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I posted a while back about Moxie having a lovely case of nematodes. She's been to the vet for treatment 3 times now. I haven't seen any signs of her passing them at all since the first treatment. The problem is that they're still in her tank. I almost feel like maybe they're living in the filter, because I won't see any, then AFTER I scrub the tank and rinse it and refill it, they appear. Then the filter sucks them back up, and I don't see them again until I clean again. The vet told me that they shouldn't be able to live outside the host's body though. So I don't know what to think. I've tried to clean the filter as much as I can, and even left it out to dry for a few days. Is there anything I can do to make the tank water less hospitable to them? Am I going to have to replace the filter? I changed the filter media and got the same result. Help!

Umm, if the vet said they can't live outside of the host, I would think that to be true. You may have a separate worm infection ... If you can keep your turtle out of the tank for a few days (like in a separate rubbermaid container), you could try running some various cleaners through the tank. I would look into bleach, high salt concentrations, or exceptionally hot water.

Reading online, it sounds like you can starve the worms to death in a few days. What is says to do is not feed your fish for 3-4 days, so taking your turtle out of the tank for a few days and no giving the worms anything to eat, eventually they should all die. You might have to let it cycle a week or two in case any eggs hatch, the babies would need to starve too.

I have some aquarium salt, maybe I'll give that a try. Thank you for the suggestions!

So her poop is normal now but the worms still reappear?

Yes. She goes to the bathroom and I see absolutely nothing in there, and there will be no worms visible in the tank for weeks. But after I drain the tank and clean and scrub and rinse everything, when I refill it there will be hundreds of them floating around until the filter sucks them up.

I feel like if Moxie was still passing them, I would see them between cleanings, but they must be reproducing somewhere because there's still just so many of them.

How often are you emptying out your tank and refilling it? And what size is your tank?

It's a 30 gallon tank, and I completely drain, scrub and refill it about every week and a half to two weeks.

Why are you cleaning it out that much?? You only need to partial water changes when it gets dirty. Does your filter not work?

It's good that she's not infected. It's possible they're not parasitic and there is ample room in a filter to hide out. They could be in the impeller, tubing, etc.

I would set up a tub of hot, salty water and let the filter run it for awhile.

untsmurf wrote:Why are you cleaning it out that much?? You only need to partial water changes when it gets dirty. Does your filter not work?

I've only been doing that since the worms started showing up. Before this started, I was doing partial changes monthly, or as often as the algae got gross. I was afraid that maybe the worms could be hiding out in the algae, so I haven't wanted to let it build up too much.

I just drained the whole thing, completely disassembled the filter, scrubbed everything, discarded the filter media, then put everything back in the tank and filled it with extremely hot water. I'm hoping that will kill whatever was left, and I'll be feeding Moxie in a separate container, at least for now, to see what happens.

Well keep us updated. I'm really interested to see what will kill these little things.

Hmm,

Maybe next time you do a cleaning, replace all filter media and then clean and disinfect the tank and filter with a 10:1 bleach solution?

Thats the only thing I can think of that would for sure kill everything.

But if the worms dont have a host for say a week or two, they will die.

Okay...update...

Using the hot water in Moxie's tank did seem to eliminate most of the worms, when I was done cleaning I saw 2 or 3 floating around, rather than the hundreds I was seeing before.

Saturday night I noticed a couple of worms in Napoleon's tank. Great. They were floating on the surface, which was kind of weird because the ones in Moxie's tank never did. I scooped them out, they were definitely alive. So I decided to give Napoleon's tank the same treatment as Moxie's. BAD idea. I am positive that the water was nowhere near as hot as when I did Moxie's tank, as the first time it was scalding and this time I could stick my hand in there. Even so, the tank cracked. It was half full, and I had water gushing out onto the carpet. I managed to pack some towels between the tank and the wall and stem it a bit but it's still a huge mess, and the tank is now useless. The crack runs along the entire back side. So now I'm desperately looking for a new tank, and Napoleon is camping out in a rubbermaid.

So while the hot water did seem to work, I'm going to have to recommend going the bleach or salt route. Bad times.

Bummer! On the bright side, I guess you got rid of the worms in poor Napoleon's tank. I bet the tank had a weak spot, and the flood was inevitable. Napoleon will be fine in a rubbermaid for awhile. He's pretty tough.

Sorry to hear that! Do they have the same kind of tank? I did mention using a separate tub though. Again, sorry to hear it