Many thanks for the info. I moved the caecilian to a bin tonight and began treatment on all my aquariums just to be on the safe side. While I would gladly leave the caecilian on his own for the month or longer it takes me to make sure these things are eradicated, I don't have anything very fit to house him in that long. So after consideration I've determined every weekend I will move him to the bin and treat the tanks with levamisole. Once the treatment is up and the tanks are clean (well as much as they can be) I will move him back.
Typical treatment is 24-48 hours long and the med I use is just about the best one you can get against these worms. It paralyzes any adult worms and allows the fish to pass them out. Its very effective at removing the adult worms. Then you do as close to a 100% water change as you can, cleaning the tank/filter as much as possible to remove any paralyzed worms. Then repeat every week or two till your confident their gone.
It will take at least 6 weeks, probably more before I feel sure there gone. From what I have read they seem to use an intermediate crustacean host. While I have no shrimp in this particular tank, I'm well aware there are likely thousands of microscopic crustaceans in there. I'm still debating how to tackle this issue. So far the best idea I've come up with is to probably treat the tank with copper sulfate along with the levamisole. Copper sulfate is normally an external parasite medication for fish, but I'm mainly hoping to take advantage of one of its side effects and thats its pretty high toxicity to invertebrates. It will kill shrimp pretty easy and I'm hoping it does the same to a lot of the copepods and what not. This first week just using the dewormer and seeing how that goes before I start mixing meds. I'm not sure if the dewormer I have effects the larval stages of camallanus. Below a video I took of the worms under the scope earlier this week. The adults I had were very much paralyzed after being treated, however the young inside the females were definitely not. I didn't think to test if this is because they were protected from the med or if they were simply just not susceptible at that life stage =/. I left that dead fish and the worms with one of the professors who was gonna see if they would survive for the zoology labs the next day.
Camallanus worms - YouTube
I use to quarantine all my new fish. The first time I got this parasite years ago it made it though quarantine
. So for at least a year after that I dewormed all new fish regardless while they were in quarantine. Found better, healthier sources through local breeders/hobbyist and as a result got lazier
. Once I get this cleared up I'll go back to quarantining and deworming everything regardless.
This is the tank in question.
My caecilian asleep.
This is the setup I'm using to hold him for now. He seems pretty pissed about it lol.