Hook Worm

[Tagged]

I recently caught a Bass with a terrible case of Hook Worm. I removed them and the fish bled badly, I don't know if this was the right thing to do, so fill me in. Has anyone else seen this ? It was a wild fish from the Mary River.

[Big_unit]

It sounds like Anchor worm - Lernaea spp.

It is best to leave them alone as the added stress of time out of water and handling can be enough to kill the fish. It is thought that most infected animals do make a recovery in their own time. There are some preparations available through pet stores and vet surgeries which can treat anchor worm, however these treatments require the patient to be kept in sufficient concentrations for prolonged periods so that the medicinal treatment can have effective coverage.

Anchor worms are a parasitic copepod that infect fish and one of the main problems with them is that they increase the risk of attracting other diseases and or prarsites. The anchor worms can cause serious damage to a host fish and can eventually cause mortality, although they are seldom the sole cause of death. Generally the host dies from other diseases or parasites which run rampant after the hosts immune and defence systems are down.

Anchor worms are small crustaceans. These crustaceans start out their life as free swimming organisms and find a host to burrow into. They burrow themselves too far into the fish to allow for safe removal. When they have buried themselves into the fish they move themselves into the muscles where they live for several months while developing. They then make their way out of the fish, a process that often leaves festering lesions, and releases their eggs before dying. The cycle will then start over again.

The wound caused by the crustaceans often gets infected which is one of the main reason this disease can invite so many other diseases to infect the sick fish. The crustaceans spend a prolonged period in the host which makes it difficult to diagnose where the parasite was introduced or if in fact it is still present within the host animals system. The symptoms of anchor worms include the fish scratching themselves against everything available and white green threads hanging out with inflamed centres on all parts of the host fish.

Cheers
James