Gerald Bassleer examines an Otocinclus with internal worms and bacterial infection. He walks through diagnosis and treatment options, drawing on his experience and published materials on fish disease.
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Hello, dear aquarist, Today I will talk to you about case 178 about an Amazon fish. Yes, the Otocinclus or South American catfish and a good algae eater. Here behind. Oh, this side you see one of the boats I was on during my Amazon trips observing the nature and the fish and exchanging experience with the Piaba project and with the biologists, the veterinarians who come along and show us the wildlife. Something I recommend for you to see is going on such trips. If you want to have more information, well, ask me below and send a comment and send me questions. I try to answer them and forward your details to the Piaba project. Interesting project. But today it's the fish diseases and fish we encounter during our work is the Otocinclus as a very common fish in ornamental fish hobby because it's a good algae cleaner. And here we found an internal worm infection and secondary bacterial infection affecting the otocinclus. So I share in my PowerPoint, of course I share you the details of my book on fish disease which below you find a link where you can order the book. And the auto sinkers here they arrived and many were skinny and some were very weak. You could see the very skinny ones. Here is one, here is one. You can see they looks like a lot of food. They hadn't had food. They had food history. Well, who knows? Well, the only thing we know is that you have to take a microscope and do an examination. And then we find like encapsulated worms here in Turner, in the organs here, the little spots over here of many, many bacteria. We found here encapsulated and free moving worms. Here is the photograph and on the video you can see there are still active those round worms or nematodes and affecting of course the organs and the health of the fish, which is of course annoying for a fish and causing damage and causing the fish to become weak. And that's why it gets very easy. So secondary bacterial infections and. And that's what I show here on this video. You see the abdominal cavity and you see the millions of different little specks of bacteria. Here we see it at a 400 magnification, before it was 200. And well, here we see it at a smaller magnification. You see the whole cloud is a full of bacteria, massive bacteria affecting the organs. And here you see the kidney. Here we see that kidney which is like blocked up, could be different parts, could be blood clots, could be calcium because a lot of bacteria were around and the kidney was not functioning well. Well, when the kidney falls apart, well, you know, the fish's health will fall apart and he will become weak and die. So wild fish such as Otocinclus are commonly affected with worms. It's like Corydoras from the wild or any wild fish. Commonly they have these kind of worm infections. But not all the fish are so badly damaged. It depends how severe the infection is and how many worms are inside the fish. And this you can see on the, on the, on the video I showed you or here on the photograph. Some are very healthy and have a good body and they have less infection. That is the nature that control it. So it depends also on the general condition of the fish, how well he has had food and had less stress. So for you, take good care of that fish with good water and food supply, avoid stress and you take important healthy measures. Try to treat with an anti nematode worming medication. See the multiple choices in my books. Try to help the fish with a functional food that helps to fight off a nematode infection and helps in the repair. Like we Recommend to our Dr. Basler. Biofish food, pumpkin seed. And maybe an antibacterial treatment will be necessary to control the secondary bacterial infection. So more details you can get in my books or in the training we give on our Patreon channel. Where is the link here? I share you. So I hope this Amazon fish, this catfish told you a little bit more about what is possible to find a sufficiencies. Thank you for watching.
