Albino BN Pleco red things near vent

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Could you manually inject substrate with a large syringe??

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I hope you get the meds quick and get your fish healthy again. Good luck, may the force be with you etc etc

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the idea (as some have said elsewhere) of doing 90-100% water changes every few days just isn't going to happen either.

There is no point changing water so often. This is only needed for other medications like antibiotics or methylene blue that destroy the biofilter and cause an endless spike of ammonia.

Some people advocate changing water daily to siphon out as much of the invisible worm eggs as possible, but you don't really have to worry about the eggs if all the larva will die from the medicine anyway. Even if you could remove 99.999% of all eggs, that 0.001% of remaining eggs will just bring you back to square one if you do not adequately medicate. For this reason it is very important to medicate for a long time.

This deworming medication is fortunately quite inexpensive compared to most other medications, considering you only dose once every 7 days. Metronidazole is quite expensive as it needs to be dosed every 8 hours.
 
Could you manually inject substrate with a large syringe??

It's too hard to distribute the meds into every nook and cranny. A piece of driftwood alone has hundreds if not thousands of deep microscopic crevices.

The larva will eventually look for a fish host to colonize. When they begin to swim around the tank, the medication will kill them.
 
Thanks, Mattcham, am hoping that is correct.

If I have to disassemble and steralize the tank, frankly (and with apologies to those whole will feel it is hard hearted), the fish are not much of an issue. Far more time, effort and expense has gone into the plants and setup than the fish.

Saving the plants by a dip - possibly. But I'm skeptical that H2O2 would kill eggs, and bleach or other things strong enough to kill it for sure... well, I just can't see risking contaminated plants if I'm going the way of tear-it-all-up-and-redo. If it was marine coral... different story. But $100 in plants and $100 in fish and I'm in business -- it's the $5000 in my time and labor that I hope to avoid (that's at minimum wage for a complete redo/recycle :eek:)

Will update when I make some progress.
 
Some people advocate changing water daily to siphon out as much of the invisible worm eggs as possible, but you don't really have to worry about the eggs if all the larva will die from the medicine anyway. Even if you could remove 99.999% of all eggs, that 0.001% of remaining eggs will just bring you back to square one if you do not adequately medicate. For this reason it is very important to medicate for a long time.

Yeah, I've had that discussion with people over ich treatments as well. It's kind of like trying to get rid of all mosquitos by killing only those that land on you.

What I haven't been able to figure out though, and relevant, is whether these medicines actually kill them... is it the larva stage it kills? Stuns the adults so they disconnect?

There's a ton of fairly scientific information, relatively, on ich lifecycle and interruption compared to camallanus.
 
It's too hard to distribute the meds into every nook and cranny. A piece of driftwood alone has hundreds if not thousands of deep microscopic crevices.



The larva will eventually look for a fish host to colonize. When they begin to swim around the tank, the medication will kill them.


Would increasing tank temp speed that up?
 
The dose I use for fenbendazole is as follows:
Goat dewormer solution is 100mg/ml solution, which is basically equal to 0.1 gram/ml.

Start treatment at 0.5ml per 10 gallons. After 2 or 3 days increase to 1ml per 10 gallons by adding more fenbendazole.

I want to make sure I followed this. The 0.5ml/10G in the second paragraph refers to 0.5ml of the 10% (100mg/ml) solution, correct?

So it is approximately 50mg/10G of fenbendazole itself, or for 200G which is about a gram total first does, and 2-3 days later another 1 gram for a total of 2 grams.

Now that begs the question: A lot I read says this must be ingested not just in the water column.

Since I have levamisole on order, what I'm thinking of doing is using the above as a maximum-in-water, stay well under it but dose in food for now, and use the levamisole for the water column at it's full dosage, and hope they two don't conflict.

Any thoughts welcomed.
 
Here is what I am doing. If someone in the future is reading this, skip to the end and see if it says "and then all the fish died" before you pay any attention. :popcorn:

I bought horse size dewormer, 25g of 10% fenbendazole, which comes as a thin white paste (it treats an 1100 pound horse by the way).

I started with about 5g of the paste (so 500mg of fenbendazole), and mixed it up in about 50ml of water, basically just to get it really thin not for a particular dilution.

I then added some pellet food (maybe 3ml), 4 algae tablets, and a block of frozen bloodworms, stirred thoroughly and let it soak for an hour. It took up maybe a third of the water.

I then used a spoon to put it into the tanks, which hadn't been fed in 1.5 days, so everyone was hungry, at least those that usually come out for food. I put it in with the liquid, a little at a time to encourage it to be eaten (the algae tablets just fell to the bottom of course). It apparently didn't affect the taste negatively, as everyone ate quickly. I did it over 10 minutes or so, trying to get most of it eaten as opposed to sinking; I think most was, but not nearly all, so there's some left for the pleco and cat fish.

This made the water quite cloudy, but that didn't seem to affect the fishes ability to eat.

This went into two tanks, totaling about 240 gallons +/-. If my math is rather that put about .54 mg / L into the water so far.

I plan to do it again tomorrow and the next day so most of it gets eaten. I'll use less water then, I think this was a bit too dilute. By that time I hope to have Levamisole, and will make up a bath, depending on how the fish are doing. May give them a day in between.

Comments welcome if this is very off base.

Two specific questions if anyone knows:

1) I have purigen in the filters. I've heard it doesn't impact most medicines, unlike carbon. Anyone know? I'm actually not sure I care if it absorbs the fenbendazole, as I really want it ingested, but how about the levamisole?

2) I have low power UV sanitizers in the filters (they are SunSun 404B). I'm sure they are little help with the parasites, though who knows, maybe they are getting a sunburn. Will it impact the medicine though?
 
What I haven't been able to figure out though, and relevant, is whether these medicines actually kill them... is it the larva stage it kills? Stuns the adults so they disconnect?

As far as I know, all dewormers act in a similar fashion by causing permanent paralysis of the worm. The paralyzed worm eventually dies. Think of it as a neurotoxin of sorts similar to many insecticides.

Would increasing tank temp speed that up?

I do not know. I often read about temperature effects on protozoans, but not with worms.

I want to make sure I followed this. The 0.5ml/10G in the second paragraph refers to 0.5ml of the 10% (100mg/ml) solution, correct?

That is correct, 0.5 mL of the retail 10% (100mg/ml) solution for every 10 gallons. Only a very small amount is needed. It will make the water cloudy white, but fish and plants tolerate it ok. I have a dutch style densely planted tank and experienced no plant death when I used the maximum dose of 1.0 ml per 10 gallons for a total of 14 days and changing 50% of the water every week as part of my routine plant fertilizer regimen. Since I change only 50% of the water every week, the drug stays in the water column for over a month, since every weekly water change is only eliminating 50% of the drug.

I was treating for detritus worms (which are harmless but very ugly) as I had thousands of them in plain sight on a plant-only 125-gallon tank with hardly any fish (just 6 otocinclus catfish). The worms come out at night and are supposed to be the result of overfeeding but I actually never feed the fish (the oto's are all fat from eating diatoms). Anyway, the drug killed all the worms within 7 days. I treated at maximum dose for only 2 weeks total, but the drug stayed in the water column for much longer since I change only 50% of the water every week. I also noticed that in about 6 weeks all the ugly pond snails disappeared/died. I never used carbon to remove the drug. It's been 8 months since I treated the tank and I have not seen a single detritus worm or snail.

So it is approximately 50mg/10G of fenbendazole itself, or for 200G which is about a gram total first does, and 2-3 days later another 1 gram for a total of 2 grams.

That is correct.

Now that begs the question: A lot I read says this must be ingested not just in the water column.

Ingested route is more effective for camallanus because it will kill all the worms inside the fish intestines. Since there is very little water circulation within the fish gut, it is possible that a few worms in the fish gut will not get exposed to medicine in the water column and these surviving worms will cause a recurrent epidemic in the future. Remember, if there are 100,000 worms, all you need is 1 surviving worm laying 500 eggs to bring you back to square one.

Since I have levamisole on order, what I'm thinking of doing is using the above as a maximum-in-water, stay well under it but dose in food for now, and use the levamisole for the water column at it's full dosage, and hope they two don't conflict.

Levimasole alone may be sufficient, and Levimasole does NOT need to be mixed with food to be effective. I am not sure how it is able to kill worms inside the gut and why it is different from fenbendazole. It may have something to do with the fact that fenbendazole is very difficult to dissolve in water and even the retail liquid form goat dewormer is in suspension form (microscopic solid particles suspended in water) compared to levimasole which acts as a truly liquid medication (becomes fully dissolved) with no solid particles.
 
Here is what I am doing. If someone in the future is reading this, skip to the end and see if it says "and then all the fish died" before you pay any attention. :popcorn:

I bought horse size dewormer, 25g of 10% fenbendazole, which comes as a thin white paste (it treats an 1100 pound horse by the way).

I started with about 5g of the paste (so 500mg of fenbendazole), and mixed it up in about 50ml of water, basically just to get it really thin not for a particular dilution.

I then added some pellet food (maybe 3ml), 4 algae tablets, and a block of frozen bloodworms, stirred thoroughly and let it soak for an hour. It took up maybe a third of the water.

I then used a spoon to put it into the tanks, which hadn't been fed in 1.5 days, so everyone was hungry, at least those that usually come out for food. I put it in with the liquid, a little at a time to encourage it to be eaten (the algae tablets just fell to the bottom of course). It apparently didn't affect the taste negatively, as everyone ate quickly. I did it over 10 minutes or so, trying to get most of it eaten as opposed to sinking; I think most was, but not nearly all, so there's some left for the pleco and cat fish.

This made the water quite cloudy, but that didn't seem to affect the fishes ability to eat.

This went into two tanks, totaling about 240 gallons +/-. If my math is rather that put about .54 mg / L into the water so far.

I plan to do it again tomorrow and the next day so most of it gets eaten. I'll use less water then, I think this was a bit too dilute. By that time I hope to have Levamisole, and will make up a bath, depending on how the fish are doing. May give them a day in between.

Comments welcome if this is very off base.

Your experience sounds about right. Fish do not seem to notice the cloudy water and the fish do not hesitate to eat the medicated food.

I tried this treatment on protozoans (which are not worms) and it had no effect on the protozoan infection. But I did learn about the tolerance of fish to this medication.

Two specific questions if anyone knows:

1) I have purigen in the filters. I've heard it doesn't impact most medicines, unlike carbon. Anyone know? I'm actually not sure I care if it absorbs the fenbendazole, as I really want it ingested, but how about the levamisole?

Always remove carbon and purigen when medicating. Personally I think both carbon and purigen are non-essential items. Frequent large water changes will do a better job than purigen and carbon combined, but that is another debate for a different day.

2) I have low power UV sanitizers in the filters (they are SunSun 404B). I'm sure they are little help with the parasites, though who knows, maybe they are getting a sunburn. Will it impact the medicine though?

Always turn off UV sterilizers when medicating. Even if the drug is not light sensitive, a UV bulb may break down the chemicals. The "weak" Sunsun UV light is actually very powerful. Do not be deceived by the low wattage. 9 watts is enough to kill green water algae and is the same wattage used in 2,000-gallon pond UV sterilizers!!!

Search for "tetra pond UV" in Amazon dot com.

Since you have a worm problem despite using a UV sterilizer, we can probably conclude that the sterilizer is not effective in eradicating the worms.
 
Always remove carbon and purigen when medicating. Personally I think both carbon and purigen are non-essential items. Frequent large water changes will do a better job than purigen and carbon combined, but that is another debate for a different day.
...

Always turn off UV sterilizers when medicating. Even if the drug is not light sensitive, a UV bulb may break down the chemicals. The "weak" Sunsun UV light is actually very powerful. Do not be deceived by the low wattage. 9 watts is enough to kill green water algae and is the same wattage used in 2,000-gallon pond UV sterilizers!!!

Search for "tetra pond UV" in Amazon dot com.

Since you have a worm problem despite using a UV sterilizer, we can probably conclude that the sterilizer is not effective in eradicating the worms.

I am not doing the purigen to avoid water changes (I'm using plants for that :whistle:) but rather to take some of the yellowing out from tannins (etc), and add some polish. Though one could argue that more frequent water changes does the same, I get it. One is $8 once for maybe a year, the other is a lot more manual labor.

As to the 9W - the wattage is not why I believe it is poor, but rather the price; the with-UV and without-UV are about the same price (sometimes actually flipped), so I suspect it is a poor quality UV bulb. I've been told it is ok for green water, but I doubt it is anywhere near a level 1. I think I've found bulbs that will be a better replacement. Regardless - there's no reason to think every worm/larvae/egg would actually go through the filter, despite having good flow.

However - off it is. At least for the levamisole - I left it and the purigen in last night, and will today (mostly because I don't have time to change it in three filters - wife's birthday). I'm counting on the fenbendazole from being eaten, and taking it out of the water makes it less likely the levamisole later will be some kind of over-dose.

PS. The water was clear this morning, it must settle quickly, or come out in the filters. Fish are all still alive, the shrimp (ghost) look a bit quiet but alive. And the worms are still visible just as before. Another dose this afternoon.
 
The water was clear this morning, it must settle quickly, or come out in the filters. Fish are all still alive, the shrimp (ghost) look a bit quiet but alive. And the worms are still visible just as before. Another dose this afternoon.

Fenbendazole precipitates out of solution and settles to the bottom as you have noticed. My substrate and filter pipes show a whitish powder after a couple of days and the water less cloudy. I have read about levimasole and have it in my fish medicine cabinet but have no experience with it.
 
Just to follow up - I did another feeding with another 5G of drug soaked in a bit less water. Eaten eagerly again. The visible camallanus are still there, however, which does not seem a good sign. On the other hand no one including the shrimp seem negatively affected by the drug.

I still worry that some fish are going to OD and others under-dose, but what can you do -- it's not like the fish share evenly.
 
for the plecos could you soak a piece of small drift wood in a mix and drop it down there. Mine love to much on driftwood?
 
As a brief update after two treatments with Fenbendazole one day apart in food there's no visible change in anything - fish are still alive, snails alive, worms are still hanging out of the vent of the same fish.

Hopeful to get the levamisole today, and think I'll do one more feeding with febbendazole and start the levamisole.
 
Out of curiosity, where do you think you acquired these worms?

Well, now that I know a bit about their lifecycle -- absolutely no way to narrow it down.

They take weeks to appear, as I understand, so that fish in quarantine didn't show signs is not indicative. And I really don't know when the fish that now show signs started -- I only know when I first noticed. Since only 3 (maybe 4) fish show signs, I very possibly could have missed it for weeks or months, OR that only 3 (or 4) show signs may mean it was within the last month or so. I just don't know.

I have fish from two LFS's, and of one of these one batch that just arrived from an (outdoor) farm, and two batches that were tank raised.

I also have plants from four LFS's (three of them different from the above two), that had fish in the tanks. It appears plants can carry eggs, and I did not make a habit of dipping plants.

Worse, I have 3 fish, a bunch of shrimp (now dead), and several plants from a local outdoor marsh. Those plants I chlorine dipped so I doubt it is from them, but the fish and shrimp I only quarantined.

So... no idea really which of those. Sadly.

I got ich twice -- I know EXACTLY which LFS gave it to me at least once, and suspect it was the same one a second time. I no longer buy fish there.

The Ich taught me to be more serious about quarantine, but 2 weeks is no where near long enough for camallanus (from what I read).

So... what to do next?

I just traded in my small QT for a larger one (so it is easier to keep going with less water changes), with the plan to:

1) Treat with a de-wormer on receipt

2) Raise the temp for 2 weeks to 89F to kill any ich

3) At three weeks treat with a de-wormer one more time

4) During all the time except about 3 days around the time of the de-wormer, run a UV sanitizer (it's going to be in a sunsun 404B, but I'm going to throttle the flow WAY down to make it (hopefully) adequate dwell time, I may also swap out the lamp for a better one -- still researching.

Comments welcome on the above.

As to status -- for anyone following along --

I fed Fenbendazole again tonight for the third time (no impact so far).

I received the Levamisole today, and mixed up 15 grams and split it up between two tanks.

Hoping to see results now in a day or so.
 
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