Magnified pics of a murderer.

[anathema]

Hello all,

First the background info:

I restarted in the hobby after not having a tank for approximately 6 months. I had all my rock in storage, and a tank with live sand/microfauna running in the basement, but nothing set up. I have set up a 5 gallon nano, and after the cycle, bought a firefish to stock it. After approximately a 5 day period of hiding (normal) the fish came out and began to behave normally, eating well.

When it first began to swim freely, I noticed a couple flatworm type creatures crawling on it. Since it was already in the tank, and flighty and easy to scare, I fed it well, and hoped it would recover.

I had to leave for a couple days, and returned this afternoon to see the fish gasping on the sand, literally COVERED with these parasites. I scooped it out, gave it a FW dip which caused them to fall off. I dug my digital blue kids toy out of storage, and took some photos.

Any info would be helpful, most of all an ID, but I mainly at this point would like to know how long I should wait for these creatures to cycle out of the system, and also if there is any possibility of these hosting in humans! Mainly concerned with flukes here.

Pic 1 is 10X, 2 is 60X, 3 is 60X, but I took a paper towel and dried off all the water because I felt it gave a clearer pic. It's not the best quality, but hopefully I can get some info on it.

As of tonight, the fish is still alive, barely. I assume it will die, unfortunately, and wish I had not been home the last few days and been able to dip it earlier. However, this seems to be something that took out a healthy fish just by sheer numbers. I'd like to avoid any further deaths, so hopefully I can find some info about this.

Thanks,

Gusty

 

[LargeAngels]

Typical fluke. They are so common I treat ALL my fish with two 5-7 day treatments of Prazipro before they go in any of my tanks.

 

[anathema]

Ok, well they are in my tank, so how long should I wait before I restock?

 

[JHemdal]

anathema,

That is a Neobenedenia mellini, an egg-laying fluke. To the best of my knowledge, nobody has done any research into the "clearance time" it takes for the remaining eggs to become non-infective, but it is likely to be very long, as the eggs can apparently hatch out in response to likely hosts being near by. That implies that in the absence of hosts, they can remain in the egg state, biding their time. I know the time is longer than six weeks based on personal experience.

Now - your tagline says you have a 5 gallon nano, LargeAngels is correct, aquarists really need to do a prazi treatment to clear up this problem. My problem is that I've never dosed a nano with prazi before, so can't say how easy/hard it will be, or if there are any special considerations...maybe somebody esle can chime in?

Jay


FWIW: in my recent mini-aquarium book, I write that firefish are really best suited for larger nanos (8 gallons or greater). I've kept them in five gallons, but it is borderline, IMO - especially if the tank has a lot of LR that displaces much of the water volume.

 

[anathema]

Hmm, well that's disconcerting news. I am not about to treat my aquarium with anything, so I guess I'll have to be fishless for a few months in hope that clears it out.

Thank you for the advice on tank size. I am considering setting up one of my larger tanks, but I've personally found that as long as firefish have a bolt hole they tend to hang out very near it, in a large or a small tank. Due to this I've usually considered them to be suitable for small tanks.

 

[SouthFloridian]

Interesting!