Ali
Active Member
First saw these when I was fish-sitting some cardinals. One had a bubble with a coiled up worm around its eye, I treated with a copper based antiparasitic I got from Cory, but it still died. About a month later the other dozen or so all broke out with it, and meds did nothing. Desperate to not have fish that belonged to someone else die on my watch, I scoured the web. On page 8 of a google search for "tetras look like scene from Alien what do" I found a site poorly translated from some sort of Slavic language that essentially said "if no light and no food worms run out of food and die before fish do." Liking the fact that this required absolutely no effort, and in fact was just neglect I tried it, and after a week without food or light they looked incredible.
Fish-sitting client decided they didn't want their tank back, and I didn't feel comfortable selling fish that may have this bug so I've kept them.
This seems like a pretty common problem, but there is no consensus as to what it actually is, or how to treat it. (I've even found vitriolic debate that it's a fungus vs. parasite as most think.) I've heard people say it can't affect the same fish twice, it is recommended pull the little worms out with tweezers, it comes from wild-caught fish handled poorly during import, it's a fungus that stays in the water column indefinitely, and more.
Recently two more cardinals had visible worms, I isolated them and tried the starvation method. One died, and the other seems less affected though now the worms are on the edges of the fins, not exploded from the body cavity like I've always seen before. And now some green neons from a different tank have it too. They've never been i contact with the cardinals, but nets and siphons have been in both tanks. I guess that supports the fungus theory.
Has anyone dealt with this before? What worked? Or didn't?
Sorry for the long rambly post, I'm frustrated and a bit sleep deprived.
