Worms In My Filter System?

[WILDER]

Meds can irratate fish skin i'm afraid, and make them flick and rub.

Copy and paste your thread over to tropical discussion to see if anybody else has experienced the same thing..

I would follow the med instructions.
Keep the med in the tank the time stated.


Do you have anymore tanks that you could take a mature filter sponge from when the meds finished.

 

[mark4785]

Meds can irratate fish skin i'm afraid, and make them flick and rub.

Copy and paste your thread over to tropical discussion to see if anybody else has experienced the same thing..

I would follow the med instructions.
Keep the med in the tank the time stated.


Do you have anymore tanks that you could take a mature filter sponge from when the meds finished.

All fish were flicking and rubbing prior to any medication being added.

I have tank sponges installed in my pond filter but I cannot use those as I've only just got the pond water quality (ammonia and nitrite) back under control after several snails dropped into the water and started rotting.

I have a 60Ltr tank going through a fishless cycle which isn't complete yet so again I can't use filter media from that source either.

I will post this thread over on the tropical discussion forum to ask about Parazin.

Mark.

 

[WILDER]

If the worms are not causing the flicking, the only other thing can think of is bad water quality, flukes.

But you say your fish are only showing signs of flicking and rubbing.
Have you noticed any red pin prick marks, or sores on the fish.

 

[mark4785]

If the worms are not causing the flicking, the only other thing can think of is bad water quality, flukes.

But you say your fish are only showing signs of flicking and rubbing.
Have you noticed any red pin prick marks, or sores on the fish.

- Water quality is excellent
- Flukes are not the problem

As discussed before there are two red pin prick marks on each side of my German Blue Ram.

 

[WILDER]

But you thought you saw the worms on the fish and I wondered if they were causing the red marks.If it not the worms causing the flicking and rubbing, or red marks, the only other thing I can think of is flukes.
You can't see flukes with the naked eye.
I would get a magifying glass to take a closer look at the fish body and gills.

 

[mark4785]

But you thought you saw the worms on the fish and I wondered if they were causing the red marks.If it not the worms causing the flicking and rubbing, or red marks, the only other thing I can think of is flukes.
You can't see flukes with the naked eye.
I would get a magifying glass to take a closer look at the fish body and gills.

I've had the magnifying glass on the fish and I cannot see anything attached. I can see some slight reddening on the belly of my GBR which is the bit he his rubbing into the sand. As he rubs so frequently I'm guessing that whatever was attached to him (if anything; remember I can't see them!) comes of after he's done some rubbing.

I think the rule of thumb is to treat the cause of the rubbing before any secondary issues (i.e. reddening, ulcers, sores etc). Yesterday, the GBR was rubbing more frequently so I did a 30 litre (25-35%) water change, did 1 gravel vac afterwards (30 mins), took most of the ornaments out and cleaned algae of them & returned them. After returning them there was a lot of floating algae so I did a further 30-40 minute gravel vac. I tried to do a vac in the places where I saw the ram rubbing in the hope that anything that may have dropped off of him would get sucked into the vac bag. Lastly, I added a bit more Parazin since I may have lowered it's concentration in doing the water change.

If it is the med causing more rubbing (WaterLife argue the meds don't cause rubbing; instead the meds cause the crustacean parasites to move more quickly whilst stuck to the fish which in turns causes the fish to rub more) I'll be sure to treat for any associative problems of rubbing (i.e. sores) after 10-15 days after which Waterlife claim all stages of a crustacean parasites life cycle will have been destroyed by their medicine.

I'm adamant it's not flukes as I treated for protozoan parasites (flukes) with Sterazin twice and it didn't stop any of the flicking/rubbing.

When I used Parazin for the first time the rubbing became more infrequent, that tells me I'm more than likely dealing with a crustacean infestation. Problem is I thought that if there was a crustacean infestation I'd see them crawling around the tank and on the fish. I think I saw several on the GBR's fin as discussed earlier but due to how fast he swims and the size of what I thought were worms, I cannot really validate what I saw.

 

[WILDER]

Did you see a disc shaped parasite with legs?

Flukes are hard to get rid of as some are egg layers.
You have to keep killing the young as they hatch.
You can be treating flukes for up to 4 weeks.