external symptoms
- Fish lose weight.
- Fish turn dark.
- Fish scrub themselves.
- Fish twitch their bodies.
- The fish droppings are white and slimy.
- fin rot
- Bacterial infections (red belly, red patches on skin)
- curvature of the spine
- Paralysis of the caudal fin
Behave
- First greed, then increasing reluctance to eat
- loss of appetite
- Fish separate.
- Fish die with their mouths open and sometimes severely crooked.
internal symptoms
- bleeding in the intestines
- ulcers in the intestines
- worm infestation in the intestine
photos
Photos: Georg Skillas
Severely emaciated platy with pinched fins and a twisted spine
hairworm video
Photos and film: Angie Jurca
Guppy with a twisted spine and typical hairworm posture. The caudal fin seems paralyzed. The feces were white and slimy.
Photos: Carola Kuhlmann
Guppy with typical hairworm posture.
Photo: Thomas Rechberger
Dead fish with mouth wide open and gills spread. For months, about every 4 weeks, one fish died in about 50 fish with the following symptoms:
- Fish literally froze and could hardly move, the whole thing happened very suddenly in a few minutes without noticing it beforehand
- The affected fish were probably just below the water surface beforehand, but did not gasp for air
- The gills were spread wide but moving slowly
- The mouth was wide open and the head deformed upwards, that with the head could not be seen minutes before
- Within minutes, extreme coordination problems developed, the fish shot uncontrollably through the tank and then landed motionless on the floor where it was still breathing
- Catching a fish out of the tank was enough for this to happen suddenly
- There were also a few fish in the tank that were floating upside down (swimming bladder?) and some had to be quarantined with Furanol2 for a month
Many of the symptoms are at least similar to those of hairworms. Whether it was actually hairworms is unclear.
Photos: Franz Eckard
Young guppy probably with hairworms. The guppy often hid. It hardly moved its caudal fin at all and often trailed white feces behind it.
Please only load the films if you are really interested, so that the transfer rate remains as low as possible and we do not incur any additional costs.
Copper tetras with twisted spines, sunken abdomens and rapid breathing. The symptoms appeared from one day to the next. The breathing had been a little faster for a long time. The combination of symptoms led to the suspicion of hairworms. However, the symptoms can also have other causes.
causes
Hairworms (Capillaria) infest the intestines of many fish species that are kept as aquarium fish. In small numbers they are harmless. Capillaria pterophylli is known to attack angelfish, discus fish and other cichlids. Killifish are also frequently infested. If they multiply rapidly, they damage the fish by depriving them of food and burrowing into the intestinal mucosa. Drilling can cause bleeding and ulcers.
The fish eat less and less, lose weight and eventually separate themselves from the other fish. sometimes the fish die suddenly, without visible, previous symptoms.
Hairworms reproduce when the female’s eggs are released into the water with the fish’s feces. The eggs fall to the bottom and only partially develop there. Only when the eggs are eaten by fish do they get into the fish’s intestines and continue to develop there until the worm larvae hatch. Hairworms can also spread when dead fish are eaten by other fish.
A hairworm infestation can be detected by examining the feces with a microscope. If there is an infestation, you can see the worm eggs in the faeces. Depending on the type of hairworm, the shape of the eggs looks different. At both ends, however, the eggs of all species look as if they were closed with a more or less large plug.
Hairworms got their name because they can be more than an inch long but are thinner than a human hair. The worms themselves can only be seen by examining a fresh intestine with a microscope. Live hairworms are constantly moving. Worms that don’t move are dead.
Frequently, the fish are attacked by other diseases as a result of an infestation with hairworms. This is usually the case when there is rapid spread with many deaths. Hairworms alone usually spread slowly. Secondary diseases are often an infestation with spironucleus and bacterial infections, such as fin rot, red spots on the skin and red bellies.
Hairworms can also get into the aquarium through live food, but in most cases hairworms are brought in with new additions. To avoid this, newcomers should first be kept in quarantine. During this time, hairworm infestations can be detected by examining the feces with a microscope.
treatment suggestions
There is no known safe treatment.
Because the eggs can lie on the bottom, it makes sense to keep the bottom of the aquarium clean.
No products found.
- Fish lose weight.
- Fish turn dark.
- Fish scrub themselves.
- Fish twitch their bodies.
- The fish droppings are white and slimy.
- fin rot
- Bacterial infections (red belly, red patches on skin)
- curvature of the spine
- Paralysis of the caudal fin
Behave
- First greed, then increasing reluctance to eat
- loss of appetite
- Fish separate.
- Fish die with their mouths open and sometimes severely crooked.
internal symptoms
- bleeding in the intestines
- ulcers in the intestines
- worm infestation in the intestine
photos
Photos: Georg Skillas
Severely emaciated platy with pinched fins and a twisted spine
hairworm video
Photos and film: Angie Jurca
Guppy with a twisted spine and typical hairworm posture. The caudal fin seems paralyzed. The feces were white and slimy.
Photos: Carola Kuhlmann
Guppy with typical hairworm posture.
Photo: Thomas Rechberger
Dead fish with mouth wide open and gills spread. For months, about every 4 weeks, one fish died in about 50 fish with the following symptoms:
- Fish literally froze and could hardly move, the whole thing happened very suddenly in a few minutes without noticing it beforehand
- The affected fish were probably just below the water surface beforehand, but did not gasp for air
- The gills were spread wide but moving slowly
- The mouth was wide open and the head deformed upwards, that with the head could not be seen minutes before
- Within minutes, extreme coordination problems developed, the fish shot uncontrollably through the tank and then landed motionless on the floor where it was still breathing
- Catching a fish out of the tank was enough for this to happen suddenly
- There were also a few fish in the tank that were floating upside down (swimming bladder?) and some had to be quarantined with Furanol2 for a month
Many of the symptoms are at least similar to those of hairworms. Whether it was actually hairworms is unclear.
Photos: Franz Eckard
Young guppy probably with hairworms. The guppy often hid. It hardly moved its caudal fin at all and often trailed white feces behind it.
Please only load the films if you are really interested, so that the transfer rate remains as low as possible and we do not incur any additional costs.
Copper tetras with twisted spines, sunken abdomens and rapid breathing. The symptoms appeared from one day to the next. The breathing had been a little faster for a long time. The combination of symptoms led to the suspicion of hairworms. However, the symptoms can also have other causes.
causes
Hairworms (Capillaria) infest the intestines of many fish species that are kept as aquarium fish. In small numbers they are harmless. Capillaria pterophylli is known to attack angelfish, discus fish and other cichlids. Killifish are also frequently infested. If they multiply rapidly, they damage the fish by depriving them of food and burrowing into the intestinal mucosa. Drilling can cause bleeding and ulcers.
The fish eat less and less, lose weight and eventually separate themselves from the other fish. sometimes the fish die suddenly, without visible, previous symptoms.
Hairworms reproduce when the female’s eggs are released into the water with the fish’s feces. The eggs fall to the bottom and only partially develop there. Only when the eggs are eaten by fish do they get into the intestines of the fish and continue to develop there until the worm larvae hatch. Hairworms can also spread when dead fish are eaten by other fish.
A hairworm infestation can be detected by examining the feces with a microscope. If there is an infestation, you can see the worm eggs in the faeces. Depending on the type of hairworm, the shape of the eggs looks different. At both ends, however, the eggs of all species look as if they were closed with a more or less large plug.
Hairworms got their name because they can be more than an inch long but are thinner than a human hair. The worms themselves can only be seen by examining a fresh intestine with a microscope. Live hairworms are constantly moving. Worms that don’t move are dead.
Frequently, the fish are attacked by other diseases as a result of an infestation with hairworms. This is usually the case when there is rapid spread with many deaths. Hairworms alone usually spread slowly. Complications are often spironucleus infestations and bacterial infections such as fin rot, red patches on the skin and red bellies.
Hairworms can also get into the aquarium through live food, but in most cases hairworms are brought in with new additions. To this…