Good news....microscope success....Bad news....

[Mmathis]

......I will actually post this as 2 threads devoted to this problem, and you'll understand why.

@Dave 54 @fishin4cars

I FINALLY had a chance to scope a fish and actually FIND something under the microscope. It would have been an exciting discovery, except that......

It was on a fish that I pulled from the pond yesterday, and it died over night. A very pretty calico Watonai [though NOT one of my new fish that are still in QT] that I got last year. This was just before I started to drain the pond -- so I could get in and do some cleaning and lily-care. The fish was in my Oase floating skimmer, but alive. I took it inside and [big mistake] put it in my inside tank where I am QTing 2 little fantails. It was lethargic, but moved around when stimulated. Gills appeared pale. Slow respirations. I gave it a salt dip.....there wasn't much else I could do.

I scraped it this morning. Where I scraped inside & around the gills -- GILL FLUKES! Nothing at all showed up on the body scrapes. And no other living or moving entities on the slides. I scraped & examined, then did a repeat -- since the fish was dead, I didn't have to be squeamish and concerned about harming it. On the first scrape, only found one fluke. But on the 2nd time around, I found one concentrated massing of about 4 or 5. Fascinating, but gross, and scary at the same time.

When I found the fish yesterday, I was busy with other things, and didn't check water parameters. Afterward, I'd done at least a 50% water change, so figured it was pointless. However, the last time I checked everything, all the values were good with exception of KH which was borderline low. Also, we've had a lot of rain recently. No other fish have been acting "off." I have plenty of filtration [a Skippy, turtle bog, and 2 box filters going to "spitters." I have 3 airstones, plus the Oase skimmer which also adds LOTS of air.

Going out now to check water parameters......

But I finally SAW SOMETHING under the microscope..........

 

[bettasngoldfish]

Sorry about your fish Maggie, flukes are pretty common in goldfish.

Lot's of goldfish keepers will automatically treat any new goldfish for flukes just because they are so common. Prazi is a good treatment and it's also pretty safe to use.

 

[fishin4cars]

After reading both posts I would have to agree that all water, filters, nets, etc need to be treated, the good thing is all can be treated with the same medication and not extremely expensive or hard to dose like some medications could be. We just had a scope and scrape learning session at our club meeting today. Several members down here are experiencing similar problems but we can't find anything common in the different ponds under the scopes. As a group we have decided to try to take a living fish with issues to LSU to the veterinarian Professor to see if they can find anything for us.

 

[Dave 54]

Like Larkin after reading both posts I would agree that filters, nets etc need be treated , as Larkin has said the good news is all this can be treated with one treatment
May I add well done and well spotted and it really shows just why we need the use of microscopes as part of the back up to our pond .
With Flukes it is oh so very easy to loose fish
Are you as a group also willing to share the dara raised by the good Professor it will go to show the power of the microscope to many of our other members who havent yet taken fish health issues to heart

Dave

 

[Mmathis]

@fishin4cars and @Dave 54 Thanks for the replies and encouraging information. At least if I had to have SOMETHING, this is probably the easiest to treat. And, none of the other fish [I watched them for a LONG time, yesterday!] look ill or "off" in any way. Maybe this was just a "fluke" [pun intended -- couldn't resist, sorry!], and this one fish was already ill for some other reason.

Larkin, I read about your koi death on FB, and so sorry to hear about it! I was impressed with all of the people coming together, trying to help figure out what happened.

One day I would like to get some kind of attachment for my microscope so that I can take pictures [still and moving]. Something for iPhone or iPad would be nice. So far I haven't had luck with simply holding the camera to the eye piece. But, here are drawings of what I saw.....

 

[fishin4cars]

The one you have marked fast looks to be skin Flukes, the one with the four spots is most certainly Gill flukes. I would love to be able to take pictures as well with my microscope, but If I can't take pictures I'll take your drawings. Pretty darn accurate to work with. The four eye spots are pretty much the dead give away. I use Terminate for treating.