Maggot like beasts on dead Achilles in QT

Reel North

Reel North

New King of Quarantine
Yesterday I lost an asfur angel, and today found my small Achilles dead in my 75g QT. when I picked up the Achilles today, it was a horror show. One whole side of the fish was almost wriggling! I tossed the body in some RO water, and literally thousands of tiny wriggling "worms" came off!

I have been treating the tank with ick shield powder. I'm a week in to a 3 week IS bath, and the. I follow it with 2 prazi treatments.

I currently have 4 bangai, a baby blue face angel, small naso and 2 huge bellus Angels in there.

What are those critters?!
 
Looks like a serious fluke infection. I would be sure to dose Prazipro ASAP as the other fish are at risk of suffering the same fate.
 
What you see there is maybe 2x2". The container much bigger. Same density.

I thought they were either flukes or a parasitic round worm.

I already dosed the prazi 20 minutes ago.
 
Not true flukes (Trematoda) but rather Monogeneans, likely a Capsalidae species.

I had a run in with some of these guys recently and they killed off an entire QT with 5 Ventralis Anthias. The ones I had were too small to easily identify them without a microscope. More importantly they were small enough to take shelter underneath the fish's scales. This way they were unaffected by the formalin bath I gave the fish upon arrival. Also, due to their tiny size, the few that may have come off were too small to be easily identified.

Form the behavior of the fish and their appearance the infection mimicked ich.
 
Is prazi going to get these things?

Or fw dips?

I have some amazing fish in there, and don't want to lose them!
 
Praziquantel (PraziPro) should work in most cases.
If it fails, organophosphates like Trichlorfon (Dylox) may be the last resort.
Hyposalinity (below 15 ppt) may work with some Capsalid species as well, so some are not affected by salinities as low as 11 ppt (the lowest teleost marine fish can handle).

Eggs may take 4 to 21 days to hatch, so series of retreatments may be required.
 
Everything was dead when I got home. Every time I dose prazi, everything goes south. I have a cycled large sponge, cycled canister filter AND a powerhead blowing across the surface.

God I am sick of flukes.
 
Tell me about it. My ventralis looked OK one day and were dead the next.

Even worse, there are many different genera with a multitude of species, of which quite a few are resistant to Praziquantel.
 
Reel North said:
Everything was dead when I got home. Every time I dose prazi, everything goes south. I have a cycled large sponge, cycled canister filter AND a powerhead blowing across the surface.

God I am sick of flukes.
Click to expand...

I have a air pump that puts out several liters of air per minute I put in tanks after dosing PP because I too was losing fish after dosing due to suffocation. You need something to agitate the surface more. Since adding the large air pump ($38 from ebay) I haven't lost any fish in Praziquantel treatments.
 
It's quite concerning that the need for extra vigorous aeration is nowhere mentioned on the bottle or brought up here.
Add to that the need of turning the skimmer off and you have a perfect recipe for disaster.
Every time I tried to treat fish with PraziPro they reacted so badly to it that I had to stop the treatment early.
That's why I don't use it prophylactically.

Sent from my XT1254 using Tapatalk
 
ThRoewer said:
It's quite concerning that the need for extra vigorous aeration is nowhere mentioned on the bottle or brought up here.
Add to that the need of turning the skimmer off and you have a perfect recipe for disaster.
Every time I tried to treat fish with PraziPro they reacted so badly to it that I had to stop the treatment early.
That's why I don't use it prophylactically.

Sent from my XT1254 using Tapatalk
Click to expand...

I agree, but with so many fish coming in with Flukes now, almost have to use PP to make sure you get them all.
 
With the next new fish I will first try hyposalinity. Many of these flatworms can't handle it and if PraziPro treatment is required, the lower salinity will allow a higher oxygen saturation of the water.

Sent from my XT1254 using Tapatalk
 
ThRoewer said:
Every time I tried to treat fish with PraziPro they reacted so badly to it that I had to stop the treatment early.
That's why I don't use it prophylactically.
Click to expand...

Interesting. I've only had a couple of instances where the fish didn't tolerate it. One was an error on my part (overdose) and the other I just chalked up to specific sensitivity. Both fish recovered.
 
Out of 15 plus fish I have QT with prazi or ick shield, only 5 made it out alive.

I think I might just do fw dips or something. That's a TON of wasted $$$$$$$$

I'm bleaching my entire qt system tomorrow, and tossing my Python or soaking it in bleach too.

I have a huge air pump. I'm so angry at all these losses. I never lost fish before like this.
 
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