Gerald Bassleer presents Fish Disease Case #102 involving wild-collected dwarf pygmy puffers (Carinotetraodon travancoricus) that were emaciated, eating poorly, and dying. Key findings: gill filaments heavily pigmented black, encapsulated trematode larvae (referred to as Metasarcaria/metacercaria) occupying and destroying gill tissue, one small nematode observed in the intestine, and melanomic centers in the spleen; heart and liver also show abnormal dark pigmentation. Interpretation: disease likely involves both parasitism (trematode larvae as intermediate-stage parasites in gills) and possible environmental poisoning (heavy metals or pesticides) from the wild collection site. Recommendations: contact the supplier/collector to investigate habitat pollution, improve husbandry and nutrition, euthanize severely affected fish, and consider supportive treatments (speaker recommends 'Narcomore plus'); further learning via the author’s books and Patreon.
Encapsulated metacercaria (referred to in transcript as Metasarcaria), a digenetic trematode larval stage, occupying gill tissue.
One small nematode was found in the intestine.
Narcomore plus (recommended by the speaker).
Chapters
Dear aquarium fish keeper, you enjoy keeping the fish in the best shape possible can. Well, it's not always easy because sometimes we encounter problems which are difficult to diagnose. And here I have such a case. I want to show you that in some cases we are puzzled with the results we find. But still we try to do a microscopic examination and that helps us to understand what do we see. And this was a case already. Our case number 102, about the dwarf pygmy buffer, the Carinotetradon travancoricus, which had worm larvae and maybe poisoning. Well, the fish were very skinny. And here I collected just one of them. You can see how emaciated it is. And some are eating very poorly. They're dying, wasting away. Here you see another video of this very skinny pygmy puffer which I going to examine with and using my microscope to try to find out the causes of the problem. But particularly the gills were already showing a black pigmentation. You see how black to all the filaments are. The gills are not looking normally beautiful red like it should be. And this could be an origin of poisoning during the lifespan of that fish. And at the same time we found here and here and here and here, you can see here these capsules, those are encapsulated Metasarcaria, which are a kind of. It's a worm larvae from the digenetic trematode. It's in the gills, it just taken away healthy gill tissue. And the worm larvae will become a adult bigger worm when the fish is eaten by another fish or by a bird or by an mammal or maybe by a human when it's not cooked well. Well, this larvae is just way is an intermediate stage. And so the fish is an intermediate host carrying this worm larvae and affecting the healthy gill tissue. So the gills are not in perfect shape because healthy tissue is being taken away by the worm larvae. Here you see quite a few more here encapsulated, taken away the healthy tissue, which is causing of course a bad stress on the fish. Here we took also part of the gills with the heart attached to it. You can see here the pumping heart, which is still active after the fish has been dissected. This can happen. And you see a lot of pigmentation also in the heart muscular tissue, which is not normal. It should be normally a nice reddish brown heart coloration like in the gills. All that black pigmentation is not normal. Also in the organs here in the liver we see the black pigmentation all around in the tissue. At the same time we found One nematode in this fish here in the intestine, in the gut. It's a small nematode. We only found one. And we also checked the organs like here, we checked the spleen and we found melanomic centers. So the spleen is in an unhealthy condition, might be bacterial causing. This probably could be as a secondary problem. So the organ is not in a good shape. So in general, what can we propose as a treatment? Well, first of all we have to check with the supplier here, the collector of the wild fish. Because those carino detrowed on our wild collected pygmy puffers and maybe the wetlands where they are living in, maybe they are polluted with a particular heavy metal or pesticides that can cause poisoning and causing this kind of black pigmentations and bad organs in the fish. So certain habitats can also be affected by worm larvae during certain seasons. So this is something to to take a keep in mind when you have wild fish that also wild parasites like these worm larm larvae can appear on the fish, which is normal for these kind of fish. Coming from the nature, the one nematode is maybe not a serious problem in this fish. But when you receive a couple of hundred of these kind of pygmy puffers, it could be that others have many more of those nematodes. Well, the best thing you can do for this fish is trying to give the best conditions and a good food so that the fish survive well. And some like this fish is such a bad shape that they cannot survive and you should utinize them. And we recommend for this Narcomore plus from aquarium. It's a gentle help to put the fish asleep. Well, if you want to read more, learn more about phage diseases, try to obtain my books on face diseases which are available on our website. And these things can help you to become a professional. And also you can become a good fish manager following my Patreon channel and get the training on fish diseases. Well, this is a case, a special case on the pygmy puffer that maybe explain you some of the problems we're dealing with when we encounter problems with wild collected fish. Thank you for watching.
