Worm and Worm Eggs - Microscope Pictures and a Treatment Tale

[jwcarlson]

I'd intended on posting this here some time ago.  And forgot... @kneereminded me with her post about her ram.

One of my discus quit eating some time ago and started falling behind.  My experience, at least with discus, is that they'll still "eat", but they'll spit a lot of the food out if they're not feeling well.  It can be frustrating trying to make sure they're all eating.  I'll call this fish "him", though I have no idea what sex it is.

This is him before I noticed he'd stopped eating.

Here he is after I moved him to isolation.  It's kind of tough to tell, but he had lost quite a bit of mass.  Still social with the other fish and moved about the tank a bit.  But was also kind of hanging back and hiding when the others were eating.  One of the most telling things between these two pictures is his shape.  He's quite round in the first one, but in the second he's clearly stretched a bit longer, but not grown taller (round).  A bit more football shaped.

In any event, I isolated him, cranked the heat to 93 and got some poop to come out of him.  This is a common discus tactic to get their metabolism going.  93 for a couple weeks... salt... try to get them eating.  I just wanted to see some of his poop.

I'd never seen this fish poop, but blue diamond discus are known for huge poops (more on that later) and one of the things that tipped me off is his massive poops were missing when I did water changes.

The first night he passed this...

I've got an ancient microscope that I bought off of a friend some years ago, I don't use it often, but it's fun to bust out and look at stuff occasionally.

Unfortunately, I didn't see it until it was too late.  Once it touches the bottom it's useless as a sample because there's always something living in the tank that invades and can make it impossible to diagnose.  I looked anyway and found a detritus worm (I think).

I got lucky and got a good sample soon after.  This is an example of what I'm told is a textbook "internal parasite" poop, the yellow/green is possibly from a secondary infection.

Here are some examples of worm eggs in his poop.  I'm told these were capillaria eggs by the person who supplied the discus, he's been doing this "forever" and is well respected, so I have no reason to doubt his diagnosis.  🙂  These are at different zoom levels.

 

So... armed with the knowledge that he did, in fact, have a worm infestation.  I cooled him back down and put him back into the main tank with his buddies because I needed to treat everyone, including the dither fish.  I treated with pure levamisole at about 2.5 ppm on day 1, 5, and 13 based on some discus breeder recommendations.  It's a 24 hour bath with a full tank wipe down and water change after 24 hours to get rid of any worms that are passed.  Levamisole just paralyzes the worms, it does not kill them.  So vacuuming is crucial.  I already do 90% changes and have a bare bottom, so this wasn't that big of a deal for me.  I've also done this with new fish in quarantine as well, some on substrate... just doing as good of a job as I can with the cleaning.  During the 24 hour treatments I also was adding one tablespoon of epsom salt per 10 gallons to help them pass the worms.  Again at the recommendation of a respected discus breeder.

So after his three treatments, he perked up and started eating.  He was (and remains) absolutely ravenous, has gained his weight back, and is absolutely growing again.  

The deworming happened around the middle and into late November.  So he has been back to eating for awhile now.

With some of his renewed eating came some of his renewed... well... pooping.  The first one I witnessed was very scary.

This is normal blue diamond poop size, by the way.  The thready worms are not normal.  I netted him and took a sample of the poop.

There were a lot of worms in the poop, but they were all dead.  They were basically kind of... empty looking.  I checked as much of the poop as I could and found no eggs.  So I was pretty satisfied that this must have been some sort of a worm pile that was kind of lodged in his intestines and that's what I saw coming out!  I don't have a great picture of it, but there were several worms all twisted and braided together.  You can kind of see it in the next pictures.

 

 

This was about two weeks after the last levamisole dose, so that makes me wonder why they're dead?  I'm only speculating here, but the lady who recommended treatments on 1, 5, and 13 days might suggest that because it paralyzes them enough to starve them?  Or weaken them enough to kill them?  Pure speculation here, but I have no other way of explaining a big mass of expelled worms two weeks after treatment.

Here he is a couple of days ago, going strong now:

 

Well, that's it... hopefully it helps someone.  You don't need a particularly special microscope, either.  I think most of the ones available for kids would do the trick.  

Edited February 17, 2023 by jwcarlson

[TheSwissAquarist]

On 2/17/2023 at 4:50 AM, jwcarlson said:

Well, that's it... hopefully it helps someone.  You don't need a particularly special microscope, either.  I think most of the ones available for kids would do the trick

Might actually be interesting to look at filter bacteria or infusoria under a microscope.

Sorry you had a scare with that discus! 

[Colu]

That's why I got a microscope for that reason when ever I get new fish i always look take a sample of their poop when there in quarantine to look at under a microscope for sign's of  parasitic infections  @jwcarlson

[The endler guy]

On 2/17/2023 at 6:48 AM, Colu said:

That's why I got a microscope for that reason when ever I get new fish i always look take a sample of their poop when there in quarantine to look at under a microscope for sign's of  parasitic infections  @jwcarlson

Honestly I’m not surprised, do you also have a dna sequencer to tell what bacteria are infecting your fish? Lol

have you thought about making a journal as a sort of dichotomous key for fish ailments?

[Colu]

On 2/17/2023 at 12:41 PM, The endler guy said:

Honestly I’m not surprised, do you also have a dna sequencer to tell what bacteria are infecting your fish? Lol

have you thought about making a journal as a sort of dichotomous key for fish ailments?

No DNA sequencer yet I did the thread in my signature the most effective treatments of commonly posted disease 

Edited February 17, 2023 by Colu
Typo

[nabokovfan87]

On 2/16/2023 at 7:50 PM, jwcarlson said:

Well, that's it... hopefully it helps someone. 

Really cool thread.  Nice work!