Oodinosis
Oodinosis is a quite common disease among freshwater and saltwater aquarium fish. The disease is caused by flagellates that enter with food and plants taken from natural water bodies. The pathogens are three species of flagellates: Oodinium limneticum and Oodinium pillularis, which affect freshwater fish, and Oodinium ocellatum, which parasitizes marine fish.
Oodinium ocellatum is manifested in the fact that the entire body of fish and their fins all covered with "dust" of gray or gold colour. this rash does not give the fish peace, it is constantly scratching on the rocks, soil and plants. The fins are all shrunken and pathetic. The infected fish can eat normally. It should be said that mortality usually occurs with young fish, adult fish die very rarely. Cyprinidae and Labyrinthici fish are the most susceptible to the disease.
The flagellates are unicellular organisms. They literally grow into the body of the fish with their rhizoids, gradually destroying the skin of their victim. At 25-26° C water temperature flagellates develop 5-6 days, after which they leave the fish body and sink to the bottom, later covered with a cyst. Fissioning then takes place, resulting in large numbers of dinospores. The entire fission process takes 5-6 hours. At the next stage, the dinospora are washed out of the cyst and swim freely in the water column, looking for their next victim. As soon as a fish swims past them, they immediately attach to its body and their further life cycle repeats again. But if the dinosaur does not find its prey within 24 hours, it dies. It should be said that very often dinospora are in the aquarium, but do not provoke disease in fish. However, the disease, as described above, develops rapidly in carp and labyrinth fish and takes a severe course.
Treatment
Treat infected fish in a community tank as well as in a specifically designated quarantine tank.
- In treatment in the general aquarium water is added to solutions of bicillin-5, which is the most effective drug in the fight against odinosis, and a mixture of solutions of copper sulfate and malachite green;
- When treating in a quarantine tank, solutions of copper sulphate, basic violet K and bicillin-5 are added to the water. In this case, the main aquarium during the week should not be fish, and water temperature should be within 25-26 ° C. Bright lighting should also be taken care of. Dinospora living in the aquarium, not finding his prey will die. After 6-7 days, fish from the quarantine tank can be transferred into the general aquarium.
