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Iam new to this community and new to collecting exotic catfish. At the moment I have a huge problems on my hand. Let me give you the events as they happened. I just got Fowleri 4-5 days ago. I had it in a 130 gal with my Aimara who I just got 6-7 days ago. This is the first time ive ever used bio sponges instead of wet dry filter. And I loaded my tank my new drift wood. And the water quality after I added goldfish feeders. Just seemed to have got cloudy plus the tannins leeching from the drift wood. Made it hard for me to determine the water quality. So because of this I pulled the Fowleri out 2 days ago into a 20 gal quarentine tank. He has been breathing very very hard. I set the temp @ 80 degrees. tonight I was able to look at the Fowelri up close. White worms popping out up around the spine area of the cat. Typically I thought an anchor worm pops out of a wound? I didnt see any wound, it looks like a very small white inch worm. I saw maybe 3-4 of these.There could be more I dont know. I also spotted open sore near the bottom gill.I dont know if this is a wound from the Aimara or infection? He also has some spots but they look brown, yellow, white. They are all differant sizes. But its very sparactic across its body. It almost looks like maybe some of the contents of the debris of the tank where sprinkled on the cat. So I dont really know if its velvet or to me it looks like a combination of issues going on at the same time. Now on another note i did a 30-40% water change on my 230 last night.I came home today and all my feeders about 8 of them all died?? I looked at them and they seemed swollen and smelled really bad. With hemoraging underneath the bodies, and some of there fins tattered. So this could have been a bad bacteria bloom in my 230 tank. So what ever my feeders had im sure my Fowelri has as well.I need some smart medication advice so this wont push my cat over the edge.

BH

what are your water parameters?
pH
ammonia
nitrite
nitrate

you mention new filters. how long has the tank been cycled?

how long did you soak the driftwood for? where did you get the driftwood?

do you have any photos of the tank and cat?

photos will help a lot.

keep changing the water!

siphon out ALL detritus and leftover food.

good luck.

expensive fish + lack of quarantine + feeders (also lacking quarantine) = expensive disaster.

Sorry to be blunt with the equation above, I sincerely hope your fish pulls through.

I'll second the advice and questions given above.

Test your water parameters get us the data so we can advise as to your next step. Monitor the water parameters as often as possible and do water changes, water changes and more water changes.

If it is anchorworm (Lernaea; recognisable by the V-shape at the end that sticks out of the body) let it be for the moment. Concentrate on the other disease(-s) first. Anchorworms may not look nice, but are relatively harmless. Besides, they need their own medication which might not be combined with medicins you may need to treat other diseases first.
Pretty sure they come along with the goldfish; btw: beware of analworms*(Nematodiasis)too!!
We have a good medicine against anchorworms by SERA; is this brand available in the USA?
Good luck.
PS: quarantine the Asterophysus!!
PS2: * incorrect translation, but when you see them hanging out there it's high time to act. May be threadworms in Englisch.

http://www.care2.com/c2c/photos/view.ht ... __Fowelri/

If its not one thing its another. The Fowelri seems to have developed some sort of fungus? near the eyes and mouths as seen in the photo. Youll notice the one pic with the open sore and the other with these spots of various sizes and colors. The good news is the cat is breathing normally. I did 2 water changes today on the tank . It seems the bloom is settling down. Im wondering if the driftwood leeching some how added to the perfect storm here. Anyways I got a wet dry for my big tank. Sponges alone in a tank just cant move and clean the water like wet dry. Anyways I did notice a bunch of worms. That where white/brown in color that wiggle and seemed to get around on the sponge and at the bottom of the tank???

So whats the next step here?

BTW thanks for your overwhelming response

i don't know a great deal about medications i'm afraid. i believe that if you provide the fish with as near perfect water and environment as possible, the fish will be able to fight 9 out out of 10 infections by itself with no need for medication.

if you answer the questions in my above post then we will be able to tell you what to next, how your fish got ill and what you can do to prevent it again.

do be very carefull and make sure you know exactly what you're doing with medications. if it wipes out your biological filter, you could be in a lot of trouble.


those marks on the nose look like they could be heater burns.

by the look of those marks id say heater burns