Gerald Bassleer examines a Garra flavatra infected with trematode worm larvae, called metacercaria. The video covers how to spot the infection, diagnose it, and treat affected fish, plus explains the parasite's life cycle.
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Hello, dear aquarist, welcome again to one of my cases of fish diseases. And today it will be on a very special fish or wild fish. In my case 160. I hope you will enjoy till the end because it's a very peculiar case. It will not take long, but those few minutes will teach you a lesson about fish diseases on a very special species. About the gara, the gara flavatra. And therefore I show you my screen and I will show you that we have very special case about encapsulated worm larvae of trematodes. And that is called metacercaria. I have a lot of details in my book. So try to get my books on fish diseases because they are the training tools for you to become a better fish keeper and to take care of your fish and prevent diseases. And here this case. Well, on the garas for vatra, which I show you here in the aquarium, there was not much to see on the fish. Some became skinny and some were dying. So this case was offered to me. So I start to examining the fish. And then when I took the gill parts out, I saw the metacercaria, or the larvae of digenetic trematodes. Here you see it, it's encapsulated, it's sitting here in the gills. What we also notice is all the black pigments here in the gills, which seems to be a history of stress that the fish occurred in his life. What could have been, I don't know that this is a history. It could have been maybe a period that there was toxicity in the water or pollution, or maybe lack of food, I don't know. But this is a typical stress syndrome on a gill when too much black pigments are there. But here, this is the larvae we found in the gills. But we also found those encapsulated metasarcaria in the internal organs. Here you see one on the right, and here on the left a few, two more. And here we see more in the organs. And this is taking away healthy tissue. And at the same time the fish can become weak because of that damage to the organs. And then you see here, like the spleen in a very bad condition. And the liver is in a bad condition, not well formed. This is not a normal healthy organ that look normally better, which I show in my fish diseases in my videos. You can find there more issues on that topic. Well, the badly damaged fish cannot be saved. They should be put gently asleep with a tranquilizer like the one from Accorded Munster Narcomore. Plus there are many others you can use like clove oil. But some fish are too badly damaged. They will not be saved because the worms cannot be treated. They are encapsulated so the medication will never reach there. And the fish can be very badly damaged and become weak and get then also secondary bacterial infections. So that you can treat. You can treat already in the beginning of an infection with a good functional food like or Dr. Basley or bifish food, fuko or grapefruit seed extract with moringa or the professional treat that helps the fish to become well in a better stage, better defense, better repair, better immune. And in some cases, while you might need in an advanced situation, the use of an antibiotic. So you can get information from my books what to use or ask your vet or fish doctor what to apply. The origin of the problem is the fish living in wild nature. I show you in the next diagram. Because living in the wild nature is. There is a bird. The bird drops off larvae and the larvae spreads it to the water, comes into a worm or a shrimp or what else fish eats it and then it gets encapsulated in the fish and the fish is well eaten, then again by the bird and the cycle is closed. So the worm larvae gets into the bird, becomes a large worm and then the large worm gives larvae again. So that's a cycle. So the breeder or the fish collector well is had contact with nature, with birds, with shrimp or insects or larvae of insects that carry their larvae. So that is the cause and explain that in my book so you can get that information in detail there and there can be available from our website. I'll give you the link below in my YouTube channel. Thank you for watching here this case, you can learn more on my Patreon or in my books on fish diseases. So I hope this case brought you some extra information that you become a more advanced a than a good fish keeper. Keep up the good work and keep watching my videos and I hope you like this one. So give me a like and subscribe. If you didn't do it yet, thank you for watching.
