Camallanus worms

Taari

Taari

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Nov 4, 2010
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This isn't really a thread where I am asking a question, as I already kind of know what to do, but more to share my expirience.

A couple weeks ago I noticed a little black hair poking out of my female nannacara's anus. I thought it was poop, or she'd somehow eaten a dog hair (my black pittbull mix has short, coarse hairs). But it didn't move, so I did not think it was a worm. Until yesterday when I saw two, and they were moving.

At this point I knew I could not deny it anymore and went online to research. I found a story of someone in canada who had these in their discus tank. They tried medication after medication for a year to no avail, until they tried fenbendazole, a dog dewormer easily available at petsmart. I already happened to have fenbendazole on hand from when I had hydra a while ago.

I took a whole gram of the fenbendazole and mixed it with one cube of frozen blood worms, and about 4 ounces of water and let the worms soak in the fenbendazole for about an hour. The fenbendazole does not dissolve in water all that well, but well enough. I then fed half the worms to the fish, making absolutely sure that the female nannacara got several of them, while at the same time putting about half the water that the worms had been soaking in into the tank as well.

Today I will feed the rest of the fenbendazole-soaked bloodworms to the fish and the rest of the water. In 48 hours I will do a large water change, vaccuming as well as I can to pick up the expelled camallanus worms, as aperantly the fenbendazole does not actually KILL them, but instead paralyzes them. In 10 days I will repeat this process, and in another 10 days, repeat again.

Hopefully this will make my tank worm free, and if any hydra survived the last time, they'll sure as heck be dead this time!
 
Very interesting with the whole repurposing medicine thing. Good luck getting rid of the infestation and hope your fish do well
 
It also goes by the trade name of Panacure. Uses for it are almost any animal - horses, sheep, dogs, fish, humans, hydra................................
 
Finished feeding all the medicated food to the tank and put all the fenbendazole into the water as well. The fish seem happy, and the tetras are even showing spawning behavior. I still see 1 camallanus worm poking out of the female nannacara's anus, but there were 2, so maybe that's an improvement? I've been feeding them heavily to make sure they are pooping alot to pass the worms out, so I'm going to give them 48 hours in the fenbendazole before I do a water change.
 
Shelled peas should help them pass the worms, if they'll eat them.

You might want to look into the lifecycle of callamanus. If I remember correctly, to make sure they don't return, you're supposed to dose 3 times, once every 2 weeks (14 days). Though I used Levamisole, and it was a while ago, so I may be mistaken.
 
I'm going to repeat 3 times. I guess I will wait 2 weeks, that just seems like a long time.
 
I looked through that whole page and couldn't find a dosing schedule for camallanus worms : /
 
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