alliecat
Active Member
Hi all. Got my boyfriend a fire goby for his tank last week and about a day or 2 after we got him, we noticed the otherwise immaculately healthy fish had a curly white thing hanging behind his gill. Initially we thought it was maybe a pieces of food or something caught in his gill but when it didnt go away after 2 days we looked it up and turns out it was an anchor worm! It's apparently actually a type of copepod that likes to use firefish as a host and is harmless at first- until it multiplies or destroys gill tissue. Apparently manual removal is the most effective method, since string chemical treatment is the next option but is still not 100% effective. Managed to get the fish out today and pulled the sucker off. Here's a picture of it under 40x magnification under my microscope. After 2 years in the hobby I've never heard of this parasite.
