Nart's Journal Battling Camallanus Worms

Hello All,

Just thought I will start a journal entry with my fishes battling the nasty Camallanus worms. Since I have nothing else to do but stare at all 3 of tanks that are now QT tanks. Also, this might help any new fish hobbyist going through this as well.

Back story:
It started off with my fishes successfully battling ich for about 20 days with heat + salt treatment and decided to be safe and did two days of Paraguard. On about day 17, one of my tuxedo guppy had passed away. I noticed the tuxedo guppy's stomach was bloated, lost of appetite, and listless. I chalked it up as it could've been the stress of the 20 days of ich treatment. On day 19, I noticed my cobra tail guppy had these very thin red veins/threads near his anus. I proceeded to put that guppy into a bowl to inspect it and surely enough I saw those red vein/threads move. It was not very noticeable, you really have to sit and stare with a flash light. Anyways, I searched the web for the symptoms/signs and found that they were called Camallanus worms which are a type of nematodes. At this point, I am worried for my entire community tank. Not that I have expensive fishes, but I take pride and joy caring for these fishes. It is my responsibility to care for them. As I am sifting through pages and pages of facts/studies, it is actually pretty overwhelming of what method to try and how much to dose. On day 20 my cobra guppy passed away. It was hard, but I decided to cut him open to see if he had any worms, surely enough I found about 5 small C.Worms. One word, gross.

So hopefully with my journal here you can learn from me and also for me to learn from the community during this process of battling Camallanus worms.

Medication: I purchased levamisole hcl through amazon. It is under the name PROHIBIT. It's for farm animals for about $25 for 46.8 grams.

Dosage: For the 100% Levamisole HCL powder form, you will at least need 90mg to treat 10 gallons with a 2 PPM concentration from what I gathered. Others have even treated up to a 18 PPM concentration. I basically soaked in all the advice and decided to do a gradual dose. Starting at 2 PPM. How do you get to 2 PPM? Easily! I do not have any fancy measuring device. So I measured 1/4 teaspoon and placed it onto a smooth surface. Took a razor blade and divided that into 10 relatively even piles. Each tiny pile is one treatment for 10 gallons. (A site I found did the math on this. It was something like moles and stuff like that, I'm not a chem major, so it is beyond me.

Math for the dosage: I am not an expert at this. This was the math I found.
2PPM = 2 mg/L Levamisole base, converts to 2.36 mg/L Levamisole or ~9 mg/gallon or 90 mg/10 gallons.
10 gallons is roughly about ~38 liters
2.36 x 38 = 89.68 mg or ~ 90 mg of Levamisole will treat 10 gallons with a 2 PPM concentration


10/11/16
QT tank is setup with no gravel, just the plants and décor. Slowly moved my German Blue Ram, Guppy, Molly, and Neons over to the QT tank. I decided to leave the mystery snail, nerite snail, and amano shrimp in the original tank with all the substrate. Even though I was pretty thorough with not cross-contaminating my 20 gallon long because I was treating ich, I decided to treat all 3 tanks for C.Worms anyways.
*Note: I do not run any carbon. However, I do run Purigen, so I removed that.
@ 9:30PM - QT tank received 3PPM of Levamisole dosage
@ 9:32PM - original tank with snail+shrimp received 2PPM Levamisole dosage
@ 9:34PM - 20 long received 2PPM of Levamisole dosage
Btw, I dissolved the Levamisole in a small cup with de-chlorinated water.

10/12/16
@ 5:30AM - All 3 tanks are fine. None of the fishes, snails, or shrimp show any signs of stress.

 

Good luck! Thanks for documenting your experience.

 

10/12/16
@ 3:30PM - All 3 tanks are still doing fine. Decided to test water in the main QT tank. Ammonia 0, Nitrite 0, Nitrate 0. I had brought the media bag over to the QT tank, so that should've cycled the tank. Perhaps because I am using new water? No idea. I will keep an eye on the levels.
@ 3:45PM - Dosed QT tank at 4PPM. Now totaling to 7PPM
@ 3:47PM - Dosed original tank at 2PPM. Totaling to 4PPM
@ 3:49PM - Dosed 20 long at 2PPM. Totaling to 4PPM

@ 6:00PM - Visual inspection of the QT tank. No signs of dead C.Worms. Fishes appear to have normal bowel movement. The other two tanks have no signs of dead C.Worms either.
@ 9:00PM - All the fishes appear to be hanging towards the bottom of the QT tank. The two zebra danios in the 20Long are swimming around happy as ever. Snails and shrimp are also fine in the original tank.

10/13/16
@ 6:00AM - Quick visual inspection of all 3 tanks. Appears to be okay. All fishes are alive. They were sleeping, so could not tell if they were stressed out or not. But, my GBR is a champ! She's like, "what the heck kind of tank did you put me into?". Btw, a little off track, but as I was netting out all the fishes over to the QT tank the other day, every single fish scattered. Except for my GBR, she stayed in her spot and tried to flex down the net. haha.
Anyways, so far so good. I am starting to wonder if the aquarium salt + Paraguard + daily gravel vacs during my ich battle killed off the C.Worm's off-springs? I guess, I will just continue to monitor the QT tank for any signs of dead C.Worms or symptons. Planning to feed them smashed peas tonight.

 

Your GBR sounds like a real sassy lady!

 

10/13/16
@ 6:00PM Two of the fishes in the QT tank appears to listless and hanging on the bottom. Fed them smashed peas and some pellets. All of them ate except the two listless fishes, they had just a few nibbles.
@ 8:00PM Checked water parameters, 0,0,0.

10/14/16
@ 6:00AM Just the molly appears to be listless. All other fishes seem fine. Their poop is well formed but appears to be a translucent color? Does anyone know what that means?
Still do not see any dead C.Worms on the floor or anything protruding from their anus. I plan to do a gravel vac and 50% water change this morning.

 

10/14/16
@ 12:00PM Did a floor vacuum and changed out 50% of the water.
@ 02:00PM Molly is a lot more active.
@ 02:30PM Fed flakes. All fishes are eating. Did notice the Platies are poop'ing a lot. it looks solid/translucent in color. Still no sign of dead C.worms on the bottom of the floor. Even inspected my pre-sponge filter, nothing.

 

10/16/16
@ 12:00PM Tested water parameters, .5, 0, 0. Not sure what happened, but it looks like my bio media bag did not cycle instantly over to the QT tank. I made sure all water was de-chlorinated. Fish looked fine, did a 30% water change.
@ 12:30PM The Fenbendazole medicated flakes arrived. I had ordered these as a secondary line of defense. Fed the QT tank, all fishes ate it up.
@ 06:00PM Fish stool is starting to look normal again. Never saw a sign of dead C.worms anywhere. I really think the salt water treatment during ich made it so the C.worms could not re-produce properly and infect my other fishes. Not sure.

 

10/18/16
@ 09:00AM Tested water parameters, .5,0,0 - did a 50% water change
@ 06:00PM Still no signs of dead C.worms. All fishes look healthy and active.

 

10/24/16
I have been dosing Fenbedazole as instructed. Every other day for a total of 5 doses. Tomorrow will be the last Fenbendazole dose. So far, all fishes appears to be in healthy condition. I have been doing 50% water changes every other day because of the lost nitrogen cycle. Still no signs or symptoms of C.Worms. By next week on the 1st of November, will be the last dose of Levamisole and they will be ready to be in the 20gal. Squeal!!!

 

Congratulations! What a caring fish dad.

 

Congratulations! What a caring fish dad.

No fish gets left behind! haha. Thank you.
I am very confident that the C.Worms did not spread. I will write up my theory and conclusion next week in hopes that it will help others.

 

Final Update
10/31/16:

Well, it has been quite the journey getting back into the fish hobby. Curing one parasite after another. Anyways, the fishes all received their final dose of Levamisole and all survived. The other fishes/tanks showed no symptoms during the entire process of quarantine and medication. So I am going to chalk this up to, with aquarium salt and plenty of gravel vacuum also helps to keep the Camallanus worms in check and probably kept the C.worm eggs from hatching. I did use both medication, Levamisole and Fenbendazole to cure the rest of my possibly affected fishes.

They are now all healthy and in the 20G.
Here's a couple of pictures I would like to share of the tank that my wife and I put together.




And here's my girl always checking up on everyone.



Thank you all for the great advice and support.
Please do not hesitate to PM me for any help as well with the Camallanus worms.

 

Beautiful tank and what a beautiful ram you've got. Seriously though, congratulations on successfully treating your aqua-babies! Great job and you've got some serious dedication! We could all learn a thing or two.