Oh no! Sick fish?! Come here and see if someone can help!
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Since this board has been up, we have found there are several questions that routinely get asked in order to help diagnose problems. If you can have that information to begin with in your post, we'll be able to help right away (if we can!) without having to wait for you to post the info we need.
1) Your water parameters - pH, Ammonia, Nitrite, Nitrates and salinity (if appropriate). This is by far the most important information you can provide! Do not answer this with "Fine" "Perfect" "ok", that tells us nothing. We need hard numbers.
2) Tank size and a list of ALL inhabitants. Include algae eaters, plecos, everything. We need to know what you have and how big the tank is.
3) Feeding, water change schedule and a list of all products you are using or have added to the tank (examples: Cycle, Amquel, salt, etc)
4) What changes you've made in the tank in the last week or so. Sometimes its the little things that make all the difference.
5) How long the aquarium has been set up, and how did you cycle it? If you don't know what cycling is read this: Fishless Cycling Article and familiarize yourself with all the information. Yes. All of it.
We want to help, and providing this information will go a LONG way to getting a diagnosis and hopeful cure that much faster.
While you wait for assistance:
One of the easiest and best ways to help your fish feel better is clean water! If you are already on a regular water change schedule (50% weekly is recommended) a good step to making your fish more comfortable while waiting for diagnosis/suggestions is to do a large water change immediately. Feel free to repeat daily or as often as you can, clean water is always a good thing! Use of Amquel or Prime as a dechlor may help with any ammonia or nitrite issues, and is highly recommended.
Note - if you do not normally do large water changes, doing a sudden, large water change could shock your fish by suddenly changing their established water chemistry. Clean water is still your first goal, so in this case, do several smaller (10%) water changes over the next day or two before starting any large ones.
Well, my F8 is gone and after that Myaj gave me some advice in deworming. I did read a lot of articles about it and all that stuff like methronidazole, levamisole and other medicines and treatments in QT. I was thinking of deworming my next F8 before put it in my main display. However, could be snails, shrimps and any other kind of non-industrialized food, a source of parasites? Is deworming a form of sterilize the fish? I didn't understand the purpose of this practice.
PS: I noticed this worm on the sand a couple days before my fish was gone:
(I saw this photo here - http://www.wetwebmedia.com/BrackishSubW ... isfaqs.htm, that worm is exactly the same I saw in my tank, but I thought it was common like snails and other inverts. Should I take any precautions about this appearance? (there is no fish in the tank) )
By_a_coo wrote:...However, could be snails, shrimps and any other kind of non-industrialized food, a source of parasites? Is deworming a form of sterilize the fish? ...
This is a very good question as these food items are a main food source for most puffers. Does anyone know if snails, shrimp, ect... can pass worms to our puffers??
What would be the signs??
I did read here, someone posted their shrimp (ghost I believe) had worms.
55g-2 green spotted puffers 1 year old Nov 08!
20g-5 leopard danio,4 whiteskirt tetras, amanos, nerita snails, 2 neon tetras
Mike - the worm that I noticed in my tank was ~0.39'' (1 cm)long (I don't know if I did the right convertion, sorry)
StormSkiez - When you mentioned that, it makes me remember the last live shrimp I gave to my F8... After he ate the shrimp, immediately he regurgitated it! So it makes me think something was wrong with that live meal. Freezing the meals would be a good choice?
flamedofitreet - You should see me when I did noticed that alien lugging onto the sand inside MY tank!! that was really creepy! (and my puffer was still alive and swimming as nothing had happened...)
Hey all... I've been thinking: wouldn't be too much neurosis to deworm a fish? There are a lot of worms source around us. I don't know if this practice is a good idea for as much, this type of treatment should be done to a visible affected fish. I have my doubts when I read that people deworm - "disinfect" would be the right term for me - the fish each 3-4 months.
Come on! We, being humans, carry a lot of bacteria, fungus and much more sort of organisms. All kind of life has its proper way of self-defence. Also, I did read, I don't remember where, many fish come to die after the treatment is done because you remove too much parasites at the same time... I'm really confused about this whole thing. Sorry if my words were rough, but I feel a bit sad supposing that if I had dewormed my fish his death would not happen.
I'm not revolted, but I'm idealizing if I should "deworm" or not my next F8 (I already ordered another one)? I'm not trusting in this practice as a very good prophylactic course of action...
What do you smart people think about this subject?
deworming or no deworming? Well, here's the deal with parasites. In nature, most fish have parasites (often as worms). This is true of most animals actualy. But in nature, you normaly have a balance installed. The parasites are in the fish guts, eat out of the fish food and reproduce, but they are not in a big enough number to actualy kill the fish. Although it might not kill the fish, it will have negative effects: the fish might have to eat way more than usual to compensate with the food the worms are stealing. It might also prevent the fish to put weight on. The fish would stop growing and stay emaciated. If the balance is broken, the number of parasite can increased and then do so much damage to the fish's gut that the fish won't be able to absorb it's food and will die of starvation. The balance can also be broken if the fish immune system is impaired. Stress will affect the immune system and most fish we buy just went through a lot of stress being caught, shipped, shipped again, stored in lfs water, caught again, introduced to your new tank! So when the immune system a down, the parasites are free to grow in number.
Now, there seems to be 2 philosophy about deworming a fish that doesn't show signs: no deworming as they have worms in nature and live with it or deworm anyways because they almost have worms and it can be a real problem if your fish gets unhealthy later. Personnaly, I'm of the deworming new fish philosophy! Like I said, stress is hard on the immune system of the fish and worms might become a problem quickly. Also, if your fish has worms and say, one year later he gets some disease, then the worms would be free to grow and you fish would have to fight the disease AND the worms. If you deworm on arrival, this won't happen.
I hope this helps answer your questions. As for me, the pumpkin seed method didn't work, but I had done a first treatment with Gel-Tek before I tried it. So my guess is that the parasites that were left were more resistant to medicine since they had survived to a first treatment. So if you're interested in this natural and cheap method I'd suggest you start with it and get medicine if it doesn't work, but not the other way around!!
One more question: I can't find gel-tek where I live, can I use metronidazole and praziquantel with fish food? As these medicines are inside Gel-Tek compound.
Yes, there's quite a variety of medicine available. I think you said you read it, but there's an article in the library about deworming and it's very well explained how to use each medicine. I've always kept to what is said in there. I used Gel-tek because it was easily available and the other meds in the article were not...
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