Sucking worm
Not a long time ago we examined an alga shrimp because of the suspicion of a fungal attack and we found an unknown type of worm under the tank. It turned out that these worms appertain to the type of the sucking worms but it was not understandable of which type this worm exactly was.
It is not possible to determine the worm to type or kind. Since there are uncountable types of sucking worms and its subspecies and most of them were not determined up to now, it was very difficult to assign them to a specific type or kind. The diagnosis for skin or grill worms is set if we find worms during a skin cutback of fins or gills.
Sucking worms are mostly host-specific and they only strike shrimps or only Salmlers or only discus and so on. That means that they only propagate at types of fishes which are related to each other while other types of fishes remain parasite-free in the same basin. The skin and gill worms Gyrodyctylus and Dactylogyrus are appertained to the type of sucking worms.
These have hook-like teeth with which they hung at gills and skin. We could not find any peg teeth at the examined sucking worms in opposite to the Gyrodactyluses or the Dactylogyroses. But that does not have anything to say because many sucking worms have hidden peg teeth.
These shrimps that had worms died provable because of the Saprolegia (mushroom) infection that spores expand into the internal organs.
At still lively living animals we found the same worms later, both on and also under the tank. The worms that was adhered on the tank could be combated with Flubenol very easy. The problem are the worms under the tank which were not reached by the medicine.
Whether and in which way the found sucking worm is dangerous, see the pictures on the right side, for shrimps can not be answered definitively at the moment. |
