# re fluke disease



## mousey (Jan 18, 2005)

?
I have been reading until the wee hours about skin and gill flukes. Skin flukes are relatively easy to get rid of,while gill flukes much harder.
out of the 51 guppy fry I originally had I now have about 10 left. I think I may still lose a couple.
They and all my tanks are on a second round of treatment with prazipro as I had moved some of the more mature fry into other tanks.It is a very hard disease in that it causes growth stunting ,lack of color, fin and tail destruction, starvation and suffocation
Apparently some fish just carry a few flukes on them all the time and guppies can build up an immunity to them.

Would anyone like to hazard a guess why I had an outbreak of this?I did not treat this batch of guppies and platies any different than any other batches of fry. I did water changes every 2 week and the reading were 0.0, 20-30.
The tank is planted. other tank mates are a loach and a caged betta. The only thing I am wondering about is that I had been feeding extra to try to increase growth rate and I had a huge out break of snails.I kept most of them as food for the loach but there is some indIcation that snails are the middle man in a lot of fluke disease especially among humans and 4 footed animals.

Any info and ideas welcome especially if you have had this problem. 
I do not want to go through this nasty thing again.
Oddly enough the guppy fry that I gave away 3 weeks before hand are all doing well with their new owners and do not have any symptoms so it is something thaT AROSE BY ITSELF IN THAT THERE HAS BEEN NOTHING NEW ADDED TO THE TANK.Sorry Hit wrong button and got caps.


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## Guest (Aug 2, 2009)

Mousey,

ok so the guppy you gave away 3 weeks ago are fine and nothing new was added? the snails and the loaches were already in the tank? if thats the case:

the only thing that comes to my is that it is possible that the loaches busted open one of the bigger older snails and infected water seeped into the tank causing the outbreak. its quite well known that snails carry infected water over in the shell. 

now this is just a theory and am sure there might be some other explination to the outbreak.

Incase u added the snail after giving the guppy away, your only culprit can the snails. nothing else.


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## mousey (Jan 18, 2005)

snails are as old as the tank-5 years. Not the same snail obviously but desendants of the originals.
Dunno Zakk-


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## Guest (Aug 3, 2009)

then that can be the issue mousey.....sorry was just shooting the breeze with the snails idea.....

could it be that this happened during a WC? after you gave away the guppys? it is quite a possibility, far fetched as it might be, but i have a vague recollection of you saying you've been facing freq weather changes and maybe its just in the water? 

i dont mean to scare i mousey. sorry if i do.


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## mousey (Jan 18, 2005)

I dunno zakk and no one else has any answers either.
I am thinking maybe the huge snail population was the pproblem. Unfortunately I had to treat 6 tanks as my snails, fish and plants get transfered around.
I got an email back from Hikari re the prazipro. They say I should do at least 3 treatments.At least I have done 2! 
The guppy fry that are left are looking ok except for a lot of fin damage to them. I counted up 13 of them.They are also starting to fatten up and hunt in the gravel.

I tried to get one of my old girls to mate with a new black guppy I got 2 weeks ago but I think she is too old now ( she's2) may die if she is pregnant and delivers but she looks not to be.
At this point it appears that only the fry tank was badly hit but since plants were transfered since the outbreak and before I realized what an issue I had, and the couple of guppies were transfered I have treated all.


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## Guest (Aug 4, 2009)

dont beat ur self up mousey. u didnt know there was a problem.


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## emc7 (Jul 23, 2005)

The snail explosion could have harbored more flukes. I'm normally against 'nuking' snails. But after a problem like this no one would blame you for trying to eliminate the carrier.


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## mousey (Jan 18, 2005)

Yea well i am picking out newborn snails daily and they are going into a bucket outside to fend for themselves.


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