Do my fish have worms?

[antwan]

Now i have heard of discus having worms before, im not sure about other fish though.

As i was cleaning out my canister filter today, i noticed in my coarse sponge loads of little red (dead) worms, there were also seethrough bodies of them too. I am quite sure they wouldnt be bloodworms that have been sucked into the filter because the fish usually get them all before they even hit the bottom. Anyway these worms are about the colour, shape and size of bloodworms.

So im not sure if theyre worms in my tank or fish, however, i must say my discus have been a bit sad recently and 'itching' themselves (they go up to a leaf slowly and then slide their bodies against it quickly).

Also, if these are worms in the fish, is there any way i can de-worm fish?

Thankyou.

[Faran]

de-worming discus is easiest done by crushing up a quarter of a dog "drontal" de-worming pill in a cube or two of discus tucker and feeding them making sure they all get a good share.

The scratching/itching/rubbing behaviour you describe is usually due to internal parasites, white spot or poor water quality.

The worms you've foind in your filter are tubified worms and once again signal poor water quality. Just about every establised tank has some of them, but if they've invaded your internal filter you might want to spend some time looking at your tank and figureing out if there's an accumulation of debris somewhere.

They're GREAT when growing out fry, though! I have a fry tank with plenty of them in the dingy gravel and the fry always have nice full bellies from eating them.

[Robert Smith]

There are also de-worming products available from pet stores. The one I saw initially was a bird de-wormer. I had some guppies infected with Camellanus. Not pretty. Most people say you can't cure it and the bird wormer did not do the job.

Levasole (levamisole hydrochloride) is used on Cows & sheep and works (mostly). Camellanus is bad because even if you kill the worm, it doesn't necessairly let go and causes infection.