Internal parasite in glowlight tetras?

[Corbidorbidoodle]

I've got a school of glow light tetras, and a few of them are getting pretty bloated. I thought maybe they were just getting ready to lay some eggs, but they're just getting chunkier and chunkier. What do you guys think?

Nitrate 25

Nitrite 0

Hardness 300+

Kh 40

pH 6.4

Clorine 0

Temperature 75

 

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

Oddly enough, we were just talking about this yesterday.  Link

 @Odd Duck @xXInkedPhoenixX

Edited June 10, 2022 by Chick-In-Of-TheSea

[Odd Duck]

The 2 pictured are well over what I would consider a normal level for being egg loaded females.  You should consider doing deworming with both levamisol (Expel-P) and praziquantal (Paracleanse).  Follow directions carefully, dose for actual tank water volume, not total tank volume.  In a bare bottom use tank volume, substrate levels can significantly change actual water volume.

Siphon out debris from the bottom before and after dosing to remove expelled worms, etc.  Levamisole is inactivated by too much organic debris and by light, so dose after lights out and black out tank for 24 hours, remove organics via water change and cleaning the bottom of debris as much as possible.  It’s likely that levamisole does what it can do within the first hour, but best to follow directions precisely.  If you have a bare bottom hospital tank, it might be best and easiest to transfer the fish for the duration of treatment - up to 5 weeks total treatment time if doing 3 doses of praziquantal.  Levamisole treatment should be weekly for 4 treatments.  Praziquantal treatment should be at least every other week for 2-3 treatments and it is left in for a week at a time.  It can be dosed the day after levamisole treatment.

A typical treatment regimen:

1. 50% water change with careful siphoning of debris from the bottom of the tank.

2. Dose with levamisole and black out the tank for 24 hours.  Then 50% water change siphoning the entire bottom of the tank.

3. Dose with praziquantal directly after the second 50% WC.

4. One week later, 50% water change siphoning the bottom thoroughly.  Dose with levamisole following directions in step 1-2.

5. One week later (start of week 2 of treatment), repeat all steps 1-4 over another 2 weeks time.

6. Repeat all steps 1-5, then do last WC one week later after third dose of praziquantal.

Not all snails will tolerate treatments, so best to remove any snails in the tank.

If the parasite treatment does not change the amount of distention, then the prognosis is sadly, very poor to grave.  That would make organ failure or cancer much more likely.

Oh, and remove any carbon or Purigen from filters before dosing.