Need help - Battle of the parasite...

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Aquarium salt won't necessarily kill off parasites. I think you have to use sea salt. I had columnaris on a Cory cat and I think sea salt is far more effective. Did you just add the salt as directed to the tank?

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A guy I talked to at the pet store suggested up to a tea spoon per gallon..That is about what I have used, at times a little less..
 
Usually I have used sea salt not aquarium salt and I have used it as a bath where the concentration of salt is higher but it just isn't as long.

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The worms are somewhat hard to see in the picture so I'm going to ask a few more questions, bear with me. The worms are white correct? Are they very small? Are they attacking scaled areas? Or just gills and fins?

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They attack everywhere, gills, fins, scales. They are like sucker fish in the way they act. Very small, and white/transparent. I managed to vacuum a couple off the bottom, pulled them out of the water and got some images and videos under the magnifying glass. I am working on posting them now. They act just like sucker fish, but they cannot swim, rather they squirm, and when they touch bottom they grab on like a sucker fish...Maybe even slightly striped, one of the two I caught had a striped effect to them. I doubt they are babies, even so the fish has been pregnant, they do look like the parasite. Hopefully you can confirm. They are smaller than the tip of a tooth pick.

And the parasites on her do seem to hang on like a sucker fish. And one thing I noticed about the parasite she pooped which was longer like a worm, it got down near the bottom rocks right before the filter sucked it in, I noticed it was squirmy until it got onto the rock and then crawled like a caterpillar...
 
Hm. Well I sent the link to our conversation to the expert Lol let's hope we can figure it out. Once you get those good pictures up I'm sure we can ID it

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I got it under a microscope, it is transparent, worm looking, and literally has tentacle things coming off of it. It is some creepy stuff. I am having to use dropbox to get them off of an Iphone, once they are done syncing I will upload them all...It is catfish looking too, with a large sucker head..
 
This to start. Pics are not the best but I have a vid coming as well and I can take more..
 

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Best I have right here. This thing is nasty.. I am going to run some tests with the PraziPro and see if it is truly immune or not..
 

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Brrr my skin just got goose bumps. That us a great picture though. We should be able to ID this pretty quickly. Give me a few more minutes.

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Here is the vid. I think the pics do more justice. This thing looked like a moving spec in the water, and I examined it within a bubble. It is a spec compared to the tip of a tooth pic..
 
woooooof that thing is awful looking. we are thinking maybe some sort of cestode but i dont have a positive ID on it just yet. is the fish eating decently? the worm that your fish possibly expelled looked different than this one right? longer and thinner? that one would be a form of nematode.
 
I touched in some of the PraziPro to the specimen and it did die in about 2 mins flat. Although, the ratio of Prazi to water was extremely high compared to dosing a tank...

It tries to eat, and wants to, most times I tap on the glass and she goes to the top looking for food, but she spits the most of it out..Although, if my theory of her being pregnant is true she would eat a little less right? I mean she seems like she is getting ready to burst..So I cannot say for sure if the eating issues are from the pregnant aspect or the parasite...

It gives me the creeps too, this is the furthest I have gotten into it so far. I am really crossing my fingers you guys will find some info!!!

I literally vacuumed, spotted two in the bucket, picked them out with a spoon, and started getting them down to this. The first one I killed trying to set the microscope, good thing I got two. I vacuumed the entire bottom (4-gallon) and only found two so I guess it is not super infested...But these things are definitely breeding...
 
she might be bloated because she has internal parasites. hopefully not. but very likely. i would say the not eating is probably due to the parasite as well. is this 4 gallon tank planted or anything?
 
I have some fake plants in there, I just set it up for emergency to try and deal with her because at the moment it is like she is some type of carrier.. And as far as my theory of being pregnant, the only signs I really have is the square aspect of her under belly, and her ...what is it? "Grivot" or some other, where she has this spot on her belly that has been getting larger, right where she would birth the babies if she were pregnant. I am not 100% positive.

I know it did stress her a little to be in there alone, so I put in some Otto bottom feeders and they made her feel a little better. For some bizarre reason, they are the only fish that has seemed fully immune to the parasite. I have examined them many many times and never have I seen a single sign. Also, I have one Loach that showed symptoms after all of the other fish, but he never became infected either he just got the itch....

I wish I could put her in the bigger tank or something but I am risking a lot. I had one fish (the one that brought it in) that was the first to die, and after it did everything it had for parasites went on to this one. They are concentrated with her, and the moment I pulled her from the tank the bigger one seemed slightly relieved. It happened within like 3 days, one fish died and this one which was not infected all the sudden was covered...
 
lol the "gravid" spot. close though.
yeah its hard to tell. could be one or the other. or both.
i think it is a good idea to keep her separated for now. but do make sure you treat the whole tank eventually. these things usually have life cycles that you have to continue treating for a couple of weeks if not months.
is there a substrate to the tank or is it bare bottom?
 
I have some rocks in the bottom but I put in a light load so I could try and vacuum up anything living in them. That has been where I find these parasites once they let go of her. And I have been treating both of my tanks since this started.

I was in shock this morning, literally like two days ago she was clean, everything had let go and she looked great. Then I did a vacuum and 20% water change and within hours she was loaded again.. They like to hide in the rocks I think. Not only that, I did bleach everything I have before I started running the Prazi. So this whole thing started with clean water and all clean decorations as well as the bottom rocks...

About two weeks, just over actually as of today that I started running the Prazi.. I was hoping maybe there was some "big guns" as far as medicine that I could use to knock these things out. Luckily my other tank seems to be doing ok, but I have seen signs that if I stopped the Prazi right now there would be another outbreak..
 
big guns would probably be levamisole hydrochloride. its is a livestock dewormer that can get rid of most things, unfortunately it is extremely hard to get. i purchased mine on ebay.

the way they are going away and coming back makes it sound like this is not a live bearing parasite but most likely an egg layer. usually medications will kill adult parasites but wont affect eggs. then you have a really bad cycle of killing of the adults but in a few days the eggs hatch and you are at it again. you might want to pull everything out of that tank and just go totally bare. bleach everything and then add her back after that. dont give the worms anywhere to hide or anchor to.
 
I'm on it..

Done. I only had like 3 plants in there, so outside of collecting rocks it was no big. Nothing in there now but a filter and two Ottos. I did put in one crystal like rock for her to scratch on, but other than that it is clean....
 
also that way if she drops any worms you can easily find then and clean them up.
 
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