When did Camallanus nematodes arrive in the hobby?

[GaryE]

I got my first fishtank when I was 8, and am now 65. My grandfather had had a multi-tank set up wiped out completely by Ich, so learning about fish diseases was valued in my world. I think I had my first disease book when I was 10, and I always listened closely to discussions of diseases, parasites and treatments with the old guys in the stores and fishclubs.

I first saw Camallanus nematodes in the early 1990s. I bought some fish from a reputable breeder, and we both lost a bunch of fish very quickly to a "gut predator" we had never seen or heard of. It killed fast.

In the manner of parasites, it seemed to adjust and slowed down in time. A parasite that kills too quickly can't spread. Now, it seems a common chronic infestation that slowly builds to the killing stage, long after it has silently spread.

I know there are other older aquarists here. When did you first hear of Camallanus nematode worms as a threat in fishtanks? What I first saw of it suggested it had recently jumped to the aquarium hobby from the wild, but I've realized that I took that as an assumption.

 

[Ichthys]

When I started keeping fish in 1972 it was already well established in the Singapore farms. I’ve been treating my own newly acquired fish for them occasionally ever since then.

When I joined the trade in about 1990 I saw just how rife it was. The UK gets it’s fish from Singapore. Always has. A few now come from Eastern Europe but they were just starting to become commercially viable breeders in the 90s.

I was working at a wholesaler who received two Singapore shipments a week, from two different farms. All the livebearers (the 4 main species) would come with free Camallanus every time. Every fish had them prodruding. I remember dwarf gouramies and Angels also came with them most of the time. And other species occasionally.

Thankfully we had Sterazin, which meant it wasn’t a serious problem. It probably saved the aquatic trade in the UK.

 

[GaryE]

Interesting. It seemed a rare thing here. Singapore was also the big source for fish into Canada, so maybe uncycled tanks got blamed for the death rates.

The best local store for variety advertises that it gets Singapore fish only, and it scares me away. I like the owner and would love to buy his fish, but meds are hard to get here. I guess he thinks Singapore fish are better than Thai, Indonesian or Malaysian ones.

Back to the nematodes, maybe, since I was already breeding fish and not buying a lot of fish back then, I sidestepped it. Come to think of it, I have wondered why a lot of tetras seemed so short lived compared to what I have now...

 

[Ichthys]

I always assumed the whole of North America got its fish from Florida farms. On our maps we put Britain in the middle, so it’s easy to forget that you’re not much further away from Singapore than we are.

Tetras… yes, Serpae. They would often have them, I remember. And Black Widows…

 

[Colin_T]

In Western Australia, Camallanus and tapeworm were found in fishes from Indonesian fish farms in the 80s. They were mostly found in common livebearers and cichlids. Now they are in everything, like Fish TB.

 

[Ichthys]

We don’t have much fish TB in the UK. It’s quite rare here.

 

[seangee]

I suspect we have capitalism and the relentless pursuit of profit to blame. When I was a kid I used to spend hours in the local pet store and there was no such thing as pet store chains. At least not to my knowledge - it may just be that I had a sheltered upbringing . The owner was knowledgeable about all his stock and started the business because he loved animals. He had wanted to be a vet but his parents could not afford the study. Most of his stock was sourced from local breeders who he knew personally. Nobody could ever have accused him of being wealthy, or even well off. But he made a decent living, provided a few jobs and was content with that.

But at some stage the bean counters worked out that there was more profit in buying cheap and selling lots. All you had to do was include a budget for higher mortality rates and medications and build that into your margin.

 

[Colin_T]

We don’t have much fish TB in the UK. It’s quite rare here.

if you get fish from Germany they are less likely to have TB, but anything from Asia (especially Indonesia) should be assumed contaminated.

 

[Sir Guppy]

I cheat! All of my fish, snails and shrimp with the exception of two guppies are from friends tanks!

 

[MaloK]

Camallanus cotti was first described by Fujita 1927 from Lake Biwa and Lake Tazawa, Japan in the The Giant danio species. That is the furthest reference I was able to find. I first heard of the redworms in the early 90's too.

 

[GaryE]

I was curious because they went from chainsaw wielding psycho parasites the first time I saw them, to slow murdering serial killers 15 years later. It may have been the fish they infested had no defences against a new acquaintance.

Very few Florida farms survive. It's cheaper for the big players to bring fish from Asia. The climate in Florida is also very unstable, and labour costs are high (ie, half-decent wages).

I was actually surprised to find meds for nematodes when I went looking a few weeks ago. I had some Corys come in with a clear threadworm, smaller than Camallanus but similar. When you wander through stores now, you see that bulge in front of the vent quite often. I've still never seen Camallanus in a wild import, unless they sat in a store with farmed fish for a few weeks. But it was difficult and expensive to treat for a long time. Now it's just expensive...

 

[Ichthys]

US (and Canada?) medication laws are very strange to me. Sterazin is readily available and cheap here, and the Waterlife range will cure just about everything that can be cured without antibiotics. In the US, antibiotics, and other extremely powerful over-the-top treatments, that we would use only as a last resort, seem to be the go-to drugs.

 

[GaryE]

In Canada, all antibiotics and most real medications are under veterinary control. This creates problems as very few vets know about fish, and so, the meds are effectively unavailable. For antibiotics, this is good. For things like praziquantel or Ich meds, less good.

In the US, I have heard of people prescribing themselves antibiotics from pet stores due to the issues in their medical system. That's frightening. Plus the number of fish killed annually by well meaning owners carpet bombing their tanks has to be very high.

There is a black market here, and the aquarium meds available in the US are available if you know the right people. I have not used antibiotics on fish in 40 years, and haven't missed them.

 

[Seisage]

There is a black market here, and the aquarium meds available in the US are available if you know the right people. I have not used antibiotics on fish in 40 years, and haven't missed them.

I'm curious. What do you use to treat bacterial infections if not antibiotics? I would love to not have to use them if there's something else out there just as effective.

 

[GaryE]

Here is the problem as I see it. I have zero training in which antibiotic to use. I have zero real ability to say which pathogen I would be targeting if I used antibiotics. So I would be using a valuable medical tool to play educated hunches with. In our minds, as hobbyists, we've reduced the illnesses in fish to 5 or 6 ones we think we understand, but they are attacked by as many pathogens as we are, and their responses are complex. I have had hobbyists tell me fish don't have viruses. It's only bacteria!
I've been told Ich, and velvet are....bacteria.
Sadly, that is how most aquarium diagnosis is.
I could play a hunch and aim, I don't know, a broad spectrum antibiotic at a disease. I don't have a laboratory, a proper microscope or any training that allows me to target precisely.
I have excellent picture books....
I used to buy antibiotics when I was younger, and I used them. Fish with serious diseases died. The ban came in. I thought every fish would die. But they died at exactly the same rate as they did before the ban. It seemed to make no difference. I would argue that with the exception of parasites, there is next to nothing we do that helps. The sick fish usually dies. Sometimes we get lucky, and it lives.
So how do I battle disease. First, by careful purchasing and quarantining fish. Lesson one for new aquarists used to be how to study a tank at a store to avoid introducing disease to your tank. That's a forgotten art that's still of great value.
The problem now is it makes it very hard to buy any fish. When it comes to alarm bells, a visit to the chain stores sounds like there's looting going on.
Method two is reducing stress and triggers - clean water and regular maintenance. If you run a tank crowded and maintained like a Russian prison, you'll get Russian prison level diseases.

What we get in stores here are meaningless remedies - fish homeopathy. The "fix" potions smell good, though the active ingredients are barely present in them. The herbal remedies are untestable and claim what they will. They are sold to make us feel we're doing something for our fish when they are sick. That's what we want - to help. We use these remedies combined with water changes, and the water changes are the treatments. The fish often die anyway, but we know we tried.

So prevention, and if the fish fall ill, I can do the chicken dance, pray, ritually sacrifice a snail - whatever. I try hard to keep them from falling ill.