Anchor Worms - Remedies

[Roan]

Long story short -- I sold my school of Melanotaenia parva last year. I went back to the guy I sold them to so I could borrow a mating pair, I saw that they were in extremely ill health. I took six home and put them in my spawning tank. At first I thought they had gill flukes and I was treating with Fluke Tabs. They were getting better, but when I stopped treating two of them started flashing again.

Now it appears that the biggest male has what looks like anchor worms hanging off his gills.

I'm thinking of contacting the owner and telling him I want to euthanize the big one -- he's not doing well at all and I highly doubt he's going to get much better. He's not eating and he's having trouble breathing. He's been like that for weeks now.

The others look much better now, but they are obviously carrying something nasty.

Sigh. What do you guys recommend as the best treatment for anchors?

It's very possible that they all have both anchor and flukes. God only knows.

Roan

[TwoTankAmin]

I have never had to treat for this, but your post got me curious so I did some surfing. There are two sites I checked which you may find helpful. The first is a UK koi site and has pretty detailed infor on the life cycle of this pest and suggest treatments. Koi disease & treatments

This is what the second site says:

Anchor Worm (Lernaea)

Symptoms: The fish scrapes itself against objects, whitish-green threads hang out of the fish's skin with an inflamed area at the point of attachment.

Anchor worms are actually crustaceans. The young are free swimming and borrow into the skin, go into the muscles and develop for several months before showing. They release eggs and die. The holes left behind are ugly and may become infected.
The anchor worm is too deeply imbedded to safely remove. Treatment can best be done with a 10 to 30 minute bath in 10 mg per liter of potassium permanganate. Or treat the whole tank with 2 mg per liter, but this method is messy and dyes the water.

Note the UK sites suggests manual removal while the second says the worms imbeded too deeply to remove safely.

Hope this helps some.

[Roan]

Nod, I've been to all the koi sites. I wanted to know if anyone here had treated and if so what you guys here would recommend.

I am going to continue on with Fluke Tabs, which are supposed to deal with anchor as well, and we'll see what happens.

Roan