Fish disease case nr. 62 Platy variatus with several parasitic infections

Dear Aquarist, today I present my case on fish diseases. Number 62, with a view of the mountain in Casares, south of Spain, Andalusia. I will be there in the coming weeks and enjoy some holidays. But today I first present you a case of fish disease that is very valuable because it's about a common. How can I say, a common fish in our hobby. It's about the platy. The platys have been so many breeders breeding in large quantities over the last couple of years, and fortunately, we also have problems with diseases that are supplied with those platys. And here we talk about the Fariatus platifariatus with a parasitic infection or parasitic infections. And the thing we. We could see on that fish, that a few were getting separated, weakened, looking damaged, clamped fins. And every day a few of those fish died. So every day in that bunch, batch of fish that arrived. Yeah, well, there was losses. And of course, we don't like to see losses in our fish, so we have to take actions and to find out what's the problem. Here we see another part of the tank and you can see some. Many look okay, but some don't look okay. And if you have a few dying every day, that means something goes going on in the whole group of fish. And a few ones, like here on the bottom, shows it and are the first to die. But meanwhile, others are also infected. And that's. You have to be aware of that. Those few fish that we sacrifice for our study are the ones telling us a story for the rest of the group. What was very obvious, and we took the scraping and you see the many parasites moving on the fish scale. And those parasites are the ciliated protozoa called tetrahymena. And they can divide very rapidly, they can invade all over the body of the fish here. It's at a higher magnification. And see, they're moving around, they're damaging this mucus of the fin, the skin of the fin, they're damaging the scales. And it's terrible. When this fish will have this parasite on his body, he will die very quickly. Unfortunately, what we found in the gills were all those balls in the tissue. And those, like I showed in previous presentations, are encapsulated metasarcharya. And that's our larvae of a digenetic trematode. And there are so many that you can imagine that the gills are not working properly anymore. So the fish must be weakened by this kind of infection. And the worms here we show in detail, that's a larvae that For a certain time is alive and moving. And when it's eventually this larvae will be eaten by a big predator, a bird or another fish or a mammal. It will develop eventually in a larger worm, in a larger mid trimatode. So and that is something we have to think about, that this parasite comes from somewhere. And usually it comes from the breeder. It doesn't come from you, doesn't come from your fish tank, not from your fish food. It's because those fish have been raised in tanks outdoors with snails and birds. Because usually what I see in my work when I visited the past Asia into Asia, we see fish farms with snails. And the snails is the intermediate host for the parasites which are passed on by the birds, by the excrements of the birds. I've seen it in farms in Brazil. It's particularly outdoor farms which have no biosecurity and open farms. I should show you pictures of the fish farms, but I don't want to compromise the farms because they are now instructed to improve their quality. At the same time, we found in the organs melanoma growth centers. This is a reaction usually due to a bacterial infection. This is of course affecting the organ to get those big dark areas which is taking away healthy organ tissue. Also in the liver, the same problem. So the organs were infected. Also the kidney with black specks. And this is all caused by bacteria. And here you see them on the video, millions of these tiny specks moving around and there is all over in the body of that platy, that platy Variatus species, Hawaii. Well, these are the conclusions we made. What did we found? Well, many different things. This fish was in bad shape. I tell you, this supplier or this breeder is doing a bad job. The fish that suffer so badly from the Tetrahymena should be put to sleep because eventually when the fish dies in the aquarium, the parasites will jump off and looking for other hosts, other fish. They will leave like rats the sinking ship. When we see those mix of infections, we suspect that the problem number one is Ardomata sarcaria, the larval worms. And they cannot be cured. It weakens the fish. So the the weak fish should be putting asleep and they will have no chance to be cured. You can try to control the secondary effects of Tetrahymena parasites and the internal bacterial infections. The Tetrahymena you can treat with fmc. That really works well. That's the formalin malaka green and methylene blue to control the parasites. But at the same time you have the bacterial effects. So you also have to think about using an antibiotic, and you have to ask your vet. You know, in some cases, oxytocin works or ferreltadone works. It's sometimes hard to say. Depends on the history of the fish and on the resistance of the bacteria. There we have a food which is called Dr. Basler biofish food, which helps the fish during a bacterial infection. And you have to feed it for 20 days and no other food. So these are some suggestions I can make for this particular case. Some of the plant will have very few worms. Some have many, and that's the ones who are the first ones to die. And some will do very well with a few of those encapsulated worms. And maybe we have less parasites. So this is a case that I presented for you here, which is very special. Special because it's a product from a breeder which has not been taken care of during the breeding stages, not taken care of in the ponds, which are usually outdoor. And if you're an import or if you're a pet shop, well, you have to tell, well, I don't want to have this fish anymore. You have to look for a better supply. I hope this video helps you. Thank you.