Levimasole

[Mad Duff]

I recently treat my Yasuhikotakia Sidthimunki (Botia still sounds better to me ) with Levimasole because 6 of the 10 had not grown as well as the other 4 and 2 were looking in quite bad shape (very skinny even though eating and quite sunken in behind the eyes).

After lots of trawling the internet and LOL archives and advice from members of LOL I came up with this dosage rate:

0.27ml of 7.5% levimasole solution to 1 imperial gallon.

I then received this from Emma:

1ml of Levamisole hydrochloride liquid at 7.5% solution will contain 75mg of active ingredient. Thus to obtain 200mg per 40 litres, you will need to use 2.66ml of Levamisole at 7.5%. This coverts down to 0.3ml per UK gallon.

So with our calculations being very close I settled for 0.3ml / Imp gallon. I received mixed advice about treatment periods etc and decided to go with advice received from Mikev and leave a 5 day period between treatments.

So this is what I did:

Day one - add 9.4ml of levimasole to a bucket of tank water and add that to the tank, I also left all lights out on the tank.
Day Two - carried out a 50% water change

Day Three - 4 long thread like worms were removed from tank while feeding (can only describe as see-through tubifex worms). A difference in the Sidthimunki's stomach size after eating was already visible.

Day Eight - again 9.4ml of Levimasole added to bucket of tank water and added back to tank, again tank lights left off.
Day Nine - carried out a 50% water change

I was going to carry out another treatment 5 days later but decided not to on this occasion as the treatment seems to have worked with great results. I can happily say that I now have 9 very fat and healthy looking Sithimunki's and one that is no longer a skinny as he was and catching up with the others. It has been quite astonishing how fast they seem to have gained weight after the treatment.

I am sorry for the long and drawn out post but I hope someone else can benefit from this post to help them when using Levimasole, I would also like to thank all the members who gave advice about using Levimasole.

[Emma Turner]

Fantastic, Mark, that's great news!

[mikev]

Wonderful news!

Hey, you did not make a photo of the worms per chance? Would be nice to ID them, or just have it available as a lesson for others.

[Graeme Robson]

Excellent!!

[Martin Thoene]

I recently treat my Yasuhikotakia Sidthimunki (Botia still sounds better to me )

Mark.....don't try saying Yasuhikotakia while chewing gum. You might end up with a tongue strain.

Martin.

[palaeodave]

Great news for your loaches. But what exactly is levimasole? Seen lots of people talk about it but nobody has said specifically what it does! I take it that its a treatment for parasites? I have five angelfish and all but one of them have grown well. The runt of the group eats well, is active and seems happy enough but its quite skinny and its skull sticks out a bit, if you know what I mean. Is this cause for concern?

I just noticed last night that my two adult Botia almorhae's have a strange line running vertically at their tail end. Looking at older pics it seems they've always had it, but now it looks like its made of blood. I also noticed a similar looking mark on two of my angels.....I'm a little concerned. The pictures don't really show how blood-like they look in real life but you can get an idea of what they're like.




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[Mad Duff]

Hey, you did not make a photo of the worms per chance? Would be nice to ID them, or just have it available as a lesson for others.

Sorry Mike I didnt think to take a photo, the best way I can describe them is that they looked like a length of thick hair about 1" long or like a clear tubifex worm, I have had a look at a few of the hair worms Nematomorpha and they look similar.

Mark.....don't try saying Yasuhikotakia while chewing gum. You might end up with a tongue strain.

Martin.

I wont attempt it Martin, in fact I cant pronounce it without chewing gum

Hi Palaeodave, Levimasole is a cattle and sheep wormer and can only be purchased through a vet, I think mine was £14.75 for a 5ooml bottle along witha syringe and needle. It can be used for internal parasites as well as a boost to the immune system.

[shari2]

The bright red at the edges of fins is often indicative of bacterial hemmorrhagic septicimia. It is extremely contagious and deadly. When did you first notice the blood red lines?

It is a gram negative bacteria that causes hemorrhaging in the blood vessels, eventually compromises the liver and heart. The treatment is oxytetracycline.

Here's a link to a thread on it in the Angelfish forum. If they are all eating and acting normally still you may be able to save them with quick action, water changes and medication. The fact that both the botia and the angel are showing bloody lines around their fins is disturbing...

http://www.angelfish.net/yabbse/index.p ... 6#msg91606

Here's a pdf on it. Hopefully this is not what is causing your fish to have the red lines, but best to check it out and make sure, I think.

http://aquanic.org/publicat/state/il-in ... eatment%22

hope this helps

[palaeodave]

Oh crap that is worrying. I noticed it within the last day or two, but looking at some older pics of the angels there was a very small hemorrhage on the angel as much as several weeks ago....can't think how this could have happened as I hadn't added any new fish for months by this point and I've always kept up with water changes and hoovering up the poo.

Ok, I think I need to get some oxytetracycline. There was a link to a supplier on that forum but its American. Does anyone know of a seller in Britain?

[shari2]

Skim through that pdf. This disease is actually present in the intestinal tracts of many fish and will manifest for a number of reasons...it also lists a couple of treatments for it.

[mikev]

The bright red at the edges of fins is often indicative of bacterial hemmorrhagic septicimia. It is extremely contagious and deadly. When did you first notice the blood red lines?

It is a gram negative bacteria that causes hemorrhaging in the blood vessels, eventually compromises the liver and heart. The treatment is oxytetracycline.

...................

We had this with a gastro shipment, I even posted photos a while back.

Minocycline (closely related to tetracycline) worked very well, it should be available as Maracyn2: there were no losses in a shipment of 40, with perhaps half showing the signs.

Tetracycline also works, and one can use it as a high concentration bath, one may be enough. But you need to move quickly: I lost a Kubotai to it a year ago by delaying: while TC bath still cured the infection (signs gone), the fish was weakened and did not make it in the end.

[shari2]

On the angelfish forum they run into this from time to time. They really need clean water and deteriorating water conditions can bring it on. The majority of posters there don't have much success with Maracyn 2, though a few have.

I'd pm Emma and see if she could help with locating a supplier in the UK, or an effective alternative.

Good luck! At this stage you should be able to get them through this.

[mikev]

Hey, you did not make a photo of the worms per chance? Would be nice to ID them, or just have it available as a lesson for others.

Sorry Mike I didnt think to take a photo, the best way I can describe them is that they looked like a length of thick hair about 1" long or like a clear tubifex worm, I have had a look at a few of the hair worms Nematomorpha and they look similar.

Hopefully you ID'd them correctly. Capillari worms are somewhat similar, and it may be something else. Round worms are difficult to ID unless you are trained...perhaps more difficult than ID'ing loaches. It appears that what you got are not tapeworms where we can be certain of non-direct reproduction, but rather something similar to nematodes...but what? (The name Nematomorpha incidentally literally means "similar to Nematodes"). Notice that there are many species in each group, to make ID'ing more complicated.

But the important thing is not the ID, but knowing if you got a direct or indirect type of worm. You don't.

The difference is that one group requires an intermediate host, so killing them all solves the problem. The other kind reproduces in the tank, so you must have multiple treatments; two treatments kill the adults each time with near 100% certainty but possibly leave some eggs and larvae in the tank, so you need to come back for them. (In the Momfish FAQ she mentioned four+ rounds for direct Nematodes.--valid.)

I'm somewhat paranoid here, since I saw a near total wipeout due to these things. So the tank that has been exposed to a fish infected by direct nematodes for less than an hour (my N.Platiceps incident) is getting at least five treatments, spaced by five days (currently, 3 done, next is Sunday night). I'd even apply the same treatment to all my other tanks except that in this specific case I know exactly what I did during the fatal hour and I did not come close to any other tank.

You may be seeing improvements since the adult worms are gone, but unless you can be sure that the eggs/larvae are not present, it may come back. Compare this with treating ich after all symptomes are gone, it is the same principle...

Sorry for the possibly bad news.

One more hint: capillari nematodes are likely to do very substantial damage to small fish quickly. So if you had the sids for more than two months and no fish in the tank died, you probably don't have the worst kind... You probably killed all the worms even in the worst case already. But these are guesses, really, and the price of an error is high. If I were in your place, I'd assume the worst and consider running more treatments.

Yeah: for those who had their dinner already:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nematomorpha

[palaeodave]

Thanks for your help everyone, particularly shari2 and Emma (by mail). My work shifts today are 5.30-9am then 1-4pm, so normally I'd be sleeping in between but I think frantically visiting various vets to find somebody who knows something about fish is a better use of my time today!

What form would the oxytetracycline come in for use in a fish tank? Presumably not the tablets that teenagers take for acne!

[Mad Duff]

Hi Mike thanks for the info, I have had the sid's for probably around 5 months now and in that time I have only lost a couple of neon's which I was given and to be honest they weren't 100% when I got them so I wasn't shocked to lose them.

I will probably do a couple more doses just to be on the safe side .