YouTube transcript of Gerald Bassleer (fish doctor) describing Fish disease case no. 78: an Ancistrus (armored catfish) outbreak with heavy bacterial colonization of skin, gills and internal organs. Bassleer documents clinical signs (sunken belly, emaciation), microscopy (many bacterial colonies visible at 400× in skin/gill/abdominal scrapings), and recommends rapid management: large water changes, improved filtration and stocking, better/distributed granulate feeding, quarantine, and—if advanced—antibiotic therapy guided by culture/antibiogram. He also mentions proprietary supportive feeds (Dr. Basleer/Dr. Basil products) containing herbal extracts and grapefruit-seed/moringa-type ingredients as possible adjuncts.
Questions this video answers
About 3–5 centimeters long.
400× magnification.
March 23, 2023.
He refers to it as a kind of "Dolichopteris cystrus dolichopteris" (as spoken in the video).
Chapters
Hello, dear aquarist, we have today another case of fish diseases. Well, it's part of a world when we're dealing with livestock or aquarium fish and our aquarium hobby, that fish diseases is something we have to deal with and we have to try to prevent, try to identify correctly and trying to control. And as a fish doctor, it's part of my job and part of my career. And today we're going to talk about an ancestor species which is a common fish in our aquarium hobby. And most of the ancestors these days are tank raised and are coming into the aquarium industry. As few centimeter fish, 3, 4, 5 centimeter, that's about the size we are getting in into the wholesalers and the pet shops. Of course there are some wild fish, also some wild ancestors which are usually bigger sizes. But the most common ones are of course the cheaper ones, the smaller ones and the common available ones. In the pet shop today we will talk about an ancestry. It's a kind of Dolichopteris cystrus dolichopteris with a bacterial infection. And I show you my screen here. They were becoming very skinny. You can see here the sunken belly sticking to the glass but not looking very thick, not very healthy. They were wasting away and some were dying. And we took a skin scraping and as you see here on the video, you can see the black parts. I Show here the 400 sized magnification. You can see the, the black parts are all groups of bacteria here. The black parts are all colonies of small black, spotted, okay, black colored bacteria which are massively available on the skin of that ancestry. Here we have another scraping and you see here all the bacterial colonies. Those black spots are all colonies of thousands of bacteria which we only can see this at 400 magnification. If you would go to 1000, we see much more. But I don't use commonly a 1000 magnification. Just giving me more info. This info tells me, wow, a lot of bacteria on the skin of my ancestors. And then we go checking of course for the gills, because the most important parts of the fish to examine, which are easy to examine for every one of you is the skin and gills. It can give us a lot of information. You can see here the inflammation, the red bleeding parts on the gill tissue, which is of course here also at the base, an unhealthy pattern of gill. You can see here some demolition or called necrosis or the lamellae of the gills have been damaged here. You see also some of the bleeding parts at the base. So those gills are in a Very bad shape. And here we can see some, some gills are rotten away with bacteria, colonies of bacteria. So there is bacterial skin infection, there is bacterial gill infection. Here you see some of the gills which are really badly damaged. Well, of course, those risks of gill infection, this is a big cause of fish disease in our hobby, in the industry, because if the gills fail, well, the fish cannot exhaust the gases, the ammonia cannot get out, the fish have a difficulty of taking up CO2, the oxygen, I mean, and that is causing of course, a lot of stress for the fish and lack of appetite, the lack of eating, etc. So in this case, the fish is very badly gum. And here you see the liver is also destructed by bacteria and the organs are affected. And if we look into the abdominal fluid here we also see a video. Here you see on the right side, the intestine. And if you go to a 400 identification, we see the thousands, millions of bacteria. Some are black spotted, even some are white spotted. Like I say in many of my videos, usually we deal with two or three different types of bacterial infections, maybe with one dominant. So it's not easy to find the correct cure or the correct treatment for when there is a mix of bacteria. It could be that you need a mix of antibacterial treatments, different approaches. So in a case like a disease, like this fish, like this ancestry, well, what you have to do is first of all check your water conditions. You know, you have to improve them, make sure the aquatic environment is perfectly taken care of. That means also the filter is working properly, well maintained. Avoid overcrowding. Usually it happens with ancestors. They're keeping many together because they're all in the aquarium at the bottom. But anyway, that can be too much. Apply good food. Avoid aggression also between the fish for the feeding package. So avoid that they only eat a few granulates, but maybe fine food, fine granulates distributed on the bot gives all the ancestors a chance to eat, to be less competitive and have more opportunity to get some nutrition available. So the origin sometimes of this kind of problem is also polluted food or live food which contains microbes. You do a test in a laboratory, you can find out if your food is adequate enough. And that's why we in the aquarium hobby, in the aquarium industry and aquaculture, we use granulate foods because they are most cases very safe. They be treated properly to avoid microbes or pathogens into the food. For handling this problem, you might certainly help your fish by applying our Dr. Basler bifish food professional treat. This is a mix of herbs which takes care of the health of the fish and that helps regeneration the fish. We also have a Dr. Basil buys food fuko with fuquadin extracts which work like a whey, like an antibiotic, helps to heal the fish and control bacterial infection. And also the grapefruit seed extractor moringa is a perfect mix to help control internal bacterial infections, particularly in the intestine, in the gut and in the internal organs. So we have some different fish feed available which already might help the fish to overcome the disease and to fight off the problem with a food without to use of an antibiotic or antibacterial treatment. But this is only possible when you do it in the first stages of the disease, when you do it as a prevention measure. In a way, when this fish has been stressed or stripped or putting in quarantine, that's when you have to start feeding with all kind of food to help your fish. Of course you can apply an antibacterial treatment when it's very serious advanced. And a good antibiotic can work certainly. But think about it, it's tank raised fish, so your antibiotic might be not appropriate. It might be having some to deal with resistant bacteria. So talk to your fish doctor if you're a breeder, make a culture of the bacteria and do antibiogram test to see what antibiotic is appropriate. You can have a whole lot of help with that on the market. And the sooner you start taking axis, the better the results. So that's the most important thing I want to share with you. Start working quickly, start taking actions as soon as you can. And always I say the first thing you can do to help your fish. Do a boob. Do a big water change. A big water change helps a lot in eliminating a lot of bacteria, giving fresh water, fresh oxygen to the tank and check the water conditions and apply a good food. Yes, I'm a fish doctor talking about fish food, but it's important as a part of health control of your fish. So thank you for watching my my video and I hope you stay tuned to the next ones to come up and to become more advanced aquarist. Thank you.
