My dog heartworm pill has some other meds in it too but my comment was on the fact that people are um.... eating live stock wormer... as a home remedy... for umm... ykno
My dog heartworm pill has some other meds in it too but my comment was on the fact that people are um.... eating live stock wormer... as a home remedy... for umm... ykno
ReefChasers
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Ivermectin -- isnt' that one what people have been taken "Horse Dewormer" to fight off Covid? I'm guessing tractor supply is SOLD OUT!
Jay Hemdal
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That is the weird thing about this - how the leeches just showed up all at once. They are also full sized. I would have expected you to see small ones first, and then they would grow, lay eggs and new small leeches would develop. I think the isopods aren't directly related to this issue.
You might want to try a 5 minute FW dip first, just to see if you can knock some of the leeches off. As I mentioned in another post, it is a very real issue where you knock off all the external parasites from a fish at once, and they bleed out.
Has the eel fed for you?
Jay
Eels normally will not survive more than several months after exposure to formalin. There are other species like puffers and lions among others that it is a death sentence. Even people using the popular ich x has found out the hard way when their eels, puffers, lions die unexpectantly, ich x does contain formalin.
Wyvern
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Paraguard is formalin free, not sure if it would do anything.
Jay Hemdal
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I’m not sure what eels you’ve used it on, or at what dose, but I’ve dipped snowflakes, greens, zebra and dragons and never had an issue with delayed mortality. Ich-X is another matter entirely - malachite green does have latent toxicity issues, especially with scaleless fishes. I stopped using malachite green about 15 years ago.
As I said, people mistakenly buy NBF formalin, but that has toxicity issues, I’m not sure if people mess the dose up or if it is an issue with the ingredients. You need to use low methanol formalin. I use the fisheries approved formalin - Paracide S. I’ve also used regular formalin from Carolina.
Jay
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hawkie
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Good afternoon everyone I thought I’d share some updates. I had been in a hyposalinity during this process and decided to do a low brackish dip on my eel today a .04 for about 10 minutes along with cleaning the body of my eep and was about to knock off about 90% of the leeches. I’m going to see if the rest fall of over the next few hours do to the shock. My eel seems to be much happier and even ate today. I have them in quarantine tank and tomorrow as long as he isn't stressed am going to use paracleanse as it was highly recommended by one of my buddy who works for fritz. My eels body is covered it blood spot so I’ll as well keep you updated to see if the end up bleeding out. I woke up to a couple fatalities this morning one being my lionfish and a dottyback. The leeched seemed to suck the life right out of them but everyone else seems to be doing just fine. I will continue to update until I either lose the rest of my fish or I irraticate all of the remaining leeches and isopods. I really didn’t want to go the formalin route due to the mixed reviews I have heard on but was going to keep it in the back of my head as a last resort. Thank you to all that have given their input on the matter and hope none of you will ever have to deal with this. At the end of the process I will leave the full process just in case anyone else contracts these life suckers.
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The strange thing here is that these leeches are affecting other fish species. I’ve seen marine leeches before, but not on many species: eels, puffers, sand gobies, rays - all freshly caught wild fish. I’ve never seen them on lion fish or marine perciformes like dotty backs. Hopefully you’ll be able to get these under control!
Jay
I have seen many eels perish from an lfs here that does routine formalin dips, as well as hobbyist. More instances and species of eels than I can count. It's a little different when you are removed from what happens afterwards. Many dying from a few to several months, while some did live into the 1st year but none pass 2 years that I have tracked. I suspect this happens with other species as well, I have just made it my thing to track predatory fish mainly lions, scorps, eels, anglers. Formalin should be a last resort chemical, not something used as a routine prophalactically. In this case if it is leeches, it would be a case to use it.
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As I said, I've never seen any delayed mortality from using formalin. I'm not doubting what you have seen, just that it is more likely that the formalin was applied incorrectly, or using the wrong product. I don't use formalin on elasmobranchs or in soft, acidic water. It isn't my treatment of choice any longer, only because my current systems and their fish are mostly too large to treat as a dip. Using formalin as a static bath is limited to 25 ppm, and that only has an effect against protozoans, and copper works much better. Noga states that there can be idiopathic mortality from using formalin, but that these deaths occur in 1 to 36 hours post treatment.
To reiterate:
- Aerate the formalin bath well, I usually aerate for 5 minutes before starting the dip
- Formalin is dosed on a sliding scale of time versus temperature versus concentration - Herwig 1976 has a list for this
- Start with the lower dose/time first and work up.
- Use low methanol formalin, not NBF or formalin with methanol higher than 14%
- with heavy ectoparasite infections, they will drop off due to the formalin, but the fish may bleed out and die
Finally, formalin is one of only eight FDA approved drugs for food fishes.
Jay
I am also not doubting what you are saying either, I think the bigger picture is that people are using these chemicals, that never should be using these chemicals. While very advanced professionals may have success, the vast majority of hobbyist just can not. And as for lfs, today they can not even keep their sg stable; and mixing rock, micro, corals, and inverts with fish; to give another vehicle to transfer fish disease. So how can you expect hobbyist and suppliers to manage such chemicals. This is also why I might see all the copper related deaths as well.
Oh and I wouldn't trust the fda when it comes to food safety, jeez, ever heard of glyphasate among others. And the American diet....., guess I'll have to check my seafood sources more carefully.
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hawkie
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Today’s update. my eel was doing much better only a 3 noticeable leeches left and didn’t seem to be stressed at all so I put him in the QT tank yesterday. I woke up this morning and noticed about 20 new leeches. Idk how they are replicating so quickly and to very similar sizes as all the rest. I am using paracleanse in the thank right now but I am utterly shocked that they were able to reproduce as quickly as they are.
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That is weird - especially since you moved the eel to a new tank. Leeches will have eggs in little cocoons in the tank. Moving the fish to a new tank = no cocoons. What CAN happen is that the juvenile leeches aren't really visible, and then, they get large enough to see, making it look like they just "showed up". The trouble with that idea is that the FW dip would have knocked the juveniles off as well.
I went back and reviewed this case. I can clearly see segments on the worms. That means they are annelids and not flukes. In turn, the only parasitic annelids are leeches. I checked and could not find any reference to live bearing leeches, but I seem to vaguely recall some freshwater leeches that brood their eggs internally.
Paracleanse is the same thing as API General Cure - it is a mixture of praziquantel and metronidazole. As I had mentioned, praziquantel does not kill leeches. Metronidazole is an anti-protozoan, so would also not be expected to have any benefit.
The trouble with leeches is that the eggs can really only be killed by thorough drying, or with chemicals that would also kill the fish. Adult leeches are also tough - anything that will kill them is going to be borderline deadly to the fish - it is a tightrope you have to walk.
Since these leeches seemed sensitive to a FW dip (not all are) my advice would be to continue dipping the fish and try to catch them as they hatch, but before they have time to mature and lay eggs themselves...I don't know what the frequency needs to be for this though, probably around 3 to 6 days.
Jay
I'm glad you decided to try paracleanse, I'm still hoping it's not leeches. Give it a day, after 24 hrs if you don't start seeing die off, then your only option left would be the formalin others are recommending. At that point your tank would have to go fallow. I'm not sure how long these creatures can live without a blood host, so others will have to chime in with that info.
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hawkie
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Here to give you all an update. I was in touch with a buddy who works for fritz again and told me to mix some of the paracleanse in with the food. Oh boy what a mistake. Everyone who has eaten the food had died. Except for my eel who was not interested in the food which leads me to believe it’s directly from the food. I thought I’d let you all know to never go down this route what a huge mistake. Daily the eel gets more and more parasites and the only way to keep the numbers down is from daily dips and picking all the visible ones off my hand. Just going to go for a formalin dip at this point and hope for the best because I am over it at this point. Paracleanse in the tank did not work, neither did praziquantel, prazipro, expel-p nor did Paraguay’s help at all. I’ve exhausted the entire Arsenal aside from trying the dog heartguard medicine but highly doubted and positive results from that route. Truly a sad day for the fish community.
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Sorry to hear. I’m now worried that with all the fish has gone through, the formalin will be too much for it. From my 10/7 post, have you thought about using FW dips to control them? If you dip daily, you hopefully can break the life cycle, as the eggs keep hatching out, but are killed by the dip before they can reproduce.
Jay
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