Loaches Online Forum

Hello, i am new here, and i have a problem with my loaches.
Loaches are Lepidocephalichthys guntea.
The tank has been setup for 8 years, but with this set of fish for about 4 months. Tank is habitated by a school of 10-13 pearl danios (Brachydanio albolineatus, i dont know the exact numbers. They are in tank for a long time and other former inhabitants ate a few, i think, and they are impossible to count), 7 cherry barbs (Puntius(Barbus) titteya, also old inhabitants). A couple of moths ago, i added 6 loaches (L. guntea) and a week or so after them 6 honey gouramis (Trichogaster chuna, one of them died a month ago from bloat from unknown reasons. Obduction revealed nothing)
the tank is 29 cmx30cmx80cm (wxhxl), approximately 80l or so.
Water parametres are:
T: 26°C,
hardness (total, carbonate is a degree or three lower): 16°dGh
NO3:always lower than 15 mg/l, currently ~10 mg/l
NH4: 0
pH: i dont measure it, given that my water hardness ensures its stability. Should be around 7. (not sure, but fish dont seem to be bothered by my pH).
I change 15 l of water in at most 10 days (around 15% a week). I dont clean the filter except the cotton-ish stuff- that i clean when its starts to impair waterflow. Waterflow through filter should be a bit under 600l/h. Filter is internal and it contains approximately 3 l of blue filter foam and 1,5 l of little ceramic tubes. I also add a few dried leaves of beech, oak and edible chestnut after water changes, and every month some alder cones.
I feed the fish live daphnia, Lumbriculus variegatus, Asellus, Gammarus (latter two are breeding in the tank too), Copepods, and frozen Copepods, Mysis and Corethra larvae (white mosquito). I mostly feed frozen.
Even upon arrival 2 of the loaches were smaller and thinner than the rest. Thiniking it was due to stress and them being probably males, i did not think much of it. When after some time (2 months) they neither grew nor fattened up, i started worrying they're sick. Looking through this forum i found out that they're probably infected with internal parasites. I separated them in another container and treated them with fenbendazole. I lost one due to my mistake (i forgot to turn on the aeration), the other one survived the treatment and i put it back in the tank. I made an obduction of the other one. Internal organs looked normal to me (no strange colors or granules). After squishing the intestine and inspecting it under microscope i found something that looked suspiciously similar to Capillaria worm. I never found any eggs (i looked in every feces i found too), and found only one living worm and a couple of similar strands, that may be or may not be those worms.
The survivor settled back in the tank OK, i guess. It ate more than before. I didnt see it a lot though (i dont see any of them much, since the decor enables them to hide and play so i dont see them a lot, but when i do, the others are fat (literally) and had grown a cm or two). Until yesterday i thought i cured it, but today i found it lying on the side at the back of the tank, being very thin, barely breathing irregularly. I think it lost either orientation or ability to orientate or doesnt have enough energy to do so. The gills also seem a bit discolored, and i think there is some mucus covering it?.
The question is- is the capillaria really the culprit here?
If so, which antihemnithic would work on it (fenbendazole, apparently, does not, and i dont have the access to levimasole), and wouldnt kill the fish? should i just go to the vet and ask for something against capillaria and hope it works?
if not, what is it?
I would really appreciate an answer. If it really is this nematode, i think it could be the cuprit for some earlier fish deaths i had in both my tanks since i could have probably transferred the eggs from one to another. The one thing that bugs me about this is that i havent found eggs of capillaria? if i understood correctly, there should be plenty...

First of all, congratulations on the serious approach you are taking! -- pleasure to see posts like yours, even if the situation may not be so pleasant.

OK... firstly on Capillaria: it is generally difficult to find, so finding one living worm is an achievement. I had an episode with this worm years ago and I could not find any myself, professionals in a lab were able to find it only on the third "body". No eggs were found ever. Ability to detect eggs or worms may depend on the species of capillaria too.

If you are reasonably positive about detecting capillaria you definitely must treat, it will infect every fish in due course and slowly kill them all.

Now, on meds: fenbendazole is actually effective, but tricky: it is nearly insoluble, simply putting med into the tank does not do anything good, and people go into serious (and dangerous) tricks to dissolve it in the water... basically dissolve it in a solvent like aceton or vodka or... googling for "fenbendazole" will net you some info on how this is done, but myself, I would not touch it, too dangerous. You may be able to dissolve it sufficiently if you grind it into very fine powder, dissolve in a glass of hot water (70-80C), and stir it like a maniac for 20-30 minutes.... pour the water into the tank as it is partially dissolved, add more hot water and stir again, dissolving the residue...repeat... I did this once, against capillaria specifically, and it worked....

Far better way would be to use flubendazole, it is nearly the same med, with the key difference that it is more soluble... you still have to make an effort to dissolve it but not as extreme as with fenbendazole.

As for levimisole: very iffy with capillaria, works on some species, fails on others.... I stopped using levimisole a number of years ago because of this and a couple of other quirks connected to it.

There are no other meds besides already mentioned... the other possibilities would be other variants of *bendazole meds, again barely soluble (mabendazole is one example) .... or meds that are very dangerous to fish (ivermictin is an example of a med you don't want to touch).


Hopefully this is of help.

ok, so it probably is capillaria then. It was definitely a nematode (nematoid movement, no segmentation or chaetae) It had something that looked like stichosome at the front, similar to the pictures of capillaria on the internet, so its most probably Capillaria.
Even if it's not Capillaria it was a nematode and would probably cause the same/similar simptoms? ( though defenitely not Camallanus)
I administered the fenbendazole in amounts recomended by vet (not a fish vet, though). I injected it with a syringe directly in front of the mouth, so they breathed it in, they sucked it all up and ate it (very obedient fish ), im quite sure of it. I also soaked a bit of live food in the solution and fed them and they ate it too. So I guess they should have gotten they dosage of the medicine. I also found that drug resistance is quite common among Capillarias, so i guessed that'd be it. I could be wrong though...
Unfortunately i was too late for to save the sick loach .
I'll try to get some flubendazole or some more fenbendazole with your dissolving method and do a wholesome perventive treatment of the aquarim (fortunately these drugs dont damage the filter..)... if i'm lucky it was maybe a species requiring intermediate hosts.

Thank you, you are most helpful.
I lost quite a few fish to very similar simptoms, and only now found that all those deaths (mainly new fish i kept for less than half a year) may well be of something quite easily tretable (For some time i thought it was TBC, thats why is started with obductions...)...i will definitely add one of the bezimidazoles to the collection of necessary equipment.

You are very welcome.

A couple more comments: orally administered *benzadole meds do not work, you need to treat the entire tank. (Reason: eggs remain in the tank and you will have reinfection soon enough; additionally these meds appear to be more effective when come through gills.).

The dosing for either *benzadole med is 2mg/l based on the tank volume assuming empty tank, if treating a tank *with things in it* (plants, substrate), double.

To the best of my knowledge there is no resistance to *benzadole meds.

Are you positive that the nematode you found actually came from inside the fish? Whether you correctly id'd it as cap is not very important, any parasitic nematode must be dealt with and flubendazole is the med.... but if it were a soil nematode, you may be mus-diagnosing the entire situation. (Not saying you made a mistake, it sounds like you know what you are doing, but there is this possibility of contaminating too...)

Yeah, caps are unpleasant... I lost half the fish when I first encountered it... at the time I was under impression that levamisole is the med that works (too many FAQs say this) , and since it obviously did not do any good and no parasites were seen on necropsy's, I kept losing fish and thinking it is not parasites.....

TBC? You mean "TB" ? -- sure, possible too.

Anyway.... try flubendazole, if this does not help, we'll look into other possibilities.

I'm positively sure, that it was from inside the fish. I dont know from where else it could be. Beforhand the fish were in an empty tank. I also severed the intestine i such a way it didnt touch anything but the glass i put it on, i think.But i guess i cant be 100% sure. it also looked quite similar to the pictures of it on the net (doesnt mean much since all nematodes are quite similar though...).
It was quite a big nematode (much more than 2mm), so it's quite improbable that it would be a non parasitic one (i found some harmless nematodes living in the moss i have, they were much, much smaller) As far as i'm aquaintanced with nematodes the (very) general guideline is that the bigger ones are almost all parasitic, small ones generally arent. (''big'' meaning more than a couple mm).

I know i must treat the whole tank. (did it too, maybe i miscalculated) and repeat it after a month or so. Separated the two so they could be fed the good stuff and remove the competition. I should have waited for longer before putting them back...(things are always clearer in retrospect)
I found somewhere that there is resistance:
http://en.wikivet.net/Capillaria
It doesnt say which drugs its resistant to (apparently levimasole is one such drug) and which are still 100% effective
Maybe not the best source, but still, i have a reason to believe there is a small chance that i got a resistant type, if it really is Capillaria.
With TBC i meant tuberculosis. I think it's not tuberculosis since i havent found any tubercules in any of the fish that died (if i understand correctly there's supposed to be masses of obvious spots on internal organs, and even then, there is a couple of diseases with similar internal rash).

Another possibility is maybe infection with Hexamita/Spironucleus, but for that i dont have a good enough microscope to confirm...
For now, there is no big hurry anymore... all the other fish are seemingly healthy, eating well and fat. I might be lucky and got the species with indirect cycle, so there wont be any more infections. If i'm not so fortunate... well in any case I'll treat weekly with flubendazole for a month. if the fish'll stil get sick, i'll know something else is bugging them and act accordingly

Resistance: I would not worry about this. It is quite possible that resistance can develop in livestock that is exposed to low med dosages once in a while..... unlikely in wild caught strains....and I never heard about this.

Correct protocol of treatment: once a week, 3-4 treatments, w/c before adding the med.

If the fish were in an empty tank, high chances this was an internal parasite.... direct or indirect --- correctly administered *benzadole meds should have wiped out both. And it does not really matter if the worm is Cap or not, *benzadole meds should kill all worms.

You can use snails to see if you are treating correctly (snails in a treated tank should die out in 4 days or so).

Hexamita -- actually flubenzadole treats it too.

Thank you for the warning about snails... i have Neritina natalensis and dont want to kill them (now i see i forgot to mention them, they were in the tank before the loaches). also, i'm not quite sure of the size of the Melanoides sp. (Malaysian trumpet snail?, i'm not sure of the english name) population, but i imagine it could foul the water quite easily if wiped out by the benzimidazole?
Also, whats the chance of snails (Neritina) being transmitters of the Capillaria/ other nematodes for an extended period of time?

Seems like flubendazole is the cure then... definetly must get some.
What's the lethal dose of flubendazole for fish? I want to know so i know how much space for erorr i have.

If your nerite snails are still alive this means you did not treat fenbendazole correctly... all meds in this group work on snails just like on worms.... remove them before using flubendazole...in fact remove them now because you probably have undissolved fenbendazole in the substrate that they may eat.

What I said was not meant to warn you, but rather suggest using some expendable snails as indicator that you actually treated the tank.

I don't know the lethal dose, but the margin is definitely very large, I usually overdose 1.5-2x to ensure I put in enough. It is possible that there is no lethal level at all... simply you cannot exceed the solubility level.

flubendazole can be ordered from the UK, they ship anywhere asaik.