Worm infestation.

[Noodle]

Hi everyone,

I have a problem with worm infestations in my mollies, and chances are it may be affecting my guppies as well.

Search on Google tells me that garlic is a good deterrent, and I'll be adding some to my fish's diet immediately.

Salt is also supposed to help, but I've been routinely adding freshwater aquarium (as opposed to marine) salt to my Guppy and Molly tanks (1tsp to 4L water) and I still got an infestation of what looks like tapeworms. (prob'ly from the cheapie fish flakes I've been feering them - Pensions don't go very far these days)

I read, or heard somewhere about using Vermox (tm) to treat to treat fish, but I can't for the life of me remember the reference. Does anyone else know anything about it? dosage etc...

...Or some other effective treatment? Preferably something that won't damage my plants, or upset my bio-filter.

This is quite urgent as I already lost 3 Mollies, before I identified the pest.

Thanks in advance, I know I'll get help here.

[disco]

i think the vermox treatment can be found on slojo's website...see under his profile. How do you know it tapeworms...how do they look?

[SalmonAfrica]

Hi there

I don't think the salt will be doing you a ton of good - sure, the guppies and mollies may enjoy the increase in salinity, and so therefore may become less stressed and have a slightly more useful immune system, but the use of salt is generally for external parasites, which are 'protected' from the change in salinity in the tank by the fish's internal environment.

There are remedies for internal parasites, most of which are found at your local pet store. I'm not sure which brand specifically you should go for, but I'm sure someone here could help you. Just saying that the salt won't do you much good, though, and you should seek an aimed treatment.

Regards

[f-fish]

Before you add raw garlic to the food have a look at the thread http://www.tropicalaquarium.co.za/showthread.php?1332-Garlic-for-fish/page2 seems like it needs to be gelled with the food.

[Reedfish]

I don't think salt, or garlic are going to help much.
You need to treat with some sort of anti-parasite treatment. There is a product called Kusuri that I have used quite successfully, but I am not sure if it is available in SA?
There must be some sort of similar product though.

If you have snails in your tank, it could kill them too, and leave a lot of pollution due to the rotting bodies.

[Anine]

jungle parasite clear. contains praziquantel which is safe and wont kill your filter bacteria

[scotty]

The problem is Jungle Parasite clear is no longer available. Unbelievable product and is what I would always recommend. Problem is they have been bought out by TETRA who have gone and closed them down, direct competition to their products.

[azurekoi]

I've used the Vermox liquid to good effect... - pour some over their food(or put it into that wet food you make Noodle) - feed for 3 days in a row.... Voila,no worms...

[Go-Big]

Levamisole Hidrochloride

[Marco]

Hi Noodle

Nope, I really doubt your fish got worms from Flakes. Highly unlikely.
Another thing, you sorta need to make sure that this is indeed Tapeworm. If so, which is possible, I would rather guess you fed them either daphnia at some stage, or you have some cyclops in your tank which would then infest your fish with Tapeworm.
Solution - Vermox could work, though I find most worms have become completely immune to Mebendazole, the active ingredient in Vermox. Best bet, Praziquantal. Its hectically expensive and the best and cheapest source is probably from a chemist in the form of Biltrizide. Its a 600mg tablet and will probably set you back about R60 each. Quite hectic yes, but it will sort out the Tapeworm. If I remember correctly you dose it at 2mg per liter, followed by a 50% water change on day 3 and redose again. That should have killed all Tapeworm.
Levamisole wont help for Tapeworm, so dont bother, you really need Prazi for these buggers.

Rgds

Marco

[Go-Big]

You quite right Marco. I use endotape which contains Levamisole and Praziquantal. I have great results. The advantage is that it also work on cammalanus.