’ve owned growing up I had little to no problems everything went pretty smooth.


HOWEVER my son has been wanting a fish tank for a while now so my wife and I decided to go ahead and get him his first tank. Bought a 3 Gal Tank the tank. Set it up, and decided To do a fish in cycle. Went to the LFS and got all the equipment I thought was needed. Bought live bacteria, Tank starter liquid for the PH levels nitrate heave metals and such and test sticks. Brought it home did everything let it run for 2 days then went and picked out 1 goldfish and 1 guppy.


Here are my issues it’s been 2 days with the fish in the water is still high PH, should I keep adding the tank starter liquid I bought? Or should I buy something specifically for Ph levels?? Also since I’ve added the live bacteria in a bottle the water has gotten extremely foggy? Should I get some water clarifier?? It’s been 4 days since I’ve put the live bacteria in a bottle in the tank...


Also my fish have not eaten I’m given them freeze dried bloodworms, I’m not sure What they ate at the LFS should I try changing their food to flakes or pellets and see if they eat?


NOW FOR MY FINAL PROBLEM and most important problem That I’m finding as I do more and more research on it doesn’t sound fun. Yesterday when I got home from work I looked in the tank and saw the guppy had 2 red spikes coming from her vent after more research I quickly concluded it was the dreaded camallanus and went to my LFS to ask for advice and if it was showing pictures and videos they agreed said it was the starting stages of it and said safe gaurd for puppies with bendendazol (sorry if it spelt wrong) works so I brought it home and did some more research finding that you could add it to the tank or to the food success had happened with both. I decided I’d add it to the water and “ NUKE” so to speak everything extremely worried about it spreading and laying eggs also my fish haven’t been eating like I said earlier in post so I figured the eating method would not work. However I couldn’t find specific dosage rates I found after what seemed like hours of research 1 ML per 10Gal tank I have no clue if that’s the right amount however that’s what I found. But I also read that you can overdose but It needs to be a substantial amount more. And if you are going to overdose or underdose it’s better to overdose bEcause you want those worms out. So from there I’m bad at math but decided I’d try to do it. I came up with for my 3 gal Tank I would dissolve the powder into water into 1 Liter and use 1/16th of a ML and pour it into the tank. Couple hours went by nothing happened so I decided to dose again thinking maybe I didn’t dose enough and I want those worms out of my poor fish so I dosed another 1/16th of a ML. Went to sleep woke up nothing went to work and decided i would now ask for advice myself.


Does anybody have any advice for me with all of this?? I’m extremely sorry for the long read any help is much appreciated! Thank you!

 

[Brendt]

It’s actually fenbendazole** not benbendazole

 

[Brendt]

Update 2 days of fenbendazole treatment at 2 doses per day of 1/16th of a ML and worms are still inside my guppy is it time to up the doesage?

 

[Essjay]

You do have a few problems, with camallanus worms being only one of them.

First of all the tank is far too small for a guppy and even worse for a goldfish. Guppies need at least 10 gallons, and goldfish at least 30 gallons for just one goldfish.

Goldfish are cold water fish and guppies are tropical fish.

You need to test the water for ammonia and nitrite. High pH is not a problem for these fish.
Fish excrete ammonia, and as you did not cycle the tank first, this will be building up in the water. The bacterial starter you added may possibly help, but in such a small tank with a messy fish like a goldfish it is very likely that even with the starter you have ammonia building up. Once there are enough ammonia eating bacteria to consume all the ammonia, they will make nitrite, and despite the starter that will also build up. You need to test for these two and do a water change every time you see ammonia and/or nitrite above zero.

The next step is to get two tanks, one of at least 10 gallons for the guppy and one of at least 30 gallons for the goldfish. Or rehome them both, once the camallanus worms have gone. A 3 gallon tank is the absolute minimum size for 1 betta (siamese fighting fish) though I prefer to see them in 5 gallons or more. The only other alternative for a 3 gallon tank is shrimps, but they do need a cycled tank.


As for the camallanus worms, my fish had this a few years ago and being in the UK there are few medication options. I tried one that contained flubendazole, with little effect; the one that finally worked contained emamectin. There is another product here that came out after I had treated the tank, and that contains levamisole, one of the recommended chemicals for these worms.
Clean the bottom of the tank very well before treating and at every water change afterwards. If you have gravel on the bottom of the tank, clean that as well.
In my case, I never actually saw any worms in the tank after treatment. The medication did say to treat the tank again 3 weeks later to kill the worms that were eggs during the first treatment. I did the two treatments and have not seen any worms since.