OneSockERock
Community Member
6 years of ignoring any type of quarantine procedure finally came back to bite me.
"Never bothered to quarantine anything on my 20L over the years and never had a fish problem, so why would I start now on my new 40B setup?" I thought as I casually scooped my first inhabitants straight from the lfs bag into the tank. Cut to 3 weeks later, fire fish has multiple ~2mm flukes crawling on her.
Little history...
12/19 Dry rock/live sand, water in, and a cube of frozen calanus with daily microbacter 7 dosing to get me cycled
1/23 1x clownfish and 1x nassarius snail from lfs #1
1/30 1x common (red) fire fish also from lfs #1
2/6 2x astrea snails and 1x scarlet hermit from lfs#2
2/10 notice a spot about 1mm when the light hits it right on her tail where the red fades, don't think much of it, must have just scratched herself on the walls of her cave right?
2/11 fire fish is looking "lumpy" on the sides when you look at her straight on ...huh
2/12 roughly 5-8 "lumps" are clearly visible and moving around her body throughout the day ...start researching in horror
2/13 one is on her head between the eyes and hours later another is on her eye...
Cue freak out leading to $150+ in purchases of various medications and equipment to get a 10g QT up and cycling that night. Ya know, everything I probably should have already had after 6 years in this hobby? Live and learn I suppose.
Never saw any on the clown this whole time, but he's always wiggling around so I can't really get a good look. Over the next few days the adult flukes start to flake off and presumably die. Prazipro arrives during this time but no point in dosing then since the eggs are resistant to treatment. Time to wait until the next generation.
2/20 notice a small one on her body near the tail fin, game time.
2/21 freshwater dip just the fire fish in ph buffered rodi and find this ~1mm hideous beast and maybe 2 or 3 others in the dip. Magnified on my hand scope for your viewing pleasure, second picture obviously not mine. Yep Neobenedenia, successfully reproducing and re-infecting my fire fish in my new set up. Thanks lfs #1 or #2, but in the end I know it's only my fault.
So here we are, dosed the first round of 2.5ppm Prazipro on sunday night (2/21) with an airstone running constantly since. Both fish are still eating, fire fish seems sad though. Think I saw a new small one on her body near the tail fin today, still nothing noticeable on the clown but presumably he's infected too. 10g QT is only a week and half into cycle, but I did pick up a bottle of biospira in case I need it. Of course I could always pull the sponge from my established 20L in an emergency but that tank has it's own cast of annoyances like aiptasia, vermetids and algae that I'm not trying to spread.
Fish seem stable so I'm going to proceed with the second dose of Prazipro in the 40 this weekend and see what happens, but preparing for 35 days hypo salinity for both fish in QT and leaving the 40B to fallow during that time. I'll be setting up a second 20L as a QT this weekend for future new fish observation and keep the 10g as a hospital tank to treat meds in when it hits the fan. Lesson learned.
Any other suggestions or pointers for dealing with neobenedenia? Any success stories?
Thankfully this is the one that woke me up from my false sense of security as opposed to other more aggressive parasites/diseases, because I was woefully unprepared to act quickly in terms of medications and additional equipment on hand. Sucks if I'll have to leave the 40 to fallow for the next month, but at least I think I got a handle on it from here on out.
For the readers out there who stumbled upon this in their own research, a couple articles that I found useful in learning about Neobenedenia and their lifecycle...
Effects of temperature on the life cycle of Neobenedenia sp. (Monogenea: Capsalidae) from Seriola rivoliana (Almaco jack) in Bahía de La Paz, BCS Mexico (labeled picture credit)
Reproductive Strategies of the Insidious Fish Ectoparasite, Neobenedenia sp. (Capsalidae: Monogenea)
"Never bothered to quarantine anything on my 20L over the years and never had a fish problem, so why would I start now on my new 40B setup?" I thought as I casually scooped my first inhabitants straight from the lfs bag into the tank. Cut to 3 weeks later, fire fish has multiple ~2mm flukes crawling on her.
Little history...
12/19 Dry rock/live sand, water in, and a cube of frozen calanus with daily microbacter 7 dosing to get me cycled
1/23 1x clownfish and 1x nassarius snail from lfs #1
1/30 1x common (red) fire fish also from lfs #1
2/6 2x astrea snails and 1x scarlet hermit from lfs#2
2/10 notice a spot about 1mm when the light hits it right on her tail where the red fades, don't think much of it, must have just scratched herself on the walls of her cave right?
2/11 fire fish is looking "lumpy" on the sides when you look at her straight on ...huh
2/12 roughly 5-8 "lumps" are clearly visible and moving around her body throughout the day ...start researching in horror
2/13 one is on her head between the eyes and hours later another is on her eye...
Cue freak out leading to $150+ in purchases of various medications and equipment to get a 10g QT up and cycling that night. Ya know, everything I probably should have already had after 6 years in this hobby? Live and learn I suppose.
Never saw any on the clown this whole time, but he's always wiggling around so I can't really get a good look. Over the next few days the adult flukes start to flake off and presumably die. Prazipro arrives during this time but no point in dosing then since the eggs are resistant to treatment. Time to wait until the next generation.
2/20 notice a small one on her body near the tail fin, game time.
2/21 freshwater dip just the fire fish in ph buffered rodi and find this ~1mm hideous beast and maybe 2 or 3 others in the dip. Magnified on my hand scope for your viewing pleasure, second picture obviously not mine. Yep Neobenedenia, successfully reproducing and re-infecting my fire fish in my new set up. Thanks lfs #1 or #2, but in the end I know it's only my fault.
So here we are, dosed the first round of 2.5ppm Prazipro on sunday night (2/21) with an airstone running constantly since. Both fish are still eating, fire fish seems sad though. Think I saw a new small one on her body near the tail fin today, still nothing noticeable on the clown but presumably he's infected too. 10g QT is only a week and half into cycle, but I did pick up a bottle of biospira in case I need it. Of course I could always pull the sponge from my established 20L in an emergency but that tank has it's own cast of annoyances like aiptasia, vermetids and algae that I'm not trying to spread.
Fish seem stable so I'm going to proceed with the second dose of Prazipro in the 40 this weekend and see what happens, but preparing for 35 days hypo salinity for both fish in QT and leaving the 40B to fallow during that time. I'll be setting up a second 20L as a QT this weekend for future new fish observation and keep the 10g as a hospital tank to treat meds in when it hits the fan. Lesson learned.
Any other suggestions or pointers for dealing with neobenedenia? Any success stories?
Thankfully this is the one that woke me up from my false sense of security as opposed to other more aggressive parasites/diseases, because I was woefully unprepared to act quickly in terms of medications and additional equipment on hand. Sucks if I'll have to leave the 40 to fallow for the next month, but at least I think I got a handle on it from here on out.
For the readers out there who stumbled upon this in their own research, a couple articles that I found useful in learning about Neobenedenia and their lifecycle...
Effects of temperature on the life cycle of Neobenedenia sp. (Monogenea: Capsalidae) from Seriola rivoliana (Almaco jack) in Bahía de La Paz, BCS Mexico (labeled picture credit)
Reproductive Strategies of the Insidious Fish Ectoparasite, Neobenedenia sp. (Capsalidae: Monogenea)
