WHAT IS WHIRLING DISEASE AND HOW DO YOU GET RID OF IT?
- Thread starter scott g
- Start date
I don't think that the copper will help at all, why do you think your fish have it?
It is a cold water fish disease mainly effecting young trout and salmonids and less commonly other cold water fish. It is caused by a proto/matazoan called Myxobolus cerebralis. The disease has a multistage lifecycle including fish and small water worms such as blackworms and tubifex but it's spores can survive drying and live at least 20 years witrhout a host.
The symptoms are a bent, twisted spine, darkening of the tail, and whirling motion, followed by death.
So far there is no cure once the disease becomes noticable. Injecting an infected fish with Furazolidone and treating the tank with Forma-green has some success in preventing it's spread and stopping the symptoms from getting worse.
Current protcols for aquaculture requice the fish and any that share the water system to be destroyed and bodies to be disposed of as biohazardous waste. The system is then disinfected using chlorine bleach before reuse.
Sorry this is not good news but there is no record of it affecting tropical or warm waterfish. here are a couple links and a pic of some infected trout.
http://www.whirling-disease.org/
http://whirlingdisease.montana.edu/about/anglers.htm
It is a cold water fish disease mainly effecting young trout and salmonids and less commonly other cold water fish. It is caused by a proto/matazoan called Myxobolus cerebralis. The disease has a multistage lifecycle including fish and small water worms such as blackworms and tubifex but it's spores can survive drying and live at least 20 years witrhout a host.
The symptoms are a bent, twisted spine, darkening of the tail, and whirling motion, followed by death.
So far there is no cure once the disease becomes noticable. Injecting an infected fish with Furazolidone and treating the tank with Forma-green has some success in preventing it's spread and stopping the symptoms from getting worse.
Current protcols for aquaculture requice the fish and any that share the water system to be destroyed and bodies to be disposed of as biohazardous waste. The system is then disinfected using chlorine bleach before reuse.
Sorry this is not good news but there is no record of it affecting tropical or warm waterfish. here are a couple links and a pic of some infected trout.
http://www.whirling-disease.org/
http://whirlingdisease.montana.edu/about/anglers.htm
It may not be I'm not sure. All I know is that I have a fish currently that won't eat but he isn't bloating up, sometimes he hides but not as much as he did a few days ago before I put in the pennies but he's still not eating. I had a yellow lab. who acted like this for about three weeks and even though I treated the tank with an Anti Parasetic/Anti Bacterial medication he still didn't start eating and so I finally said screw it, better to get rid of him than to loose the whole tank of fish. so I flushed him about 3 days ago and everybody seemed to be doing well until yesterday and now I have a zebra doing the same thing. What can it be?
If it is bloating and swimming strangely the most common culprit is bacterial septicemia. Binox and an antibacterial food should help.