Neobenedenia Flukes Treatment

[Bucs20fan]

So the whole story. My copperband started to act weird and lost some color on the sides of his body a couple days ago and I noticed some slight deterioration of his fins. I assumed after research it was a bacterial infection, as that is what it looked like to a T. Well after 4 days of metro and kanaplex in a hospital tank, with symptoms getting worse I was almost at a loss. Until I googled a symptom of hanging out at the top of the water. It was suggested this could be flukes, which I was skeptical because there was no flashing or scratching that I had observed. I did a freshwater dip and sure enough large scale like flukes came off. So now that I have a positive ID and gave the fish relief and more time. As it is doing much better today. If I am correct my treatment will be as follows:

Prazi pro will be dosed today when I get home.

After 48 hrs 50% water change.

Wait 7 Days and then another dose of prazi.

After 48 hrs 50% water change

Wait 10 days and another dose of prazi.

48 hrs and 50% water change


I am under the impression it has to be done like this to make sure all the eggs hatch because prazi wont kill these kind of fluke eggs.


For those that are wondering, the flukes had to hitch hike in on corals I added. It is the only thing ive added in the last two months. Of course I dip my corals and inspect accordingly but my hypothesis is that one of these corals had fluke eggs attached to it and the dip did not kill it.

If there are holes in my treatment plan please let me know, any help is greatly appreciated!!!

 

[LeftyReefer]

sounds like a good plan.
you can use the following site, put in your tanks actual water temperature and salinity and it will give you a window for your repeat doses.
Marine Parasite Calendar

 

[Bucs20fan]

sounds like a good plan.
you can use the following site, put in your tanks actual water temperature and salinity and it will give you a window for your repeat doses.
Marine Parasite Calendar

Thank you for that tip, The calculator says treatment 7 days after the first with a third not being necessary, although I may do it again 7 days after the second treatment just to be sure, and prazi is pretty safe for most fishes.

 

[Bucs20fan]

@Jay Hemdal I read the article you posted regarding these flukes and Your treatment protocol also had 2 treatments, do you think a third will be necessary?

 

[Jay Hemdal]

@Jay Hemdal I read the article you posted regarding these flukes and Your treatment protocol also had 2 treatments, do you think a third will be necessary?

Two prazi treatments is a typical clearing treatment for most flukes, but Neobendenia is very tough to manage. That calculator looks really cool, and seems to give you concrete numbers, but IMO, it is way too optimistic. If even one Neo egg remains, the infection can start up again. One course of treatment has five doses. Personally, I've gone to hyposalinity for 35 days as the best control method. You only need to go to half salinity (16 ppt) or a specific gravity of 1.0125 - but I often use full hypo (1.009) to control Cryptocaryon/ich at the same time.

Here is some text I wrote on them:

Neobenedenia melleni (eye flukes)​

These are relatively large (up to 8 mm), egg-laying worms that live on the skin or eyes of marine fishes.


Symptoms
Neobenedenia infections peak slowly; there may be no symptoms for weeks after you acquire a fish. Eventually, as the flukes multiply and grow in size, they begin to cause symptoms of disease.

The first obvious symptom may be slightly cloudy eyes, caused by the transparent fluke feeding on the eye tissue and eliciting a tissue reaction. This gives this worm the common name of “eye fluke,” although it is unknown whether these worms actually prefer to feed on eye tissue, or whether that is just where they first become apparent.

As the infection becomes more serious, the fish will “flash,” their skin color will become dull, their fins may become tattered, and they just generally get a “scruffy” look to them. Rapid breathing due to stress, possible secondary infection, and then death follow if treatment is not begun.


Diagnosis
The best means of diagnosis is to give the fish a five-minute freshwater dip. Not only does this knock back the infection by killing the adult parasites, but even a casual look at the bottom of the dip container afterwards will help to positively identify this disease. The worms turn whitish and fall to the bottom. Many aquarists mistake these for scales that were dislodged from the fish. However, looking at these “scales” under a dissecting microscope, or even a hand lens, will soon show them for what they are—dead worms.

Sometimes a fish’s history can help diagnosis at least the potential for this disease. Angelfishes and butterflyfishes are especially prone to Neobenedenia infections, so any of these fish that have been housed at an import facility that doesn’t prophylactically treat for trematodes stand a very good chance of being infected.


Angelfish, Pomacanthus sp. ++
Barrimundi, Lates sp. ++
Batfish, Platax sp. +++
Butterflyfish, Chaetodon sp. ++
Cichlid, Tilapia sp. +++ (when housed in seawater)
Invertebrates 0 (but may carry eggs)
Jacks, Caraganidae +++
Lionfish, Pterois sp. +
Lookdowns, Selene sp. +++
Pyramid butterflyfish, Hemitaurichthys sp. +++
Grouper family, Serranidae ++
Garden eel, Taenioconger sp. +
Remora, Echeneis sp. +
Sharks and rays, Elasmobranchs 0
Surgeonfish, Acanthurus sp. ++
Spadefish, Chaetodipterus faber +++



Aquarium hosts for Neobenedenia sp. 0=not infected, + = sometimes infected, ++=commonly infected, +++=very commonly infected (From Bullard et-al 2000 and personal obs.)

Treatment

Many people suggest using a freshwater dip as a treatment for all incoming fish. The two drawbacks to this are 1) the dips are not 100% effective (and do not harm the fluke eggs) and 2) newly acquired fish often do not stand up well to the added stress of a freshwater dip when they first arrive.

Neobenedenia eggs can take 14 (or longer?) to hatch as motile larvae called oncomiracidium. Additionally, the eggs have sticky tendrils that attach them securely to all manner of objects in an aquarium. There is some merit to the idea of keeping a treatment tank free of substrate and siphoning the bottom regularly in order to remove some of these unhatched eggs. There have been reports that Lysmata cleaner shrimp feed on these eggs, rendering them non-viable. However, it is unlikely that in a normal aquarium, with many other food choices, that cleaner shrimp will markedly reduce their numbers.
Any successful treatment for these worms must be undertaken in stages. The first treatment kills off the adult worms (but this won’t kill the eggs), and the subsequent treatments kill off the juvenile worms after they have all hatched but before any of them have matured and begun to lay eggs of their own. Due to variables in timing, it is virtually impossible to accomplish this in only two treatments.

Whole-tank formalin baths at 166 ppm for one hour will eliminate the adult flukes from an aquarium but not the eggs. Because this type of treatment has no residual effect, the treatment may need to be repeated every two weeks for two or three more times. Experience in public aquarium exhibits has shown that this method rarely clears a tank completely of this pest.

A better alternative is a Praziquantel treatment at 4 ppm, followed by a 50% water change after 48 hours, then a second treatment 9 to 10 days later, followed by another 50% water change 48 hours later.

At the aquarium I was the curator at, we noticed that multiple Praziquantel treatments on the same system, over months to years, required higher and higher doses, combined with increased frequency of the treatments in order to maintain effectiveness. Eventually, the praziquantel was simply no longer effective. One supposition was that the target parasites were building an immunity to the drug. That seemed unlikely as genetic change in multi-cellular organisms typically takes longer to happen (as opposed to drug-resistant bacteria that can develop resistance in short order). We wondered then, what could be rendering Praziquantel so ineffective on repeat doses?
Subsequent research indicates that bacterial degradation of the Praziquantel (Thomas et-al, 2016) is the process at work. Their study concluded that while Praziquantel is stable for over two weeks in sterile marine aquarium water, when dosed in working systems, it degrades below detectable limits in just nine days. A subsequent dose on the same system showed a reduction in Praziquantel in less than 48 hours. The presence or absence of fish in the system did not affect this rate of degradation. The natural bacterial population of the aquarium actually works to eliminate Praziquantel from the water.

Barrett L. Christie, a public aquarium curator, has researched a variety of treatment methods and has struck upon one that is highly effective. The treatment is relatively simple; in a quarantine system, the fish are exposed to hyposalinity (low salinity) for 30 days. Exactly how low of a salinity is the variable that needs to be controlled. Some species of fish do not tolerate lower salinities, yet if the salinity is not reduced enough, the parasite population is only reduced, not eradicated. Barrett has hit upon a workable value of 17 parts per thousand, a bit less than half the salinity of normal seawater (this equates to a specific gravity of around 1.013). Using a target of 16 ppt for 35 days is better, as it ensures that any errors in salinity measurement or timing won’t affect the treatment. Obviously, most invertebrates cannot be present during this sort of treatment. Sharks and some rays cannot tolerate it either. Assuming the fish are healthy in all other respects, you begin this treatment by lowering the salinity to the target value over 24 to 48 hours. During the low salinity treatment, water quality must be monitored closely, especially pH. Be aware that some other diseases, notably Uronema and Amyloodinium thrive at lower salinities. Luckily, another common scourge, marine ich, Cryptocaryon irritans, is also inhibited by low salinity. After 35 days, the salinity is gradually raised back to normal. It is imperative to perform this change back to normal seawater very slowly. While marine fish tolerate a drop in salinity very well, their kidneys have more difficulty adjusting as the salinity is raised. Never return fish to normal salinity faster than 72 hours, and don’t make large changes at one time.

Jay

 

[Bucs20fan]

So @Jay Hemdal would you say my best course of action, being i plan to use prazi instead of hypo, is to do a treatment of prazi 5 times. Spread 7 days a part, and each 48 hours do 50% water change after treatment. 5 treatments every 7 days puts it out to 35 days which in theory should cover me for all the current eggs in the aquarium?

 

[Jay Hemdal]

So @Jay Hemdal would you say my best course of action, being i plan to use prazi instead of hypo, is to do a treatment of prazi 5 times. Spread 7 days a part, and each 48 hours do 50% water change after treatment. 5 treatments every 7 days puts it out to 35 days which in theory should cover me for all the current eggs in the aquarium?

That would work, I would give the fish a 5 minute FW dip before moving them back to the DT at the end.

One word of warning - the 5 treatment plan is based on praziquantel powder, not Prazipro. The problem with Prazipro is the solvent used, a glycol. I do NOT know if that will prove to be an issue, I've never dosed it myself more than 3x in a row. Always aerate heavily when using prazipro, and if you see cloudy water, you need to do partial water changes.

Personally, I always go the hypo route now.....

Jay

 

[Bucs20fan]

That would work, I would give the fish a 5 minute FW dip before moving them back to the DT at the end.

One word of warning - the 5 treatment plan is based on praziquantel powder, not Prazipro. The problem with Prazipro is the solvent used, a glycol. I do NOT know if that will prove to be an issue, I've never dosed it myself more than 3x in a row. Always aerate heavily when using prazipro, and if you see cloudy water, you need to do partial water changes.

Personally, I always go the hypo route now.....

Jay

So my issue to not use hypo is that im sure there are eggs in the DT, without a doubt. I was going to treat the DT with prazi pro as I have no feather dusters or other worms in the tank, and I could care less if it kills my bristle worms. I can fw dip and then hypo the fish, but my corals and such wouldnt survive hypo. And Ive read that these particular fluke eggs will stick to anything, specifically the sand bed and rocks.

 

[Jay Hemdal]

So my issue to not use hypo is that im sure there are eggs in the DT, without a doubt. I was going to treat the DT with prazi pro as I have no feather dusters or other worms in the tank, and I could care less if it kills my bristle worms. I can fw dip and then hypo the fish, but my corals and such wouldnt survive hypo. And Ive read that these particular fluke eggs will stick to anything, specifically the sand bed and rocks.

Yes, Neo eggs have sticky tendrils. However, with no fish hosts, they die out in about 30 days (technically less time, but I like a buffer). Prazi has no effect on Neo eggs, all is does it stun the adult flukes, causing them to drop off the fish. They then can’t reattach and they die.
Jay