My tanks

[NoodleCats]

Definitely not a happy update.

My past dealings with camallanus? Yeah, discovered it back yet again. It was not responding to levamisole or fenbendozole, which I've treated several times for it to just keep rearing its head in the rainbowfish 55g. Unfortunately, I have a feeling there's been some sort of resistance to the medication, I don't think the baby plecos in that tank were eating the medicated food properly and what worms survived just build an immunity and just let them keep coming back.

I've had to make the decision to cull the entire tank, in order to prevent it from spreading to my other tanks and to prevent it from accidentally spreading to other keepers should they get plants or whatever from me. I wouldn't be able to live with myself if that happened.
It's luck that since the mycobacteria last summer I've been changing the water last on this tank, so nothing has spread to the others, but I don't want to chance a brain fart happening and then losing every other tank.

Currently in the long process of gutting the entire tank, tossing wood, baking rocks, replacing substrate, and boiling filter media and leaving things to dry out for awhile.

It's been a really heavy time with this tank. Hand sanitizer. Heat wave. Mycobacteria. Camallanus worms. And it's the worms that takes it out. I lost a lot of fish and it's really hard to block off the emotional aspect of it in order to not fall apart.

Madagascar rainbows, bleheri rainbows, boesemani rainbow, splendida rainbow, one of my garra cambodgiensis, my bristlenose pleco pair and their tons of babies, corydoras: weitzmani, trilineatus, panda, c102, cw028, elegans, leucomelas, paleatus, and ambiacus.... all gone.

 

[fishorama]

Oh no! That's awful! I understand why but it's still heartbreaking & a lot of work too. I'm very sorry

 

[jake72]

Can't you treat with something like fritz de-wormer (expel-p) or similar drug that contain levamisole ?

 

[NoodleCats]

Can't you treat with something like fritz de-wormer (expel-p) or similar drug that contain levamisole ?

I did, multiple times. It didn't work.
Plus in Canada medications are banned, so you have to find loopholes to get the medicines and it's extremely costly. I've used both levamisole and fenbendozole (panacur) multiple times, and it just keeps coming back and I've lost random fish here and there up until this point.

I'd treat for 4 weeks straight.
Wait 3 weeks under observation.
Dose again for another 4 weeks.

And thought they were clear, only to find them again. There's only so much that can be done if the proper medications aren't working. I can go back through my posts to when the worms first came into the tanks, just to give an idea of how long I've been treating this.

At this point, I had to consider the worms have built immunity and nothing was going to eradicate them.

 

[NoodleCats]

Went back... October 2022 is when the worms were brought in. I've been treating them since that point.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

I buy two meds for parasites/worms from a source in the states, he is a fishkeeper, writers and chemist with a site for the meds he sells. he has been keeping fish since the 1970s. The two meds I get from him are Flubendazole and Levamisole HCL. He has a few papers on this as well as detailed instruction on dosing Levamisole. The one thing he makes very clear is that it should only take two doeses dosings to eradicate Camallanus. You add it once, wait 3 days and really clean the tank. But you have to re[eate the single dose treament again in after 3 weeks.

Here is a link to his page with links to several things related to treating with levamisole http://www.inkmkr.com/Fish/CamallanusTreatment/

One thing ha does mention is that when the worms are killed inside the fish and not expelled this can still be fatal. The decaying dead worm can cause a bacterial infection. So even after the treatment has been succesful- i.e. no more worms hanging out of the fish, fish canndie because of dead worms left behind internally.

I am wondering if you had proper Levamisole. If the med was too weak or not even the right thing that might explain the failure.

Very early on in my fish keeping years I put together q med. kit for fish. This was the result of my fish always getting sick with something I had to find meds for online and then wait for them to get it to me. That could be a week. So I decided it was better to keep an assortment of things on hand at all times. So I have antibiotics, meds for fungus, for parasites and worms. I keep an assortment of things. Those that expire I replace when they do.

I have been fairly lucky with diseases etc. in my fish. I have lost far more due to my mistakes than to disease and I have pretty good luck with treating them with success. But I am also far from perfect in this respect.

 

[NoodleCats]

I buy two meds for parasites/worms from a source in the states, he is a fishkeeper, writers and chemist with a site for the meds he sells. he has been keeping fish since the 1970s. The two meds I get from him are Flubendazole and Levamisole HCL. He has a few papers on this as well as detailed instruction on dosing Levamisole. The one thing he makes very clear is that it should only take two doeses dosings to eradicate Camallanus. You add it once, wait 3 days and really clean the tank. But you have to re[eate the single dose treament again in after 3 weeks.

Here is a link to his page with links to several things related to treating with levamisole http://www.inkmkr.com/Fish/CamallanusTreatment/

One thing ha does mention is that when the worms are killed inside the fish and not expelled this can still be fatal. The decaying dead worm can cause a bacterial infection. So even after the treatment has been succesful- i.e. no more worms hanging out of the fish, fish canndie because of dead worms left behind internally.

I am wondering if you had proper Levamisole. If the med was too weak or not even the right thing that might explain the failure.

Very early on in my fish keeping years I put together q med. kit for fish. This was the result of my fish always getting sick with something I had to find meds for online and then wait for them to get it to me. That could be a week. So I decided it was better to keep an assortment of things on hand at all times. So I have antibiotics, meds for fungus, for parasites and worms. I keep an assortment of things. Those that expire I replace when they do.

I have been fairly lucky with diseases etc. in my fish. I have lost far more due to my mistakes than to disease and I have pretty good luck with treating them with success. But I am also far from perfect in this respect.

The ONLY levamisole available here for fish:

Products Visibility - Colorz Guppy Farm

[addify-product-visibility-page]

www.guppyfarm.ca

At the mercy of the Canadian contraband fish meds lol

It worked for the other tank that had camallanus, cleared up with 2 treatments no problem.


This tank though had pleco fry who I don't think ate it and just perpetually spread it. And I couldn't net them all out either. Think I get them all, and boom, parents popped out more where I didn't see it, or I find them in the filter.

 

[jake72]

The ONLY levamisole available here for fish:

Products Visibility - Colorz Guppy Farm

[addify-product-visibility-page]

www.guppyfarm.ca

At the mercy of the Canadian contraband fish meds lol

It worked for the other tank that had camallanus, cleared up with 2 treatments no problem.


This tank though had pleco fry who I don't think ate it and just perpetually spread it. And I couldn't net them all out either. Think I get them all, and boom, parents popped out more where I didn't see it, or I find them in the filter.

Yea this has started to become an issue in the states with the FDA banning some drugs; my guess is some of these fish drugs are being used for illegal purposes or the FDA is just being a jerk.

 

[NoodleCats]

Yea this has started to become an issue in the states with the FDA banning some drugs; my guess is some of these fish drugs are being used for illegal purposes or the FDA is just being a jerk.

I've seen first hand folks misuse it for other things. People would buy erythromycin and dose it to birds or other animals.


Not even gonna touch up on the folks who used aquarium stuff for themselves during the pandemic

 

[NoodleCats]

Some updated photos of the other tanks:
10g pseudomugil tank


20g southeast Asian tank


55g blackwater


5g betta tank, but Patch the betta didn't want to come out for the tank photo lol


I don't think I officially posted my son's guppy 10g. Houses male endlers and a couple male guppies. Plus pest snails (son loves them). He wanted his guppies to have houses, so he picked out the houses lol voila, a guppy village. This tank is pH and GH boosted so the guppy stay healthy because I have softer water.




As for the tank that was torn down and culled:

Deep cleaning.
Lugged the thing all the way across the apartment to the bathtub to clean it out

(Considering I'm only 1 foot taller than it is long, this is amusing to do by yourself)


Dismantle the canister, clean inside with hot water and then its been left to air dry for a bit


All the media inside boiled, 6 year cycle boiled away. This is being left to dry as well. A new cycle will be seeded from my other tanks, so it's not a huge deal.



I do plan on setting the tank back up again, but right now it's sitting out dry while I slowly work on it. Getting new sand for it soon. Then it'll run empty with a crap old filter with filter floss to clear up the sand water for awhile.

It's a process.

I will probably open a new thread for that specific build. I plan to move certain fish from another tank over to it and have it set up as a warmer, higher flow tank.