Gerald Bassleer examines a Corydoras panda with emaciation, fin rot, and gill necrosis. Microscopy found secondary bacterial infection and sporozoan parasites in the gut. Treatment requires antibacterial therapy and supportive feeding for at least 20 days.
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Hello, Aquarist. Thanks for watching my videos. And also this one, another case on fish diseases which I encountered during my work as a fish doctor working at different fish facilities. I will share you my PowerPoint so you can follow my work. During my diagnosis of fish diseases, and in this case, number 53, we had problems with Corydora spanda with a bacterial and a parasitic sporozoa infection. We could see the fish were getting skinny, the body and the fins were rotten away. The body was getting red wounds and the tails were rotting off. Fish were dying. You can see here how the tails are gone. They're completely falling off. Here we see it in detail. We see also red markings, bloody red markings. It's usually due to bacterial or secondary parasitic infections. You see the tail is completely rotten off. The fish is very skinny, lost color. So this fish is wasting away. And a very good example to do your microscopical dye observation, doing your dissection, taking the scrapings. So we start first with the skin scraping here at 100 magnification, we see a few facultative parasites. That means they're not parasites. They're not the cause of the problem. See only one, I think it's Tetrahymena. And here looks like a kind of Hylodonella, but only one of each. That means it's not a parasitic infection. That means they are there because there's tissue which is damaged. And it's a lot of good feeding source for any protozoa or one cellular organism in the aquarium. But here there was a massive load of bacteria which we found by the skin scraping. And I show you here in a higher magnification, you see the tiny black spots moving and moving here in the water, millions of bacteria. Here we see the colonies in big quantities attached to part of the tail of the fit of the tail. And, well, this is massive. Then you know you're dealing with a massive bacterial infection. Also the gills, they were damaged. You can see here the gill lamellae are rotten away. Also here the lamellae are gone. And you can say like a necrosis or eating away by bacteria. Here also, all those gill filaments or lamella are gone. So that's usually bacterial infection causing this and that. You have to take proper action. When we find, well, we checked internally, the intestine, the gut. We found those small black specks in the gut. The first part of the gut you can see in the stomach. Look area. You can see more. Also here at a higher magnification. And here at 400, you see the spora here, sitting together in this sporoblast here. We cannot define which spore is all it is, but it's there. And that is weakening the fish, having an impact on the digestive tract. And the fish becomes, for that reason, weak and becomes bacterial infections. So we recommend that you put a weaker fish, very weak fish, asleep, because they suffer a lot. The parasite sporozoa, which we see in the gut, there is so far no treatment known for that, but you can control the secondary bacterial infection. And some fish might survive for many, many months, many years. You don't know how badly the infection with the sporozoa is. And when it's very little, they can survive. And the fishes kept in good conditions with good food and with proper treatment of the secondary bacterial infections. So you can treat here with an antibacterial medication like veromorph from aquarium insurance or other antibiotic. Ask your vet or your aquarium shop. Feed the fish with Dr. Basmare Biofish food forte or professional care that strengthens the fish and helps during repair and feed that for a minimum of 20 days. Meanwhile, do not give other food to your fish. Important to find out the source of the problem, which is usually the breeder, so he should get the information what we found on this fish, so we can try to correct in this breeding facility and try to supply better quality fish. Because the better quality fish usually start at the source and that's the farmer, the breeder, or also you as an aquarium keeper. If you take not good care of your filtration, your water quality or your food, you might create problems. And that's the source of many diseases. So always think about that. Look at the causes of the fish diseases. Thank you for watching.
