Lice? I Need Help Fast

[Discus25]

Hi, I am new to this site and I really need some advice urgently... The problem is as follows I have have kept tropical fish for around 18 years with lots of sucess and have been keeping Discus for around 1 year with no problems up until now!! I have never really had problems with disease other than whitespot, however my discus have began dying as did my rams. The tetras are ok at the moment and the water quality as ever is spot on, based on their symptoms I thought it might be Velvet disease, so off I went to get some treatment, came back opened the lid and to my horror the tank was absolutely jumping with what can only be described as LICE they are everywhere, with the average size being like a pin head I have never seen anything like this in all my years and was wondering how to treat this?? And also where did they come from?? there has been no recent additions, so I can only presume they have came in with the Live bloodworm I feed them.. Any replies would be much appreciated.. Thanks

 

[WILDER]

A good gravel vac first.
Do the parasites have any legs to them.
Location would be good.

 

[MHunt]

I had fish lice on my goldfish. Vicious little buggers too. I used a course of waterlife sterazin, but while this killed off most, it wasn't without casualties. And i did have to manually pick some of them off the fish with tweezers! While this worked for me, i know alot of people have posted on this forum saying that sterazin is worse than useless. Perhaps someone else knows a more effective treatment.

 

[Discus25]

A good gravel vac first.
Do the parasites have any legs to them.
Location would be good.

Yes they do have legs, but they are too small to see how many, they look similar to head lice, just a sort of transparent white colour hopefully the Velvet treatment will kill them.

 

[paulf]

They sound like parasites, but where are you? its a little hard to advise on meds if we dont know whre you are, thats why theres an option in your profile to add a location.
Ifyou are in the Uk/Europe or the states, have a look online for some flubenol 15, as said, sterazin is not exavtly very good....

 

[WILDER]

If in the uk this is a very powerful med and will wipe your bacteria colony out in your filter.
Interpet anti crustaceon med.

 

[paulf]

If in the uk this is a very powerful med and will wipe your bacteria colony out in your filter.
Interpet anti crustaceon med.

What will wipe out the filter???

Whats the anti crustation med for?

 

[WILDER]

Sorry that's the med for lice, not fish louse.

Take a look under argulas.
http/www.fish-disease.net/diseases.htm

No 12 Anti Crustacean & Parasite 100ml
ANTI CRUSTACEAN PARASITE No 12 : Eliminates anchor
worm, fish lice, gill maggots and leeches.

Larger higher level parasites can be introduced into the aquarium on new fish or plants. They cause life-threatening damage and should be eradicated quickly.

Crustacean parasites are very difficult to eradicate so this treatment is powerful. Therefore, take care to carefully follow all instructions and note all warnings

For use with coldwater and tropical fish in marine and freshwater systems

WARNING: This treatment negatively affects biological filtration.
Damages Plants
Do not use with UV filters
Do not use below pH 6.5
For Marines, use only in separate treatment aquarium
Use only if sure of diagnosis

 

[paulf]

ah, ok,

Must admit, this puts me off a little though...

WARNING: This treatment negatively affects biological filtration.
Damages Plants
Do not use with UV filters
Do not use below pH 6.5
For Marines, use only in separate treatment aquarium
Use only if sure of diagnosis

 

[WILDER]

Bought the med when first started up, god knows why, and in the instructions it says it wipes the bacteria colony out in your filter.

 

[Amunet]

My mom's tank a while back had an outbreak of little lice things. It was just the weirdest thing I had ever heard of. Didn't know fish could get lice of all things!
I really wish I had asked her what she was doing to get rid of them.. that info would've been great right about now :\
I hope your fish are gonna be ok!