# Mouth Tentacles...?



## Shae (Nov 19, 2006)

I need help!
Ok, here's the deal. I have a gold tinfoil barb in my 30 gallon tank. He's been there for about 3 months or so and has been doing wonderfully. Last night I was watching my tank and nothing seemed wrong with any of my fish. When I woke up this morning, I noticed my tinfoil was swimming around with his mouth wide open. At closer inspection, I noticed that there was something inside of his mouth that looked like small white tentacles growing and were definitely attached to the side. He was not like that the night before. I have worked as a fish specialist in pet stores for about three years now and this is nothing I have seen before. I brought the fish into my work (a petstore) to see if anyone else I work with recognized what could be wrong. No one else had seen it before. We called up the owner who knows a lot about fish and he told me to get some Fungus Clear and Maroxy but did not say what the disease was. My tinfoil ended up belly up in the bowl I had him in temporarily while I was setting up his isolation tank, so I added some of the medicine and he began to swim normally again but the mouth problem was still there. Along the infected side, the gills on the outside are scratched up a bit as well. I have been searching the internet to try to see what it could be but I have found nothing. Does anyone know what this could be and if my fish is going to die from it? The picture below is a picture of what I see.


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## Puffer Pita (Jun 16, 2006)

Looks like some sort of parasite.


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## Shae (Nov 19, 2006)

I looked up pictures of parasites and couldnt see anything that looks like what he has :-( I'm worried bout my fish. He cant eat because his mouth cant close.


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## Puffer Pita (Jun 16, 2006)

Well that's what appears to be to me, not fungus but parasites. I'd start treating for parasites immediately if he can't even close his mouth or eat.

Edit: Try googling "gill maggot"


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## Shae (Nov 19, 2006)

I looked up the Gill maggots and it doesnt really look like what he has. What it shows is the small bug like things infesting the area but my fish has long tentacle like things attached to the inside of his mouth and they dont move at all.


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## Cichlidsrule (Nov 8, 2006)

Overgrown teeth?


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## Damon (Jan 18, 2005)

http://www.2cah.com/pandora/Disease.html#Worm


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## Cichlidsrule (Nov 8, 2006)

What's that supposed to be showing us?


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## StarLab (Jan 14, 2007)

Just a shot in the dark, but I ran across this story a while ago. (Just took me half an hour to find it again  )

http://www.amonline.net.au/fishes/faq/tongue.htm

Not sure if it relates, but I thought I would pass it along anyway. Might be something there for you.

Good luck with this. Never seen anything like that either.


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## Damon (Jan 18, 2005)

Cichlidsrule said:


> What's that supposed to be showing us?


Its a link that has many diseases and pics as well as symptoms and treatments. Reading is fundamental.


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## TheOldSalt (Jan 28, 2005)

Thorny-headed worms. Disgusting. Their heads are embedded in the fish, and it's their tails and bodies you see sticking out exposed.

Hit 'em with Prazi-Pro at the very least, or any other strong wormer like levamisole, but prazi is easier and cheap.

What else is in this tank, anyway? 

This is definitely one that the "don't quarantine unless they show spots'' crowd needs to pay attention to in earnest. There are an awful lot of things out there you WON'T see until it's too late.


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## Cichlidsrule (Nov 8, 2006)

I searched on Google, but it says Thorny-headed worms usually live in the intestines...


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## TheOldSalt (Jan 28, 2005)

Aye, and planarians usually live under rotten logs, but most people only know them from the few aquatic species they see in fishtanks.

I suppose you could have a bizarre case of pharyngeal teeth gone berzerk here, but that wouldn't be my first guess.


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## Sue Gremlin (Jan 16, 2007)

That is NASTY. Can't say I've seen those before. I agree with Old Salt, I think they're thorny headed worms. 
There are several species of worms they can get in the mouth and gills though, so if it were my fish, I'd treat him with a potassium permanganate bath for 20 minutes (10ml/l). That will treat several types of worms and will cover bases. 
Praziquantel treats flatworms (i.e. flukes) only and doesn't do a whole lot for other types of worms. I don't think the thorny headed worm is a flatworm, so if you were gonna treat him with an anthelmintic rather than permanganate, I'd probably go with the levamisole.

Can you get some more photos of his mouth, and maybe his gills?


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## TheOldSalt (Jan 28, 2005)

I steered away from levamisole on account of the relative difficulty involved in it's use, but yeah, there are other things I should have mentioned. Good catch, Sue Gremlin.

I guess we'll never know what they turned out to be, since we haven't heard a peep of of the original poster sfor over two months. Too bad; I would have liked to find out the answer, even if it involved tweezers.

By the way, when I said thorny headed worm, I was being lazy and lumping together various types of parasites in the habit of burying their heads in the host's flesh, whether they were actual bona-fide thornys or not. My internet connection has been very unreliable lately, and I have to make my posts rather quickly.


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## Sue Gremlin (Jan 16, 2007)

Heh. It would have been good if I had read the dates on the thread. This weird fish predates me on this forum! Doh!


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