Allie

I am so relieved!! We found Prazi Pro in across town. Expensive tho!! 4oz $25 plus taxes. Good thing...b/c all of my fish besides the Africans have been exposed to the camallanus worms thanks to me NOT quarantining my keyholes. My betta should not have been exposed but I didn't clean the tank from when I lost my 1st keyhole and used it for my Betta.
Lesson learned: always quarantine new fish for a month and always disinfect sick tank and anything that the sick fish was near decor.
We've been into the hobby for just over two years, kept lots of species of fish and this is our fish contagious outbreak. Never think that it won't happen to you...it will someday unfortunately. We take care of our tanks almost too well and it still happened to us. Darn LFS crappy care sold us infested keyholes. Funny thing is that they had a big illness break out and lost a lot of fish in the same section I got the keyholes in February. I wonder if they bothered to figure out what the fish had.

chickadee

Just please be careful with that med. This is a very serious chemical and dangerous around things that do not need it. Please be cautious don't want you affected by it. Thank goodness you can now start to treat everything that is affected and especially the remaining fish and hopefully you have caught them in time. This is the only non prescription med available for this at present. I am so happy you could find it even if it was so expensive.

Please keep us updated on their progress, Allie. Someone may run into this problem someday and your experience will be valuable to us all.

Rose

shellbell4ever

Great news Allie I hope you got it in time to save some lives,even at that cost...worth every penny I'm sure if it helps save even one of your precious Betta boys I hope all of them make it for sure!Please do keep us posted.

Allie

I will be careful with it. I will be keeping this thread as a journal for the progress of the fish. Live & learn

Thanks. I hope so too, Felix, Sunny and Prince have only been here for over a month...JB has been around since March.

Martinismommy

Good luck Allie.....I'll be thinking positive thoughts for the boys.....

Allie

Thanks Karen, we can use them here. Stressed out, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Allie

Everyone is still alive today...still swimming and acting normal, as of so far.

Lucy

That's great Allie, good luck to you and you fish, I know I'd be freaking out.

Fishies-for-me

I am keeping my fingers crossed for you and your fish to make it thru this ok. I know how you feel finding this worm in you tanks. Every time one of my gups poo I still look at it very carefully to make sure that is what it is ...lol not a worm! I don't know how long of a gestation period there is for these things so I am still nervous and it has been at least 3 months since I treated my tanks. The really bad things about these worms ( at least some strains of them) is that a worm can by pregnant with a pregnant fetus that is pregnant with a pregnant fetus....and so on. And some of they need a cohost to complete their lifecycle and others don't the ones commonly found in the aquarium have a direct lifecycle meaning the do not need a second host they can infect other fish directly....I wish you good luck in eradicating these as I hope I have to.

Allie

I have been freaking out.
I had a stomach ache all day yesterday.

Martinismommy

Allie....

I'm so glad to hear everyone is still with you.....Just think positive thoughts and they can get through this...My thoughts are with you and the finbabies today....Hang in there:;

Allie

Oh you guys!! I am SO stressed out. This much worse than I thought. ALL of our tanks have to be treated. The 120g to the 5g ALL have to be disinfected. This can be passed thru nets, anything to do with fish... even the python. From what I've been reading...it takes awhile to get rid of them.
I just found my last diamond tetra dead just now, the other one died a few days ago. My angels have swollen butts. This worm seem to take the smallest, weakest fish first. Some species of fish, mostly live bearers don't respond with Prazi pro.
Gosh we sold fish in the past few months. Need to tell the guy who has my evil female angelfish. This is so frustrating!!
This is so scary, I feel sick. All my plecos I have had nearly 2 years, angels almost 1.5 yrs. We have a few hundred days old acei, other fish for sale which cannot sell now or ever depending on this fish's recovery. This is nasty.
So please learn from my mistakes.

Fishies-for-me

From what I learned when I researched it over and over is that levimiosole is the med of choice. Unfortunatly I couldn't find it where I live so that is why I used the medicated food as that has levimiosole in it. It may be worth a try for your other fish . It is not expensive and can be bought at petsmart.

Allie

We can only find Prazi pro locally. I've read it help some people's betta.
We will order other things or start asking people in the local aquarium club if they have any ideas or meds on hand. I will try everything I can.
Gosh our wide bar datnoid and 4 fancy plecos are worth a couple of hundred dollars alone. They show no signs and they were with the keyholes from the beginning...so hopefully they will be ok. I do expect to loose some fish from the treatment, but at this point everyone seems okay even the ones with the swollen butts.
They've been all exposed for 5 months so time will tell.

O yeah some articles said that people have used the same meds as they use for cats or dogs....but what dosage for how long. Worms in cats I am familiar with, fish I am not.

COBettaCouple

I'm so sorry this is happening with your fish, I know I'd feel the same as you and I really hope you have success with meds and treatment to get this nasty out of your tanks.

Allie

Thank you.
Everyone please send good vibes our way...my fishies need it.

Fishies-for-me

There is not a lot of info on dosing or where to find the meds...it is a frustrating battle that I wish you didn't have to go thru this. With the med food I had to crush it fine as it is very hard and fairly large pellets. The fish do not like the taste of it and need to be quite hungry to eat it. I have tried soaking it in garlic also to make it softer and more appetizing. If you do decide to go this way for some of the fish make sure it says levimiozole on the back of the label as not all antiparasite foods do. Like you said some people have used other animal wormers but I have also read where people did that and lost the whole tank. Is there any access to any kind of fish farm or fish aquarium there ( the large public kind) I wonder if you could call there and talk to anyone if they would have any advise?

welshalien

we're all pulling for your poor fishies! I would be losing my mind if I were in your shoes I hope you start to see some improvement soon.

joy613

After checking out more sites it seems like most wormers don't kill the eggs, it leads me to believe the eggs have a cyst around it protecting it from the wormer so it is likely the tank might have to be treated a second or even third time. How to disinfect a tank? I am trying to find out how it can be spread or if it can be spread from tank to tank just with causal cleaning.

Allie

It spreads thru water...the eggs are tiny and stick to anything. Disinfect with a bleach & water combo. 1 parts bleach to 10 parts water.

Fishies-for-me

They are live bearers. They give birth to pregnant young who have pregnant young already inside of them. They also can spread in as little as 1 drop of water...on a net....a wet hand ...anything.

chickadee

Allie, just be very careful with those meds. I am not trying to be an alarmist but mixing them could just as easily kill your fish. So if you decide on one you will have to make sure and carbon out the other chemicals that are in your tank first before changing if you do change. These are hard chemicals to work with and unless you can find someone who has worked with them before with success and I mean with the types of fish you have, I would at least stay with the Prazi pro through one course of treatment. If you stop in the middle of the treatment you have just blown that med for trying later.

The reason I hate to see you try those foods are the facts that I have never had any fish who would eat them even if they were starving and your fish cannot afford the time it would take to get them that hungry if they ever did. You can try them but the same thing applies, you will need to remove the Prazi pro from the tanks to avoid a medication reaction in the fish.

Rose

chickadee

Allie when you are ready to start your notes on this let me know and you can start a thread and you can post to it and I will put a post in asking everyone NOT to post there so that it remains a clean record of your progress with the tanks and if they want to make comments about your tanks they can post on one of the unstickied threads that you write in.

Otherwise the reference materials will be interupted with comments and questions that would detract from your progress notes.

Rose

Allie