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Hello everyone,
Well having battled Camallanus worms once in my aquariast career, I recently discovered that my Paradise fish has a very bad case, and now it is undoubtably spreading to my guppies!
ARGH.
So what I did last time was, I euthanized all the guppies who visably had it, and fed food medicated with puppy wormer to the rest. That was a long time ago!
Now, with this set of fish, I dont want to euthanize the whole tank! Besides, I want to keep the paradise fish and the two young mollies in there, all of which have the horrible worms. I have tried feeding them medicated food now, 2 seperate doses, and nothing. The worms are getting worse. The active ingredient in the medicine is Piperazine Adipate.
I was considering quaranting all the fish that show it in a bare 5g qt tank for treatment.
Heres what I have:
Kent Marine RX-P , uses hot pepper as the active ingredient, is highly effective on Ich, but would it work for internal parasites? Obviously the fish would be taking in the pepper through the water, but would it kill the camallanus worms?
General Cure- I have some of this, and it uses metranidazole, trichlorfon, and one other ingredient. I dont know want to use this in the 10g tank as I am unsure how safe these ingredients are for use with Corys, plecos and live plants? Any ideas?

My other option is to order some medicated fish food from Big Als, but that will take at least a week to get here. The food is Jungle Labs Medicated Antiparisitic food and the active ingredients are metranidazole, levamisole, and something else.

Now, my other concern is, can a rubbernose pleco and corydoras hasbrosus catch these worms? None of these fish show any signs of the worms at all. Should I treat the whole tank rather than QT'ing visably affected individuals?
The best med I seem to have is the General Cure, however, will it treat internal parasites? Should I use it to make some medicated food?
Please help.
-Sneaky

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The antiparasite food would be best of the ones you mentioned. Personally I would look for something with praziquantel in the ingredient list. Even if it means waiting a few days to get medication, you're far batter off treating with something you know will work. Jungle Parasite Clear has praziquantel in it and is usually available in most stores or on big al's online. Praziquantel will nuke the worms very quickly and you should not see them return.

Personally, I would put in an order with big al's for Parasite Clear *and* the antiparasite food. The food is good to have around because it's very good practice to deworm any new fish you buy while they're in QT. Antiparasite food is excellent for that. You can feed antiparasite food and treat with parasite clear at the same time for a very effective treatment that should get rid of the worms for good.

Plecs and corys will both contract camallanus, but IME with most catfish they won't show symptoms as obviously/quickly as other fish do with most parasites. Treat the whole tank anyway, they are probably infected and could transmit the parasites to the treated fish once they're reintroduced.

Heres a bit of info from one of my favourite sites on the subject, it might help.

http://members.optushome.com.au/chelmon/Worms.htm

I use a bird wormer called Avitrol Plus, which i don't think is available there, but maybe yu have something similar. Active ingredients are Praziquantel and Levamisole. Seems to work pretty well

For animals, the entire universe has been neatly divided into things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) run away from, and (d) rocks. - Terry Pratchett

Ok,
I have ordered some Jungle Labs AntiParisitic Food,
and some Prazipro liquid for the water (ingredient is praziquantel (sp?)
It says the Prazi-Pro wont harm the biological filter
at all. Thats a good thing.
Will it kill snails? That would also be a very good thing!
So hopefully this will work.


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