Purple firefish with monogenean parasite...I think

I bought several fish at Petco two weeks ago and put them into quarantine. I observed them for several days and they had good appetite and heathy behavior, but the purple firefish had an external parasite





I didn't know what it was at first. I noticed that it moved around on the fish’s body over the course of a couple days. I searched the web for flukes, isopods, flatworms, etc. I found a couple pictures and forum threads in which the pictures and description matched almost exactly what my fish had. The responses were speculative, and even though they were well intended they didn’t offer anything really concrete. Instead of treating for random things, I opted to try manual removal and microscopic examination for more information.


I posted a video on YouTube showing how I gently removed the parasite. It’s pretty amateurish, but what do you expect for my first upload…and sorry about my finger…you’ll see.




Once I got the parasite off, I looked at it though a microscope and did some more internet searching and found this website to be informative:


http://www.thefishsite.com/articles...es-of-fish


I believe the firefish had a capsalid type of monognean parasite. This was the best I could determine since I don’t have the experience or access to any in depth literature. Here is what it looked like under the microscope (I had to stich three pictures together).





I treated the quarantine tank with PraziPro and repeated the recommend dose on the 5[sup]th[/sup] day. As of today all the fish appear to be in good health. I will conclude with a hyposalinity treatment, to kill off any chance of an ich outbreak.

 

Thanks for the feedback. I hope the information is useful.

Ha! No scooby snack required. I was very lucky to have such a docile fish to work with. I'm glad to say its still doing very well. Thank goodness because my 2 yo daughter really likes it.

 

I had trouble with Internet Explorer 11 so I created the topic in a Firefox browser. From there it was only the click of a button and a copy & paste. It was pretty instantaneous, but I had uploaded the video to YouTube a while earlier.

 

I hadn't heard of chloroquine phosphate before. That was an interesting read. I wish there were write-ups like that for more aquarium drugs. I do like to read up before treating with something for the first time. Thanks for sharing.