Gerald Bassleer examines a Tanganyika cichlid with bacterial overgrowth and Cryptobia parasites. Skin scrapings at 400x magnification reveal the infection; the fish shows darkening, emaciation, and organ damage. Treatment involves antibiotics, FMC for parasites, and supportive feeding.
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Hello, dear Acrist, Dear cichlid keeper. Yes, you selected this video because I will talk about a bacterial and a parasitic infection in Tanganyika cichlids. Altolabrologus calvus. Yes, an interesting cichlid. And I will show you my findings when I observe the fish in the aquarium and microscopic observations. It's my case 251 the Calvis with bacterial and parasitic infections. More details about diseases of cichlids like Tanganyika cichlids can be found in my new illustrated guide to fish diseases with lot of photographs but also in the practical guide. The link is below where you can find more details on those books and where you can purchase them. Here we see the Calvis that some become dark colored and some become skinny like this one here. And it doesn't mean they're dying yet, but they will die within a couple of days or weeks, it's hard to say. Here you see one at the end here. See how skinny he is here. And that is why you start to take notice from and to take actions. We took scrapings from the skin and you saw the scales, you see the scales here of lots of bacteria. You see the dark colonies, the black parts all over the fish body covering. And here we see it in the video. You can see the small specks, the small spots moving around. And that is causing of course a risk of health with that kind of amount of bacteria on the fish, which is of course a big risk that also go inside, go into the gills here. More videos of all those bacteria which are loaded. You can see it here in detail. And this is at a 400 magnification this time here. The other one was 200. Now it's 400 magnification. You see the massive amounts of bacteria. You see some colonies here, the black, the darker spots, the bigger spots. I mean, so that's a massive amount of bacteria. At the same time we found damaged gills caused by bacterial effect. You can see here, you can see here, some parts are badly damaged. This part here, well, this should not be the case. There should be healthy gill parts like the other sides of this gill arch. At the same time you see little tiny bugs moving around. Here it is, here it is, here they are. And at the gills here, that's Cryptobia parasites. Those are also troubling the gills and causing damage and causing also that the bacteria can infiltrate into the gill tissue. So parasite Scriptopia. Here we see it in a higher magnification. You see the tiny here flagellates attached to the Gill tissue moving around. And here we see some. You can see it. You have to learn to observe it. When you use a microscope. You learn by practicing. By taking quite often do examinations. Well, that's cryptopia parasites in comparison to Costia which I showed in other videos. You can compare. This is a different kind of behaving parasite. It's how we can recognize it. And unfortunately, in the internal organs you could see the spleen with melanomic centers MMCs also the liver with melanomicin you see some fatty degeneration. Those are all bad factors for poor health condition of this colvus. So the treatment. Well, like I say quite often in my explanation, treat as soon as possible. The bacterial effect should be for proper antibiotic or other similar medication. Ask your aquarium shop or your fish doctor. Also a treatment to kill the parasites cryptobia. Usually I recommend FMC which is explained in dosage in my books. And you can help with a functional fish food to help the fish to become stronger and to fight off the disease with grapefruit seed extract and Moringa or Fuco made from Fuco IDA diseases, treatments, prevention and control found in my books. See the link below or get your training at my Patreon. So I hope this small video on this Calvus cichlid help you to understand what can happen as disease and what you can do about it when you do a proper examination. Thank you for watching and if any questions please put them down below. I will try to answer them. Bye bye.
