Total Eradication of Gill Flukes and Internal Flagellates/worms possible ?

[FihsLove]

Hi ,
I am a newbie here, but I have been keeping ornamental fish all my life. Recently I am back into the majestic wild discus fish, and it has stressed me quite a bit compared to my other fishes..

I would like to ask here if it is ever possible to totally eliminate gill flukes and internal flagellates / worms in an aquarium of discus fish once and for all with proper medication like prazi and metro etc? If the answer is yes, then theoretically these flukes and flagellates should not recur once I have medicated the whole tank..assuming no new fish and only flakes/pellet food is used. But in practical, just when I thought I can sit back and enjoyed my tank after medication, there will be 1 discus turning dark, hiding away, not eating, breathing heavily.. and I need to medicate the whole tank again cos other fish might be infected too.. I medicate my display tank in the hope to totally eradicate the flukes and flagellates but it seems an impossible mission..

I would like to hear your opinion.

Thanks

[Eddie]

Well, you can try really hard to eradicate flukes but once you've got them, you will surely have them again in my opinion. It will take some strategic treatment methods to eliminate all of them. Some people treat the fish in one tank and then transfer the fish to another tank that has been sterilized and continue treating until the life-cycle of the flukes have ended.

For the flagellates, similar issues, you will need to treat all of the fish and repeat to make sure they are all gone.

There will be lots of scope work involved so it will take time. In my opinion, you won't eradicate either of the 2 by treating in a display tank.

[bogia99]

it is possible if we can understand the Gill Fluke abit more of its life cycle. Feel free to add to the list.

how long does an adult fluke can attached to the fish's gills before it died ? (Not much you can do here I think, you will damage the gills membrane before you can actually kill the suckers with PP)
How often its lay eggs
How long those eggs will hatch @ 88F
What will it take to kill those eggs or its newly hatched flukes ? (without fishes, you can really nuke the whole tank with PP)

The strategy seems to be around interrupting its life cycle; therefore, you can eliminate it. Transferring fishes between two tanks mentioned by Eddie seems like an intriguing idea worth to explore further I think.

QT : with med
Display tank: with PP
Timing of transfer: still kind of fuzzy to me .. any suggestion ?

[Eddie]

it is possible if we can understand the Gill Fluke abit more of its life cycle. Feel free to add to the list.

how long does an adult fluke can attached to the fish's gills before it died ? (Not much you can do here I think, you will damage the gills membrane before you can actually kill the suckers with PP)
How often its lay eggs
How long those eggs will hatch @ 88F
What will it take to kill those eggs or its newly hatched flukes ? (without fishes, you can really nuke the whole tank with PP)

The strategy seems to be around interrupting its life cycle; therefore, you can eliminate it. Transferring fishes between two tanks mentioned by Eddie seems like an intriguing idea worth to explore further I think.

QT : with med
Display tank: with PP
Timing of transfer: still kind of fuzzy to me .. any suggestion ?

Its worked for me and many others. Time consuming but worth it. The trick is to have empty sterilized tanks ready for the next move.

[ronald sherman]

btw i am just starting out and not getting my fist shippment of till tuesday, and a good friend who's too old made 1 good suggestion that worked on other fish and swear he had the prettyiest discus a good dozen takes when he got a new fish he quart. using medicated -food which i have with 1% of metro, flagyl in fact my fish love it the 90 gallon with several jubio rainbow's that i had 4-5 yr's as well as severl clown loaches and with trop fish i'm a big believer of a regular vaiable diet i have at least a dozen different food 6-8 frozen algae wafer's high protein flakes i rarely use the med food as the both bag's are almost filled and i have oxtrtracycline again in med food i once had too treat a tank of fish with 400 mg every 10 gallon of metro and feed the metro flakes as well and even when i was done with the 7 day water treatment i continued with the metro-flakes as all my fish love it how i found that out was acciently feed them it once and look too see it was the med metro food they finish it 3-4 times faster than the reg food in fact i have wafer's 4 the clown loaches and even they come too the top of the tank too get all they can eat

[FihsLove]

Thanks everyone for your input.

I understand that the life cycle of gill fluke is about a week. If we put enough medicine (prazi) in the tank (display) for 2 weeks (or 3 weeks as recommended by some members here), all the flukes should be eradicated from the fish and the display tank should be fluke-free ? Am I thinking it too simply..? Cos it seems the flukes will come back to infect the fish again though i feed only dry food and no new fish is introduced to the tank.

I don't have the luxury of QT tank. I am trying to keep my fish-keeping simple and enjoy it.

[Eddie]

That would be a personal choice. Some swear by prazi and others find it less effective on flukes.


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[FihsLove]

That would be a personal choice. Some swear by prazi and others find it less effective on flukes.


Thanks Eddie for the enlightenment.

Yeah, come to think of it, it could be that my prazi medication is not effective enough to totally eradicate the gill flukes in my display tank despite treating the tank for 3 weeks more than 2 times the life cycle of flukes, that explain why it is coming back again and again despite no live / frozen foods and new fish. I now see the rationale of the hassle of using sterile tank etc. Thanks again.

[Eddie]

Thanks Eddie for the enlightenment.

Yeah, come to think of it, it could be that my prazi medication is not effective enough to totally eradicate the gill flukes in my display tank despite treating the tank for 3 weeks more than 2 times the life cycle of flukes, that explain why it is coming back again and again despite no live / frozen foods and new fish. I now see the rationale of the hassle of using sterile tank etc. Thanks again.

Any time! Its a tough battle for sure and almost an impossible one with a community/display tank.

[jozwikjp]

Any time! Its a tough battle for sure and almost an impossible one with a community/display tank.

So if you go the route of moving all the fish to a treatment tank for a couple of weeks, do you do anything to treat the fish-less display tank? Will the flagalettes eventually die off after a couple weeks in the display without a host?