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I'm keeping Uaru amphiacanthoides in my SA tank. And at feeding time today I was watching them quite closely. As you know, most fish starts "dumping their waste" when they are eating and from the look of it my Uaru had been nibbling on the driftwood, their waste looked almost like that of a large Panaque, processed wood. But the waste from the smallest of my Uaru looked different, it was full of tiny wriggeling white worms. Ofcourse one of my Satanoperca cf. jurupari grabbed it and the worms spread all over free floating and wriggeling in the water. Anyone ever seen this before? If these worms are harmful I can now assume that at least two of my fish have them in their body. Should i medicate? With what?

The worms were tiny, about 2-3mm long. And the Uaru have been very dark coloured the last two days.

i think you should start to medicate against parasitic nematodes RIGHT AWAY or you'll loose not only that fish, but the entire tank....

Uaru's are a bit like "Black water rabbits".
they're veggo's, and like many vegetarians they have very long intestines. so, yes, they can and do nibble soft bogwood, roots, leaves, fallen leaves, detritus, fruits and other high fiber stuff.

you should be very careful; both Uaru amphiacanthoides and Uaru fernandezyepezi are known to be unique among South Anerican cichlids to be victims of what is known as "Malawi-disease", "Tropheus-disease", "BLOAT" and similar names.
wich means massive gut-infections of a mixture of flagellates, bacteria and worse.
dark colors point at diseased, stressed fish; like the Discus (wich whom they share habitat btw) dark coloration is very bad news!

There are a few "simple" rules to wich you should keep extremely strickt:
-pH may never pass 7; much better if you keep it at 5.5-6.5
-NEVER feed protein-rich stuff; any artificial food (even flake) wich contains bovine heart, chicken etc is a no-go; spirulina-based flakes and pellets (and pre-soak pellets and granules to avoid blocked or bursting guts!), veggie matter, aquatic plants are the way to go.
also high fiber crustaceans like cyclops, mysis or daphnia may be fed sparingly....

temperatures should remain in the 26-29'C range, and the water should be quite low on any minerals and virtually nitrite and nitrate-free.

if you can collect rainwater, that's very good.

but for now; get medication ASAP.

Get some wormer plus from the UK, it's all natural and shifts worms a treat.

Tom

ARGH!
Owch; can you fix that avatar plz? now the whole page layout is shot to Hell.....

jools, I thought there was a maximum on these things?

Sorted

Sorry bud.

much better! tnx.


TalenT, how are the fish doing? is the sick one still alive?

Been very busy the last couple of days so I haven't checked this forum. Uarus are doing fine, the smallest one have become lighter in color, and they are all eating with good apetite. Have been feeding them spirulina flakes, cucumber and some Tropical cichlid pellets (I try to give them the possibility to choose, the pellets are mostly for my other fish, but the Uaru eat these too).

Not all brands of medication are available to us... So I think it's easier to ask this: What should the active ingredient be to battle these worms successfully?

Have anyone tried the "Jungle Anti-Parasite Medicated Fish Food", active ingredients: metronidazole, praziquantel, levamisole?

My fish wouldn't touch the stuff.

Btw. And I'm NOT arguing with you Sid. But I have been reading a lot about Uarus since I was a kid ( and didn't afford the tankspace to keep them ) so I'm well aware of their requirements with food and water params. BUT... And here comes the interesting part... One of our customers are successfully keeping Uarus with discus of different sizes, and he is feeding his fish with lots and lots of beefheart (maybe with a touch of spinach)... as I said, still having a lot of success with his Uarus, even spawning behaviour (please note that I don't support the idea of feeding fish (certainly not herbivore fish) with beefheart).

It's just interesting to see that what shouldn't work, indeed works very well...

...The question in this case might be: For how long?

You could try mashing up that medicated food in some more tasty food. E.g. shrimp meat. Those active ingredients would definitely take out those nematodes.

Regarding the dropsy thing, there's several schools of thought on that, as is there on beefheart. Personally I've _only_ had fish develop dropsy after feeding with frozen bloodworms (by which I mean chironomid larvae, not tubifex worms), which I have reason to believe had very high levels of coliform and other waste bacteria in them.