black worms on my fish

Question
i think th=at the worms you described are them slao do you have any suggestions on what i could feed the gar also hes never had a worm on him and he eats the fish ?
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Followup To

Question -
hello i was searching the net to try and find out what these things are that are attached to my fish but so far ive had no luck anyway i have a 55 gal aggresive tank with 1 big red devil two dempseys a texas a channel catfish and an alligator gar my red devil is my biggest most docile fish and he occasionally has these black worm looking things that attach to his skin i never thought anything of them but today he had four of them on him so i caught him in the net and started to pull the worms or leaches or whatever off him. now i have never seen an animal that looks like these things not even in a science book its a flat worm with a tube a either end of it that attaches itself to the skin with the little tube i imagine so it can suck the blood from my fish. the red devil and cat are the only fish that ive seen these things on what are they and how can i kill them please are they harmful i managed to get one out of the water and it was crwling around on a piece of paper. i feed the cichlids and cat pellets the gar gets gold fish

Answer -
Dear Justin,
Very odd. It's going to take some good investigation to get these mystery worms/parasites indentified.

Anchor worms seem to be the most common worms that latch on to fish. These can be distinquished quite easily from other worms by their forked ends. They are most likely brought on by infested fish. I fear the goldfish you have been feeding the Aligator gar could certainly be a cause for the worms appearing--whatever species they are. Please do not feed live goldfish as they are generally unhealthy and easily transmit disease to your other aquarium fish.

It is usually best to manuelly remove the worms as you did.

I will further investigate this and be sure and get back to you if I come up with anything else.

So far, I hope this helps!
Best wishes and Happy fishkeeping!
Karen~

Answer
Dear Justin,
Feeding live feeder goldfish to Gars is OK but it would be best if you could quarantine them in a seperate "hospital" tank to insure they do not transmit any diseases or parasites. You could also try minnows, but these are best quarantined. What about raising your own feeder fish? How about Guppies? Better yet, could you eventually get your gar to accept frozen foods like shrimp or even pellets? It has been possible to train gars to accept non-living food and if you could that would be so much better than risking exposing your fish to parasites or worms.

If you do believe the worms are Anchor worms- Picture:
"www.2cah.com/pandora/disease.html#Lernea"
Removing the worms by removing them by hand seems to be the best treatment as it treating the aquarium with a medication like 'DIMILIN' to destroy any others.

I really hope this helps you out and Best of luck!
Best wishes,
Karen~