Treating Internal Parasites with Medicated Live Blackworms

TheEngineer · Nov 8, 2016

I have 5 Vanderbilt chromis in quarantine and after successfully treating them for velvet they were kind enough to also have an internal parasite. Two of the fish have the tell-tale white-stringy poop of internal parasites. I took a quick video in case anyone is wondering what that looks like.

The advice from the ever helpful @melypr1985 was to continue Prazipro and start feeding the fish food mixed with Metroplex and Focus. The Focus is supposed to help bind the Metroplex to the food. These chromis eat just about anything I put in, but they are huge fans of live blackworms. I wondered if I could somehow infuse the blackworms with the medication and the question still remains. So I'm chronicling a little experiment to see if it is an option or not.

More pictures and progress notes to follow.

TheEngineer · Nov 8, 2016

Day 1: I added half a scoop of metroplex and half a scoop of focus to a cup with a few worms. I don't know what's going to happen so I'm not medicating all of the worms I have. My concern is that the metronidazole is going to kill the worms. I am trying to kill some sort of wormlike parasite in the fishes' guts after all. We'll see how these guys do overnight and if they are still alive in the morning.

Humblefish · Nov 8, 2016

Would be better to food soak using pellets, which are porous and absorbable. Worms are slimy and secrete oil.

TheEngineer · Nov 8, 2016

Humblefish said:
Would be better to food soak using pellets, which are porous and absorbable. Worms are slimy and secrete oil.

It is probably not an efficient transport medium, I'll give you that!

When I first got these fish, they would only eat live foods. I wouldn't have been able to treat them with dry food. I could now after several weeks of training though. @Paul B's thoughts on the benefits of feeding blackworms made me add them to the rotation. Now that all my fish eat them, I wondered if I could continue using it for medicinal uses too. I didn't see anything online about people trying it, so I figured I'd give it a whirl. I'm about to post my Day 2 findings which will make the effectiveness a little clearer too

TheEngineer · Nov 8, 2016

Day 2:
The worms are still alive. Kind of. They're moving very slowly though. I'm thinking the medication is not doing positive things to them. Also notice most of the medication is still just sitting in the cup. I'll give it another day and see where we stand tomorrow.

Humblefish · Nov 8, 2016

Remember Slimey the Worm from Sesame Street? He doesn't seem conducive to absorption.

Here is a photo of him & Paul together.

TheEngineer · Nov 8, 2016

Humblefish said:
Remember Slimey the Worm from Sesame Street? He doesn't seem conducive to absorption.

Here is a photo of him & Paul together.

lol! But Slimey does eat!

Humblefish · Nov 8, 2016

icecool2 said:
lol! But Slimey does eat!

I apologize for the comic relief, please carry on with your experiment.

TheEngineer · Nov 8, 2016

Humblefish said:
I apologize for the comic relief, please carry on with your experiment.

I enjoy it, no apologies needed.

melypr1985 · Nov 8, 2016

Humblefish said:
Remember Slimey the Worm from Sesame Street? He doesn't seem conducive to absorption.

Here is a photo of him & Paul together.

OH my! that made me laugh loud enough to earn surprised stares from my dogs and child.

jeffrey holloway · Nov 9, 2016

Take HF advice, I cleared three petco snowflake clowns with parzipro for 10 days flowed by pellets treated with metroplex/focus for 5 days. Never know what you get with fish from petco. Couldn't beat the price for their size. I followed the prazi pro with metroplex just to be sure. I'm going to leave them in QT for another month. DT is in fallow for another month or so anyway.

TheEngineer · Nov 10, 2016

Day 3:
The worms are dead. To be honest, I'm not surprised. That at least tells me that you can't medicate a batch of them and use them for the full 10 days of treatment. It still doesn't answer my original question though of whether or not you can treat the worms and then feed them to the fish within 48 hours.

melypr1985 · Nov 10, 2016

icecool2 said:
Day 3:
The worms are dead. To be honest, I'm not surprised. That at least tells me that you can't medicate a batch of them and use them for the full 10 days of treatment. It still doesn't answer my original question though of whether or not you can treat the worms and then feed them to the fish within 48 hours.

I would be tempted to go with humble's observation that the worm's slimy exterior would make it difficult to get the medication to absorb into the worm or even stick to it.

You could always medicate a frozen option or a pellet option and feed a few black worms with them. This way you get them feeding in an excited way which would up the chances of them just eating everything available including the medicated food.

Paul B · Nov 10, 2016

Humblefish said:
Remember Slimey the Worm from Sesame Street? He doesn't seem conducive to absorption.

Here is a photo of him & Paul together.

There is no room in this serious and austere hobby for humor. This is very serious and we should all concentrate on that fish with the worm.

I actually painted a self portrait of me on my Grand Daughter's wall. But yours looks more like me.

Paul B · Nov 10, 2016

icecool2 said:
Day 3:
The worms are dead. To be honest, I'm not surprised. That at least tells me that you can't medicate a batch of them and use them for the full 10 days of treatment. It still doesn't answer my original question though of whether or not you can treat the worms and then feed them to the fish within 48 hours.

Maybe because the stuff you are feeding them is meant to kill worms. Just a thought.

saltyfilmfolks · Nov 10, 2016

You might be using a medication designed to kill intestinal worms.

TheEngineer · Nov 10, 2016

Paul B said:
Maybe because the stuff you are feeding them is meant to kill worms. Just a thought.

I know

I said that up front

It takes three days though. So it's still possible there could be some benefit for the fish to be fed them with the medication. Maybe.

saltyfilmfolks said:
You might be using a medication designed to kill intestinal worms.

Indeed I am.

Paul B · Nov 11, 2016

It is possible. If you look at one of those blackworms under a microscope like I do. (yeah I know

) you will see that they pump water through their body to eat and breathe. Their body looks like a segmented pumping station. I don't know what happens to the medication after it gets in the worm, but I would imagine the worm doesn't absorb much of it just like it would not absorb other pollutants it sucks in.
But I am not a worm proctologist so I can't be sure.

TheEngineer · Nov 11, 2016

Paul B said:
It is possible. If you look at one of those blackworms under a microscope like I do. (yeah I know ) you will see that they pump water through their body to eat and breathe. Their body looks like a segmented pumping station. I don't know what happens to the medication after it gets in the worm, but I would imagine the worm doesn't absorb much of it just like it would not absorb other pollutants it sucks in.
But I am not a worm proctologist so I can't be sure.

That's what I was wondering too. Some of the medication has to get into the worm, I don't know what happens once that happens and how quickly it gets metabolized into something else. I was hoping that if you feed it to worms and then feed the worms to the fish "quickly enough" (not sure what that means at this point) if you can get the therapeutic effect of the medicine with the nutritional benefit of the worms.

Triggreef · Nov 14, 2016

One reason i always shied away from feeding meds. You never know what amount the fish have actually ingested. I always stick to medicating the water in suggested doses.