When did Camallanus nematodes arrive in the hobby?

[MaloK]

In my memory there was nearly nothing, Some LFS I knew had Tetracycline. But most of the time you where left looking at the horror that was happening.

The alternatives exist in science fiction for the hobby at the moment, but are available to large fish farms who have the money to develop the solutions.

So the hobby is left with Medicinal plants to play with. Unless you have access to a full blown Lab in Microbiology, biochemistry... And a biotechnology department.

When I left the hobby in 2006, There was still not much advancement in Canada regarding that matter.

If you can have these meds... You're Golden !

If you like in-depth explanations:

Review of alternatives to antibiotic use in aquaculture

That leads to this.

Beneficial effects of medicinal plants in fish diseases

Leading to the fact that, without proper antibiotics, the fish will die.

 

[Ichthys]

In the UK we have access to good treatments for the whole range of curable fish diseases and pests… bacterial, fungal, protozoans, worms… from half a dozen manufacturers. We have the Tetra range, Waterlife, Interpet, API (Aquarium Pharmaceuticals Inc), and others.
We even have a couple of good European ones on our shelves, like Sera and Esha. Pets at Home, a chain store, even has their own range (presumably one of the others, with P@H packaging). We’re spoilt for choice.
We also have a couple of homeopathic “cure-alls”. I tested them when they came out, and they didn’t do much, but as with all homeopathic remedies, they have their fans.

The difficulty is diagnosis, as Gary says. I can identify hundreds of common fish species from a mile away, but diseases have always stumped me except for those half a dozen that are easy. Even Ich can be difficult sometimes as there are several other diseases that can look very similar.
I’m subscribed to fish vet Gerald Basleer on youtube. I keep seeing his disease videos, and my guess is usually very different to his diagnosis. If a fish has one disease/parasite it often has a few, so as he keeps saying, you can’t really diagnose fish diseases without a microscope.

 

[Ichthys]

Carpet bombing… good or bad?

GaryE mentioned carpet bombing. It’s what aquarists in the US have to do to treat fish diseases. They use antibiotics, because they don’t have access to the plethora of ‘milder’ but very effective disease treatments available to the rest of the world. With some antibiotics it’s like using an atom bomb to kill a fly. And they can destroy filters, something that doesn’t happen with most of the milder treatments.

It got me thinking about Waterlife (Waterlife Research Industries), a British company that I fell in love with when I started keeping fish. A brief history… in the late 1960s Dr Graham Cox founded Waterlife. He produced the first commercially available salt mix for marine fish, called Instant Ocean. With this salt he became the first person in the world to breed percula Clownfish. He also created Waterlife’s award winning range of fish disease treatments, Protozin, Myxazin, Sterazin and Cuprazin.

When I entered the aquatic trade in the early 90s, I discovered Waterlife’s recommendations for treating newly arrived imports. The recommendation was… carpet bombing. Treat with Protozin (protozoans and fungi), then Myxazin (bacteria), then Sterazin (parasites, broadly speaking). Each treatment was shorter than the recommendations on the bottles, as if time was very much of the essence.

This was the one thing I was unsure about. It didn’t sit right with me. It went against the premise of not exposing fish to chemicals unless it was absolutely necessary. The premise of identifying the disease before you treat.

Recently I’ve been watching fish vet Gerald Bassleer’s videos on youtube. Angelfish with split fins only. No finrot, but various internal infections. Fish that looked to me to have one issue, invariably had several. There are many diseases that can look like other diseases, so a microscope is essential if we are to only treat with the right treatment.

The Waterlife treatments mentioned above all contain both ‘-cides’ and ‘-stats’. For example, a bactericide will kill bacteria, and a bacteristat will slow them down while you’re treating something more urgent. So if you use any one of them, you are in effect doing a bit of carpet bombing.

It seems that, without a microscope and a few good disease identification books to hand, this carpet bombing technique may be the way to go with newly acquired fish. I’m not talking about antibiotics, but the ‘milder’ treatments available to non-US aquarists.

As a disclaimer, I’ve used these treatments for over 50 years and never had issues with any side effects (except with the Mormyrids and Gymnotids, which are mildly electrical, and react badly to most if not all medications).

A microscope is the best road to take, but failing that… not to mention having to sacrifice a fish or two to identify an internal disease.

[This post didn’t ‘flow’ like some of mine. I’m not entirely sure what I’m trying to say. I guess I’m wondering if Graham Cox had the right idea all those years ago.]

 

[TwoTankAmin]

I have been poking around looking for an answer re when did these nematodes enter the hobby. Here is a brief quote from Dr. Harrison's pdf on the subject including a treatment
:

“Complete Book of Dwarf Chichlid” by Hans-Joachim Richter, published in 1989 by TFH, reports: “an illness that almost always appears only with wild-caught fishes and that one at first does not regard as an illness, is the infestation with nematodes. Only after some months can one observe the at first just barely a few millimeters-long nematodes hanging out of the anus. With increasing growth,

So, I would think that a book published in 1989 had to be written a year or two at least before then and maybe longer. And then for the author to have learned what he states about Camallanus hapeened before the writing. it would suggest at least by 1985 it was known in the hobby.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

If it only took a microscope, more of us would likely own one. The problem is that when we can see what is on the other end of the scope. are we able to identify it positively?

And things get more complicated when the first and second and maybe the third place a fish may be on the way to being sold to hobbyists often need to move the fish out as quickly as possible. So they need to lose as few as possible whine in their care and then in transit to the next holder and for some short time after they arrive there.

Unless we are getting fish from friend or the people we know the be breeding them, we have no clue what new fish may be carrying. And this is why it falls to us to quarantine. And we have to do so for lomger than any of the folks have done as the fish made their way into out care.

So the carpet bombing approach may be the best bet for those holding the fish for short periods of time along the way, but I am not so sure if it is the default wisest approach for us. I have had some experience with imports including getting fish within a few weeks of their being collected in S. America. I have bought imports from the Asian fish farms a few times. However, I am a hobbyist and h=have not done these things all that often. I do have the option to Q fish for as long as I want/nee to do so. This can be for a bunch of months. For the imported reline barbs I got them in Oct. to sell at the end of the following March. l did keep about a dozen for myself

Some of the fish showed signs of columnaris and I treated the 75 gal.planted tank where they were being quarantined. I lost 1/40 fish. The rest did fine. I treated them with the requisite antibiotics. The only time I will carpet bomb is when fish are dying and I am not sure why. So I take my best shot.

As always the above are my way of doing things and that is neither the only nor even necessarily the best way of doing things.