So here's the story.
My most recent batch of fish was four red eye tetras (to fill in the school I already had at home), four white medakas, and five emerald eye rasboras (also to fill in my school at home)
They were all netted at the store in that order, and I believe it was with the same net. This is important for later.
So I get home, decide to do water changes, I do my killifish and rams first, then my guppies
as I'm filling up the guppy tank I put the medakas in. Then I do waterchanges on my platinum HRP's tank, then the mosquitofish/convicts, my neolamp.cygnus tank, then my 29 (which has the tetras and my esmeraldas gold acara.)
Once I finished I noticed one of the medakas had a clear mass hanging out of its vent, and upon closer inspection there were a couple of camallanus worms hanging out of it. I had dealt with these things before, and I knew that once they were visible like that, that's their reproductive stage (where they're spewing out spores). In the 15 minutes I spent filling up the tank with the aqueon hose that was all time spores could have been released and swirled around the tank, subsequently getting picked up and spread to the tanks I cleaned after the guppy tank.
I put my new guppies in the ram tank, but as I stated before, they were netted after the medakas at the store, meaning, they most likely picked up spores from the medaka tank water. Same goes for the rasboras, which went to the display tank in my bedroom.
I dosed with levamisole, did the first round of treatment, but now that I've learned some things about the reproduction of the worms and the way levamisole works, I have some questions.
The original visibly infected fish was euthanized upon me noticing its infection, so there would not have been any more spores released after that.
1. I understand that levamisole is not an ovicide, meaning it would not have killed any of the eggs released by the worms in the infected fish. Does that mean the first round of treatment (with the whole wait 3-5 days for the meds to work and drain the tank completely) was all for nothing? None of the fish (to my understanding) would have had adult worms in them, unless they were previously infected at the store.
2. Since none of my fish had worms at the adult egg releasing stage, do I need to do the normal second round of treatment? The second round of the levamisole treatment is supposed to kill hatched eggs left over from the last treatment.
3. leading off of #1, since it isn't an ovicide, and since the original dose was done the day spores were released into my tank, does this mean that the eggs would then hatch next week or the following week? subsequently meaning I ultimately do need to do a second round of treatment, or even a third?
4. for the tanks that have sand, how thorough do I need to clean them out? I did as close to 100% waterchanges as I could, but since it's sand I didn't siphon the substrate (because I don't want play sand getting sucked out and drained into my sink)
I'm guessing since again, the medication is not an ovicide, any eggs would not have been killed in the first treatment and should now be hatching.
5. I read that the worms only release dozens of spores daily, so does this decrease my chances that the spores actually got into my other tanks within 20 minutes? knowing how easily it spreads I doubt it would make any difference.
I will be doing my second round of treatment on Friday, and I needed help fitting some of the new information into my treatment. This isn't the same "fish develop the worms over a few weeks, treat when I start seeing worms/everything is infected with adult worms" where I'd do the first treatment to kill adult worms and then second to kill their leftover offspring. Hence why I needed specific help.
My most recent batch of fish was four red eye tetras (to fill in the school I already had at home), four white medakas, and five emerald eye rasboras (also to fill in my school at home)
They were all netted at the store in that order, and I believe it was with the same net. This is important for later.
So I get home, decide to do water changes, I do my killifish and rams first, then my guppies
as I'm filling up the guppy tank I put the medakas in. Then I do waterchanges on my platinum HRP's tank, then the mosquitofish/convicts, my neolamp.cygnus tank, then my 29 (which has the tetras and my esmeraldas gold acara.)
Once I finished I noticed one of the medakas had a clear mass hanging out of its vent, and upon closer inspection there were a couple of camallanus worms hanging out of it. I had dealt with these things before, and I knew that once they were visible like that, that's their reproductive stage (where they're spewing out spores). In the 15 minutes I spent filling up the tank with the aqueon hose that was all time spores could have been released and swirled around the tank, subsequently getting picked up and spread to the tanks I cleaned after the guppy tank.
I put my new guppies in the ram tank, but as I stated before, they were netted after the medakas at the store, meaning, they most likely picked up spores from the medaka tank water. Same goes for the rasboras, which went to the display tank in my bedroom.
I dosed with levamisole, did the first round of treatment, but now that I've learned some things about the reproduction of the worms and the way levamisole works, I have some questions.
The original visibly infected fish was euthanized upon me noticing its infection, so there would not have been any more spores released after that.
1. I understand that levamisole is not an ovicide, meaning it would not have killed any of the eggs released by the worms in the infected fish. Does that mean the first round of treatment (with the whole wait 3-5 days for the meds to work and drain the tank completely) was all for nothing? None of the fish (to my understanding) would have had adult worms in them, unless they were previously infected at the store.
2. Since none of my fish had worms at the adult egg releasing stage, do I need to do the normal second round of treatment? The second round of the levamisole treatment is supposed to kill hatched eggs left over from the last treatment.
3. leading off of #1, since it isn't an ovicide, and since the original dose was done the day spores were released into my tank, does this mean that the eggs would then hatch next week or the following week? subsequently meaning I ultimately do need to do a second round of treatment, or even a third?
4. for the tanks that have sand, how thorough do I need to clean them out? I did as close to 100% waterchanges as I could, but since it's sand I didn't siphon the substrate (because I don't want play sand getting sucked out and drained into my sink)
I'm guessing since again, the medication is not an ovicide, any eggs would not have been killed in the first treatment and should now be hatching.
5. I read that the worms only release dozens of spores daily, so does this decrease my chances that the spores actually got into my other tanks within 20 minutes? knowing how easily it spreads I doubt it would make any difference.
I will be doing my second round of treatment on Friday, and I needed help fitting some of the new information into my treatment. This isn't the same "fish develop the worms over a few weeks, treat when I start seeing worms/everything is infected with adult worms" where I'd do the first treatment to kill adult worms and then second to kill their leftover offspring. Hence why I needed specific help.
