camallanus worms

[Zulaab]

Well I got a pair of Paradise Gourami's at the auction and they where going to end up my friends new tank.. Then I noticed there was a small problem with one of them. Swollen anus and red/brown worms sticking out.

Well off to Walmart I went to pick up a 10g tank, and since its a parasite.. I dont have any medication so tonight they are getting clout..

Anyone out there know if clout will kill the worms ?
This is what I think I have : camallanus worms.

-- after some reading.. it looks like I am going out to petsmart tomorrow.. and buy some dog medication... yes you read that right... dog medication for my fish.

[myjohnson]

dude, non-tang fishes?

shame on you.

[Zulaab]

Its a planted Amazonian fish tank. I decided to get them some Paradise Gourami's and well now I am having to fix them before they go into their tank. One of them and I am medicating both against camallanus worms. I will not give fish that are knowingly sick into their tank

[Zulaab]

Well update... 10 hours later... the worms have not changed at all... going to add another dose of it so the fish gets more and more medication in them to help them fight it...

[Zulaab]

Bought safe-guard Canine Dewormer in the three 1gram packet size.
Crushed the pellets into a powder. Poured all into a small dish added 5ml clean tank water. Added enough NLS cichlid formula to soak up all the medication (alot of it is made). I dropped enough into the tank and observed the fish. The female went right after the food and ate. Male is no going for the food. The water column is becoming white and cloudy from the medication floating in the water. I will continue to observe and hope the male will eat or drink enough water over time to put the floating medication into his stomach. His stomach is bloated and I dont know if he is going to eat for now. I hope the worms will die out and he will start passing dead worms out. We will see tomorrow. Being Gourami's they dont need air as they are fine in the water they are in right now. I will keep checking on the fish. Tomorrow I will write another report.

[Terrybo]

Where is the update? Did the Safeguard dewormer work?

Terry

[Zulaab]

Right now the female who ate her worms are going away. Male, who is not eating.. no change, except a TON more worms have shown up.
I am going to do a 100% water change tomorrow clean the tank.
The food was Cichlid Formula 1mm drowned in safe-guard.. I am going to see if he will eat blood worms. If he will then I am going to drown the blood worms in safe-guard.. I am going turn it back into a powder and pour it into the water.. I am hoping the fish by drinking will absorb enough to kill off the worms..
More to come when I do the water change.

[Zulaab]

100% water change last night.
The Female is for sure pooping out dead worms. None stick out of her now.
Male on the other hand did poop yesterday and for the first now is willing to eat.
Tonight I am going to pick up (crack for fish) aka bloodworms and i am going to thaw out a cube, and open a second pouch (never used all the food I had created and dumped it in the garbage can) and again powder it, then season the heck out of the bloodworms.. then once they have been frozen back up serve them to the fish. I want to see the male eat as much as he can because he is the one who is the most messed up now.

More to come

[Zulaab]

I didnt get a chance to get bloodworms from the store this evening so I will have to work on the second dose tomorrow.
Good news.. the male has lost a lot of the worms too...
Only one is showing today. He is eating so that is best news.. he will for sure end up with highly medicated bloodworms tomorrow in his belly..
Then if all goes well.. a week off... then second round of killing worms... I hope to see more color them in the next 48 hours..

[armthehomeless]

Update?

[Zulaab]

I dont have any good updates yet.
Because being busy at work I have had to start over. One thing though is that the male and female are eating well which only the female was eating well the first time. On Saturday I decided to give them bloodworms coated in safe-guard Canine Dewormer. They ate well, but as of yesterday it had not made much impact at all. I am thinking when I gave the female NLS soaked in safe-guard Canine Dewormer it did much better. I am thinking tomorrow I am going to start over by cleaning their tank completely again, then give them soaked safe-guard Canine Dewormer in NLS which makes a massive mess but it did a lot better I think. We will see. I am not giving up. I will find the correct way to kill this off.

[Zulaab]

** Update **

After several weeks I think I have killed them off. Looking at the Paradise gourami its not showing any more problems and does not appear to have any more worms. I am going to keep looking at the fish over the next few weeks to make for sure.

Here is what I found.

Make sure your fish eats. If not get it used to bloodworms (you will need bloodworms to feed the fish in the end) -- I made the mistake of first feeding NLS to the fish and it would take a while for them to eat it. Bloodworms they ate quick and had no problem stuffing themselves with.

I took a frozen cube of bloodworms, thawed it out, drained as much as I could without using paper towels the excess water from the cube.
then I took about 1/3 of 1g packet of safeguard dewormer crushed it first to a powder.
Then freeze the cube back up. Once frozen dump the content back into the tank and the fish will eat it.
This is the least messy way of doing this.
Make sure that your fish are QT'd in their own little tank so you can do plenty water changes.
One thing you will notice, when the worms die out inside the fish, their poop will turn almost black from the coagulated blood. This is a good sign that the worms are dying out. You will also notice that worms stop hanging out the anus.

In my research its been said to hit the fish 3 times with the dewormer, but honestly, I did it twice and everything is gone.
Make sure that you wait at least 7-10 days between each hit. The Camallanus worm bear live young, therefore once you kill off the worms the only thing that could left would be something that escaped the first hit. The second hit will do it in for them.

The water parameters I used for these paradise Gourami's where very simple.
Weekly water changes on the 10g tank 100%
No air (they are labyrinth fish and dont need air)
74-75F with a tight lid on the fish as they are jumpers..

Obviously I would not suggest this to all fish out there but since those are the normal temps/conditions that this fish is used to, this is a perfect for them.
I can recommend this treatment to those who might get the camallanus worm as there are many of the older books out there that list "destroy fish" as the only option against this worm. Safeguard dewormer is sold in three sizes, 1g packets, 2g packets and 3g packets.. buy the 1g portions as I would think 1g will do three cubes of bloodworms. Having the fish ingest the dewormer is the only real way for getting rid of the camallanus worm.