Unidentified hypancistrus specific bug wiping out my tanks..

[dancingdryad]

A mystery bug is wiping out my L134's, L129's and L066's.

The first to go, about a week ago, was my male L129 for no apparent reason, no external signs of anything, no mysterious behaviour, feeding, swimming perfectly normally. Then in the morning found dead where he lay, all fins erect. Water free from ammonia, nitrites and nitrates. Run some carbon just in case.

I'd transfered my L134's to a 4 foot breeding tank yesterday, all tanks have quartz gravel, bog wood and glass jam jar caves buried in the gravel. This afternoon my largest female was found dead, all fins erect.There is a small round cyst type thing under the skin on the belly near the pelvic fin, about the size of a pin head. No signs of these on the other fish. So far the others seem somewhat lethargic but otherwise healthy.

In the other tank all 3 remaining L129's are basically paralysised with rapid breathing, their breathing is normal until the paralysis sets in. They totally ignored me when I netted out the male because I thought he was dead. He suddenly revived in the net and when I released him he swam or rather floated down to the bottom where he has been ever since. I had treated that tank this morning for fungus as the said male had some tiny fluffy fungus tufts over his body. The small L066 looks perfectly healthy but when I checked to see what his reactions were he too was extremely lethargic. The other L066 is currently perfectly fine and spritely as is the baby L204.

I have the filter outlets near the surface where they create a lot of turbulance and also run an air block so I would imagine the oxygen levels are high. The mountain shrimp I keep in with the fish are active and healthy. I use them to tidy the tanks and also as indicators for low oxygen and toxins.

There is no slime on the fish, no external parasites that I can see, nothing out of the ordinary, looking in the tank all looks well until you go to move a fish and they really couldn't care less. It looks to me like some sort of nerve problem or maybe internal bacteria (not like any I've ever seen before) or internal parasites? but I really don't know. Ive kept tropical fish for getting on for 20 years and the only other time something like this has happened to me was with Siamese Fighting Fish. The illness wiped out all my fighting fish within days and all the other species of fish remained unaffected. I'm wondering if this could be a similar thing given that so far the L204 and the shrimps are apparently in perfect health.

All the fish in my community tank are fine as is the Mbu in his tank.

Any suggestions as to what this might be would be appreciated as I've not seen anything like this since the fighting fish episode about 5 years ago.

[MatsP]

tiny tufts might actually be bacterial rather than fungus... Maybe try some generic anti-bacterial treatment, like BSB perhaps.

I've never had this problem, so I'm only suggesting the above based on my experience with something that I thought was fungal, but the shop thought was bacterial and sold some BSB, which cured the problem in my tank.

Doing big water changes will probably also not hurt (it may also not "fix" anything...).

--
Mats

[fishysmell]

ive heard this happen from a couple people

but still have no idea what causes it....

im pretty sure its an internal problem be it bacterial,
an infection, or parisitic....

one story i heard was that a common pleco was placed in with another common pleco....

they both shortley died for what it looks like no reson....
not external problems or water qulity....

i am working on finding info on this but have not found anything or any advice on how to treat it

maybe melafix....or any solution that is suposed to rid interanl parisites would be worth a try.....

i do have a couple questions though...

have you recently added a new fish...
and how quick did it take place........
what have u been feeding the fish........


also a very good idea that can help prevent interanl parsites and other problems is feeding a garlic solotion....

there are some products out

or u can use garlic purees or minced garlic and soak your food ur going to feed them in it.....
it adds flavor and also a whole bunch of stuff that helps keep ur fish healthier,
it benefits its immune system, blood flow and others....
feeding with garlic will help all other fish too....
they used to only feed it to discus since thier so prone to interanl parasites and problems

so that can be used as a prevention technique....
formula two has 2% garlic in it all ready and plecos love the stuff...
well the ones that like veggies


but right now i`m clueless
and i hope some one helps you out...
i will look for info....

anyway good luck....

water changes is also a good idea

[dancingdryad]

Thanks for the advice. Found another L134 dead this morning. With a largish white worm partially exiting from tail just before the caudal fin. If the worm had exited successfully I would be non the wiser as to why the fish died as they look like they're just resting until the eyes start to cloud and you know they're actually dead. No other worms visable on the other dead fish apart from the cyst type thing on the other dead L134. Will take a picture of the worm and post it on here and the cyst thing, maybe they're related although the other fish have no cysts.

My dilema now is do I treat all the fish for internal parasites risking killing the fish if the parasites die inside? Although looks like they will die anyway when the worm exits so nothing to lose I guess.

I've had the fish for several weeks sourced from 4 different shops. The ones that have died were the first ones I got so I think the incubation period is just over a week or so.

Feeding them algae wafers and frozen gamma blood worms and shelled peas but only the L204 seems interested in the peas. They seem to be really fussy so maybe it's lack of appetite due to the worm infestation? I'll ask the shops what they were feeding them and see if they can also find out what the wholesalers were feeding too.

I do a partial water change every other day. I've got a UV filter on the way so will plug that in to kill off any larvae or eggs in the water. I don't know what worm it is so no idea of the life cycle. I think from now on I'll routinely worm any new fish and once or twice a year the exisiting fish too.

[fishysmell]

blood worms sometimes cause internal parsites i have heard.....
i recomend rinsing them in warm to hot water quick b4 feeding....


and also brine shrimp is like prune juice to fish.....
it helps clean out ther digestive track....
so incorporating that into thier diet wouldnt be a bad idea...

feeding brine,

rinsing frozen foods,

and feeding with garlic are all good prevention methods.....

i do belive the worm is the others cause of death to...

sorry i cant be of much help now but interanl parisites appear in fish quickly with little to no warning sides right up into the 3rd 2nd 1st day b4 they die....


this may sound kinda nasty but....
if u watch the fishes feces......
they will be browner when there well fed and healthy.....
and almost whitish when there sick or not gettin nutrients due to the parasite feeding either on their food or the fish itself.....
that may be one warning sign....
but sorry i could only give u preventive methods....

but...
im afraid right now medication is ur only reliable option.....

[dancingdryad]

Thanks for that, good advice, I'll get some garlic treatment today, I've just done a 50% water change to get rid of any eggs in the water and have treated with Sterazin, hoping that will do the trick... Garlic would be a good backup to the Sterazin and hopefully the worms won't survive that double whammy.

I feed gamma treated bloodworms so there shouldn't be any living parasites in them at all, I suspect that the shops don't feed treated frozen foods. I've tried them with daphnia which is also a good laxative but they weren't interested. Either lack of appetite due to worms or just too fussy, blood worms are gobbled up with some enthusiasm. Maybe it's the right time of year for fish worms, I don't know much about fish worms. From what I know about equine worms and parasites different species of worms are active at different times of year and appropriate treatments targeting different species of worm are available, unfortunately not with fish it seems. I'd strongly recommend anyone who has just bought wild caught fish, or even tank bred come to that, to give them a good dose of anti-parasite treatment just in case, as by the time you see any symptoms it's too late.

The droppings look fairly normal and plenty of them. I haven't seen the fish passing them, just whats on the gravel in the morning that I syphon out.

I've been going through my memory banks trying to remember if I've come across these parasites before and the only time I've seen a worm come out through the tail was with a batch of Neons years and years ago. The red parts went very pale, they stopped feeding, then went paralysed with their tails kinked and then a wormy thing popped out through the tail resulting in death. Before I saw the worms I thought that it was Neon Tetra Disease and treated them for that as no other species of fish was affected at all and even after all the neons had died no other fish were infected. The Siamese Fighting Fish never had any worm pass out but maybe the worm was more successful in exiting that species.

[dancingdryad]

The Sterazin treatment so far seems to be doing no good whatsoever... Lost 2 more L134's and an L129 yesterday.

The remaining fish have stopped feeding and are basically very poorly, they do seem to make some recovery (the paralysed ones seemed to have made a recovery but it was brief and they're looking ill again) so they're fighting whatever parasite it is.

Took one of the dead fish to my LFS, they know their stuff and they were totally baffled, they thought that it was some sort of internal parasite and a particularly nasty one at that. They said internal parasites are common in discus and asked if they were in a tank of discus when I bought them, they weren't but they might have been at some point previously. There seems to be some internal bleeding judging by the blood in the 'body bags' of the deceased, I'm considering taking them to a vet although I have now resigned myself to the fact that the remaining fish will also die. The odd thing is that the L204 and the Bristlenose seem to be so far totally unaffected although that may change... if they do survive I don't think that I'll be able to put them with other fish just in case they turn into carriers.

So far the first fish to go on 24th March was an L129.

31st March one L129 and one L134.

1st April one L134.

2nd April two L134's

3rd April two L134's and one L129

Does anyone know anything about the life cycles of internal fish parasites? in particular white round worms about 1cm-ish long, the one I found I couldn't remove from the fishes tail with tweezers but at some point it dropped off in the bag and disappeared... I can only seem to find info on white spot and cod worms.

Also I'm going to have to steralize the tanks and all equipment and start again. I'm going to fill the empty tanks with highly concentrated salt water in an attempt at killing whatever the evil nasty little oiks are by osmotic shock Then obviously rinsing well to remove salt and anymore parasites before disinfecting the whole thing with an aquarium disinfectant and maybe neat Sterazin too.

The gravel... the only thing I can think of is washing it well in running water then roasting it in the oven at the highest possible temperature before disinfecting that too although i'm tempted to just use it in the garden and get new.

As for the equipment, I think thats going to need more careful treatment. I'm going to throw out all the filter media and nets, etc and get new. The only other thing I can think of doing is rinsing in boiling water, scrubbing well with aquarium disinfectant and air drying everything and hoping that's enough. Bleech seems a bit urmm dodgey as I don't want any of it's residues left to poison the new fish when I finally get the tanks recycled.

Any other suggestions would be appreciated as I'm worried that whatever these things are might have a cyst phase in their life cycle and I really couldn't bear to go through all this again, it's soul destroying

[fishguyeric]

Did you try disecting any of the carcasses, that would tell you for certain if it is an internal parasite.

The only thing that has worked for internal parasites for me (I have only had one problem with it), was Levamisole HCl.

My parasite was camellanus, which is a red nematode.

If you do disect them, you could post some pics and maybe we could help you a little more.

[dancingdryad]

I haven't tried disecting any of the fish, did think about it but am a bit on the squeamish side about guts. The deceased are currently in a plastic bag in the freezer.

The worm that I did see was white/grey and fairly chunky for it's length. It wouldn't loosen it's grip on the fish at all when I gave it a tug with some tweezers. It did disappear eventually though

[Tom2600]

Hi

Sorry to hear about your losses.

Just a couple of comments and questions.

It is virtually impossible to have zero nitrate if your biological filter is running efficiently. Are your test kits up to date?

Internal worms very rarely kill fish, they more often than not cause a gradual decline in health with the fish wasting away. Did your plecs have sunken eyes and stomachs?

It sounds to me that your plecs have died from a systemic bacterial infection which is very hard to treat unless you use the correct antibiotic. Even then, with such small fish it would be unlikely to work.

You say the worm is 1cm long and disappeared after a while?? Where did it go? If it was a parasitic worm is would be long and would not disappear.

Something doesn't add up. I doubt very much it is a parasitic worm problem, more likely a bacterial infection. Either way, disinfecting your tanks/equipment is the best bet. I would also not go back to the shops who supplied you these plecs.

I would also discard the gravel and get some new just to be on the safe side.

Regards

[WhitePine]

I too would recommend discarding the substrate. I would consider a 19 to 1 water bleach dip for all the items you are considering keeping. I dip all my plants now before they go in my tanks. This dip is for a min of 3 minutes. If it is something like a net or a filter housing you can dip them for quite a while. This dip will kill algea, snails, snail eggs and I would be parisites. I ussually use a large rubber maid tote for the dip and household bleach 1 part to 19 parts tap water. I then set up a second tote with tap water and a declorinator like you use for water changes. I ussually double the recomended dosage for the declorinator.
After the bleach dip(step 1 for a minimum of 3 minutes), put it in the declorinated water bath(step 2) for a few minutes then rinse under fresh water(step 3) for a while longer. If you can still smell bleach on the articles, you might want to mix up a new container of the declorinated water bath and repeat step 2 and 3.

I hope that helps.

[dancingdryad]

Thanks for the info and advice.

The nitrates are as near to zero as it's probably possible to get, it comes out on the lowest reading on the test kit... I do make water changes every day or at least every other day if I miss a day.

Some of the fish have developed sunken stomachs and eyes but they've stopped feeding since I started the Sterazin treatment (maybe they're sensitive to Sterazin?). The one remaining L134 hasn't got a sunken stomach (he died this morning) the L66 has a slightly sunken stomach and the remaining L129 has a very sunken stomach although it did have a half-hearted munch on a piece of mussel I dropped in the tank. The ones that died earlier looked plumper but they were feeding then.

I took the fish to a different fish shop and the worm was on the fish when I put it in my bag, when I took it out to show the guy at the shop it had disappeared. There has been no other sightings of any other worms on any of the other fish. This is partly what has been confusing me, I thought maybe it was some sort of internal bacteria or parasites at first and then when I found the worm I thought that's what it must be. But given that the fish aren't responding to the treatment and are gradually declining in health with the occasional up's and down's leads me to believe that there is something else at the root of it.

I'm mystyfied as to what it could be and am now sure that it's too late to save the remaining fish. The odd thing is that the bristlenose and the L204 are still in perfect health!!! Maybe it's an hypancistrus specific disease? or a mixture of internal bacteria and parasites?

I think I will discard the gravel to be on the ultra safe side, one tank is now empty and it's had a pond strength Formulin and Malchite Green bath along with the pump and other equipment. I think I'll give the tank a strong saline bath too just to kill off anything that has by some miracle survived the toxic soaking although I'm erring on the side of just binning the lot and starting again.

[dancingdryad]

They've all died with the exception of the L204 and the bristlenose who are both still in perfect health. I don't know quite what to do with those two though as I'm afraid that they might have become carriers for whatever it was, if thats possible? I might put a few neons in with them and if they're ok it looks like I'll have another community tank