ive found the worms now what ?

[dogmatix]

ive been reaing various posts on intestinal worms and youve all been alot of help ;)
I decided to dose my fish in a 10 ltr bucket with 25 mg or half a 10 kg Drontal dog wormer, left them for 2.5 hours and put them back in the tank.
Now worms have started to come out of them :-X are they dead ? do i redose ? Are the eggs dead ?

And i just saw my feamale agasizi grab a worm exiting my discus pull it the rest of the way out and eat it will she get worms or like i asked are they dead ?

Any help is really appreciated as there isnt much of that here in N.Z

Thanks heaps Ben. :D

[brewmaster15]

Hi Ben,
If you are sure that it is a tapeworm, in most of the cases the medication used to expel the worms , kills the worms. Each tape worm is made up of segments that contain eggs, these segments are called proglottids. what happens is these segments open and release eggs into the water. The eggs are then ingested by an intermediate host (snail, copepods, etc.) The Tape worm eggs then develop and when this intermediate host is ingested by a fish... the tape worm finishes its cycle. and you wind up with the typical tapeworm.

http://a3.cpimg.com/image/E1/51/8882913-9ba7-02000180-.jpg

So in the case of the tapeworm, ingesting the expelled worm is not going to re-infect the fish. The fish must eat the intermediate host , after that host was infected. This is true for 99.9% of tape worms. There is one or two species of smaller tapeworms that aparently don't need an intermediate. I don't believe they are common though.

This is only true for tape worms. Not all parasites need intermediates, and in most cases, ingestion of the worm or eggs is what will infect the fish.

With most dewormers, repeating treatment a week latter is a good idea. Drontal has Praziquantel in it I believe, and if so the worms you are seeing are probably tape worms and are dead.
hth,
al

[dogmatix]

Awesome chers Al
Definately tapeworms, man i wish i had recorded the agasizi pull the worm out would have been one for the library ;)
Im going to repeat on the thrd and then a week later, I was losing baby discus hopeforly not any more and as a bonus they might start to grow.

thanks again Ben.