Dewormer? Your thoughts please

Hello Fish Fam,

I was recently advised that fish need to be dewormed and recommended to use woodworm, I did abit of research (not alot of articles either) and it seems woodworm is really strong

What's your take on deworming, how often and what product would you recommend?

Thank you
K

 

I'm very much an advocate of not medicating unless a diagnosis has been made. This can be difficult to do (accurately) in aquarium fishes, but I'd much rather be treating a symptom than applying a chemical without cause.

There are cases where you'd want to prophylacticly treat fishes - for example, wild caught fish or from a source that perhaps has a history of certain diseases. If this isn't the case, I wouldn't pursue treatment unless you suspect something has cropped up.

If you do get around to deworming, it's worthwhile knowing what kind of worm you're dealing with. The most common group of parasitic worms seen in aquarium fish (at least in my experience) are nematodes, which can be dealt with with levamisole, but other kinds of worms also parasitize fishes and will need different treatments. This is why I feel it's very important to identify a threat first.

As for how often, I'd argue that you run the treatment for the specific parasite as long as recommended, and then treat again if it failed. No more. There would be a different situation if you were frequently bringing in new fish - wholesalers and breeders, for example, may do repeated treatments as a measure of biosecurity. However, in our relatively stable systems at home, there shouldn't be many new sources for incoming parasites, so repeated treatments are a bit of a waste.

My 2c.

 

Thank you all for the above feedback

Much appreciated, I wouldn't want to cause any harm to my fish