Fish disease case nr. 47 Tiger barb with Nematodes Capillaria

Hello, dear fish keeper or fish health manager, you see me today in another outfit. You can see it's wintertime. Yes, we also check the fish during the winter. So I have a little bit more warmly dressed and I have my hat on, although I'm not outside in that beautiful skyline with the northern light. So I'm at home working still on fish diseases. And today it will be another case of fish diseases. I present in this interesting outfit. But look at the videos, at the fish. Don't look at me. And try to enjoy my presentation on the fish. Case number 47. It's about a tiger barb. The new name is Desmopuntious Tetrazona, which has a parasitic nematode worm infection. Probably it is Capillaria. We don't determine exactly because I'm not a systematologist, but still we try to get our information. Well, what we first learned is that the fish which I had to examine well, here, separating from the group, getting darker color, abnormal behavior. You see them suffering faster respiration. Some are getting darker in color, they're getting skinnier. Separating from the group. And that's the ones we take out for a good examination and to find out what is the problem. Well, we check the internal organs. And we squeezed the internal organs between two glass plates and we found these kind of organisms here, which is the worm type, which we found in this tiger barb in the gut or next to the gut, which is squeezed and being broken open. And that's why we see next to the liver here, we see these round types of animals, parasite worms. And most likely it's a Capillaria species. On a video, it's easier to observe here, the very large worm, you can see how long he is. You can see some eggs at the end of his body. We can see some more here. When we look at other parts of the intestine or the gut. And we go further, see, there's another one who was squeezed out of the wall of the intestine. Well, these are some worms we found. So then we took another observation. We see a smaller one here because this tiger barb had quite a few worms, not just one. We find usually sometimes one, which is not such a big problem. But if you find so many, as we do here, and the bigger worms also produce eggs. You can see the eggs here. Here they are. Here are the eggs. You can observe them here. And that's something that is troubling in an aquarium because those eggs are a risk of spreading the disease also to other fish. So what can I recommend you for treatment. Well, first of all, we can think about the reasons how those roundworm scapularia get into the aquarium and introduce tiger barbs. It's usually caused by other diseased fish which have been introduced which were carrying the capillaria worms or through feeding live food. Those are the two most likely cases. When you introduce this worm infection, you can see that the fish become weak and the very weak ones you better euthanize or put asleep. You can use their Narcomor plus from aquarium Munster. Try to give perfect conditions into the to the aquarium. Try to daily siphon on the bottom and also cleaning the filter. Do that on a regular basis because then you can remove manually the eggs of the worms. You can try an anti worm medication like Prazicanthal, Levamizole, fenbendazole to control the free moving worms. And think about that. You retreat after seven to 10 days because the eggs could cause new infections in the fish in the aquarium. And we also have a fish food for that. Dr. Basler Buy fish food pumpkin because the pumpkin seeds are active natural products that doesn't expel the worms. But the worms don't like to be in contact with and it helps the fish to repair. It helps together with the medication and at least feed for 20 days. So if people maybe have some questions about my treatment suggestions around the disease, please ask me in my Patreon channel. I'm open for any debate and open for your questions. So stay tuned. And I have more cases to come. In the coming days I will prepare some more which will be seen in the near future. Enjoy your time with your fish. Think about watch your fish, watch the first signs of the disease and you can then better control the health of your fish. Thank you.