So I am on my third round of treatment for what I thought might be tiny parasites in my catfish tank. They started to appear a few days after adding some slate to my tank. Tiny black spots on the bellies of my columbian sharks. I assumed that I must not have cleaned the slate well enough. Almost looked like their bellies were brushing against the rock and particles were rubbing off on them. Well I removed the slate after about two weeks, It seemed to be getting worse.
Removing the slate didn't help so I bought a chemical treatment that is supposed to kill just about anything but the fish. Yeah that didn't work. One of the sharks became badly infested in a very short amount of time.
I bought another treatment, this time I used an anti-biotic treatment. It did not show any results after a week but I gave it some time and after 2 weeks they all showed significant improvement (the spots show up really well on the Electric Yellow Cichlid). It has now been a couple more weeks and the tiny dust-like spots are coming back again. Not that they were completely gone in the first place (two of the sharks still had a few pepper sprinkles on their chest area). Now I am trying some Maracide to treat them. we are only on day two of treatment so I won't have any signs of improvement for a few more days.
WHAT I DIDN'T PAY ATTENTION TO!
I added 2 bluegill to my tank, originally as feeders (they got mixed in with the tiny shad I had left over from fishing so I threw them in). They didn't get eaten. Not that I am surprised, they are pretty fisty by nature. About 2 or 3 weeks after I threw them in I noticed that one of them had been attacked. I figured that the big Cichlid must have took a stab at him (prety fisty him self and 5 times the bluegill's size). The blue gill had a huge knot on the side of his head along with some abraisions. By the way I check my fish everyday to look them over, make sure they are doing ok so this knot showed up over night.
The thing is that the knot never went away completely. It got smaller, but never went away. I can pretty much see through the fish as long as he is near the light. a few days ago his eye showed definate sighs of fighting, his eyelid appeared partaly torn, Eye was swolen. Yesterday I noticed that his spine did not appear straight when I looked through him. Today it dawned on me what the problem was.
I removed him from the tank and took a razorblade an cut the side of his head open right over the knot and removed a 6 inch parasite worm of some sort from a 3 inch bluegill's skull. It must have been laying eggs inside of him. It is no wonder I could not get rid of them. Blue gill is still alive, not happy with me but still alive. Put him back in the tank. We'll see how they do now. If there are larva still in there the open wound should alow the medication direct contact and should kill them off. Ttime will tell.
Removing the slate didn't help so I bought a chemical treatment that is supposed to kill just about anything but the fish. Yeah that didn't work. One of the sharks became badly infested in a very short amount of time.
I bought another treatment, this time I used an anti-biotic treatment. It did not show any results after a week but I gave it some time and after 2 weeks they all showed significant improvement (the spots show up really well on the Electric Yellow Cichlid). It has now been a couple more weeks and the tiny dust-like spots are coming back again. Not that they were completely gone in the first place (two of the sharks still had a few pepper sprinkles on their chest area). Now I am trying some Maracide to treat them. we are only on day two of treatment so I won't have any signs of improvement for a few more days.
WHAT I DIDN'T PAY ATTENTION TO!
I added 2 bluegill to my tank, originally as feeders (they got mixed in with the tiny shad I had left over from fishing so I threw them in). They didn't get eaten. Not that I am surprised, they are pretty fisty by nature. About 2 or 3 weeks after I threw them in I noticed that one of them had been attacked. I figured that the big Cichlid must have took a stab at him (prety fisty him self and 5 times the bluegill's size). The blue gill had a huge knot on the side of his head along with some abraisions. By the way I check my fish everyday to look them over, make sure they are doing ok so this knot showed up over night.
The thing is that the knot never went away completely. It got smaller, but never went away. I can pretty much see through the fish as long as he is near the light. a few days ago his eye showed definate sighs of fighting, his eyelid appeared partaly torn, Eye was swolen. Yesterday I noticed that his spine did not appear straight when I looked through him. Today it dawned on me what the problem was.
I removed him from the tank and took a razorblade an cut the side of his head open right over the knot and removed a 6 inch parasite worm of some sort from a 3 inch bluegill's skull. It must have been laying eggs inside of him. It is no wonder I could not get rid of them. Blue gill is still alive, not happy with me but still alive. Put him back in the tank. We'll see how they do now. If there are larva still in there the open wound should alow the medication direct contact and should kill them off. Ttime will tell.
