Can anyone advise what treatment to use for a nematode infection? It looks to have come into my 6x2x2 display tank via my Apistogramma bitaeniata's and ahs now psread to at least my angels, if not more of the apisto's. The male bitaeniata died on the weekend, but I managed to fish him out before then. The female is stillin the tank avoiding capture.
She has little red tubicles/fibres sticking out of her rectum, so am sure it's a nematode infection.
What do I use to treat this and where can I get it from?
Levamisole is what you need, treating at the rate of 1ml per 7 litres of water.
You can buy "Big L Pig and Poultry Wormer" made by Sykes at most feed and grain stores. Anywhere they sell horse or greyhound products should carry it.
There are also bird wormer products that contain levamisole, but take care, they often contain glucose which will cause a huge bacterial bloom in your tank, so be sure to read the ingredients carefully.
A follow up dose 7 days later is recommended.
Thirty-five years keeping and breeding discus, and I'm still learning :P
levamisol should be used at 1-2mgs per litre of tank water
so depending on the strength of the product sourced you may be using different volumes
the 7.5% solution i use is 75mgs/ml and so only 1 ml is needed in 50 litres
thats why it is important to put dose's in mgs/l as strenght of parent solution can vary and hence (someone here once bought the cow wormer) the volume dose is different
Thanks everyone. My LFS recommended the bird treatment, mentioned above.
We've ordered it from the supplier and it should be arriving by mail today.
I've isolated my angels but cannot find the female A.bitaeniata anywhere. If she dies in the main tank, I've got 120+ gold mystery snails in there that will eat up the remains pretty quick. Do these things spread in the water after the fish is dead?
I was going to treat the whole tank but the LFS said I had to remove all snails and catfish, including my peppermints and borneo suckers, something that just isn't possible without stripping the whole tank down. So I'm trying targeted capture and isolation. What are the risks with this given I can't find the A.bitaeniata anymore?
camallanus has a complex life cycle in general ( i have read contary somewhere on this site previously)
that means that it will use inveterbrate intermediate hosts - then the fish eats these
because these are not in the tank of mst hbbiest's the worm seems to have managed to assume a direct life cycle ie fish to fish transmission is possible , though only for a limited number of life cycles
if you feed live food then they can be a vector
generally speaking i would be cautious with the avian wormer and prehaps use a short term dip at higher concentrations as there may be glucose or other carbohydrates within the solution that may encourage bacterial blooms in the main tank
I'm only going to use the avarian treatment on the isolated angels in the hostpial tank at this point, so the blooms shouldn't be a problem or else will be easily handled, through a high % water change. This treatment will do at least for the short term until I get my hands on the other treatment mentioned above.
As much as I can avoid it, I'm not going to treat the main tank. I'll monitor all the inhabitants for a few weeks to see if any other become infected.