symptoms
external symptoms
- skin opacities
- Fish make a lot of slime
- Worms clearly visible with a magnifying glass
- The skin turns dark.
- Reddish discoloration on the sides of the fish
- Fins are clamped.
- Fins are frayed.
- The gills swell.
- Fish lose a lot of weight.
Behave
- Fish scrub themselves.
- Fish twitch their fins.
- Pisces become apathetic.
- Fish are on the ground.
- Fish hang on the surface.
photos
Photos: Marcus W.
Catfish with clouded skin on the back. The suspected cause is skin worms. The suspicion can be confirmed with a magnifying glass.
Photos: Catherine
Gold gourami with skin worms, which can be seen as small threads within the skin turbidity or on the edge of the head. The worms can also be seen as white borders along some of the scales.
Photos: Catherine
A male cichlid in the same aquarium is pinching its fins. The suspected cause is the clouding of the skin on the side of the body. Because the cichlid came from the same tank as the golden gourami, it is probably also skin worms.
Photos: Catherine
Female cichlid, also from the same aquarium, with skin turbidity on the head. Presumably it is mucous secretions due to skin worms.
Photos: C. Duchkovich
Skin worms magnified 40 times. The hooks are clearly visible. In a seawater aquarium, all fish showed an increased respiratory rate and unclearly defined white spots. The photos are from a skin sample.
Photos: bmueller (forum)
The pathogens Trichodina, Gyrodactylus (skin worms) and Dactylogyrus (gill worms) were found in this goldfish with a skin swab.
causes
The most common skin worm in the aquarium is the Gyrodactylus. It primarily settles on the skin, but can also appear in the gills. A few skinworms are usually only harmful to small and young fish. With strong reproduction and severe infestation, even larger fish can die quickly. A high stocking density promotes rapid transmission from fish to fish, so that entire stocks can be killed in a short time if there is a large stocking.
Gyrodactylus is hermaphrodite and gives birth to live young. After just one day, a newly born gyrodactyl develops a new worm of its own. After that, a new worm develops every 5 to 10 days. The first young worm is born so quickly because its development begins while its father worm is still developing itself in the grandfather worm. The principle is similar to the Russian doll in the doll. In Gyrodyctylus there are up to 4 generations in one worm. In this way, a single Gyrodactylus can produce more than 2000 offspring within 30 days. According to other sources, under good conditions, a total of around one million offspring can be produced within a month. With a microscope you can see the embryo of the next worm in the middle of a worm.
Within 48 hours, a newly born worm must cling to a fish to survive. For this purpose it has 2 large and up to 16 smaller hooks at its rear end. With these hooks he clings to the fish. The small wounds caused in this way easily become sources of infection for bacteria and fungi, so that the infestation with skin worms easily leads to secondary diseases.
The lifespan of a worm that has attached itself to a fish is about 12 to 15 days at about 15° to 20°. During this time, it feeds on blood and skin tissue that it sucks from the fish. To do this, it has two tips with glue nozzles at its front end and a suction mouth on the front side of its abdomen, with which it scrapes off and sucks off blood and skin tissue.
Adult worms that have fallen off the fish can survive for about 5 to 10 days without a new host.
treatment suggestions
In the case of a mild infestation, an attempt can be made to stimulate the formation of mucus in the fish skin with salt baths so that the skin worms are shed. In the case of a severe infestation, suitable agents from the trade or from the veterinarian should be used, as the disease can progress very quickly. Since the worms do not lay eggs, a single treatment is sufficient as the live worms are killed by killing both the worms hooked to the fish and those floating in the water.
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