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what I see at the microscope.

rr16

Active Member
5 Year Member
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536
I don't wish to sound disrespectful, but where are you getting this information from? My idea of a complete gut includes an anus - which flukes don't have. Also, whilst flukes have an attachment organ, I've never heard of it described as a scolex outside of the cestodes.
 

Larry Rogers

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5 Year Member
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91
I don't wish to sound disrespectful, but where are you getting this information from? My idea of a complete gut includes an anus - which flukes don't have. Also, whilst flukes have an attachment organ, I've never heard of it described as a scolex outside of the cestodes.
Questioning something that you do not understand is not disrespectful, it is trying to learn. A do charge pore at the terminus of the digestive tract is a complete gut. An anus is a separate muscular group attached to that pore to discharge solid byproducts of a more complex diet. Let's look at three lower creatures to contrast development. The hydra: a simple sac organism, no need to an anus nor a complex circulatory system. The entire body is only three or four cells from digestion and each cell feeds by direct osmosis. Neural function is present but not every complex. Without neural development and musculature devoted to digestion and a separate system to distribute nutrition it is the simplest gut.
Next up the list planaria: a non-parasitic flatworm. Still primitive but has developed nerves and circulation. Intake nutrients are carried out of the gut and distributed where needed. This allows for greater cellular specialization and we start seeing developing specialized digestive musculature. A component that is required for a more complex diet. Still only a simple sack, undigested intake must be regurgitated. I am going to kump her t a tunicate for emphasis. Complete tube in tube development with neural net circulation and specialization. Some cells harvest, some digest, some distribute, some reproduce, and some control. Rudimentary learnig, response to stimulus, is present. Als a more completely developed digestive tract.
Most parasitic worms have an anal pore of necessity. If they discharged wastes directly into the bloodstream the autoimmune system would respond and infection would set in. However a vent is not an anus. Compairs to calling the grill on an auto the cooling unit when the fan and waterpump do all the work.
 

rr16

Active Member
5 Year Member
Messages
536
Questioning something that you do not understand is not disrespectful, it is trying to learn.

I think you may have misunderstood me. Yes, I am trying to learn, but I am trying to learn where you have got this information from. When I studied parasites some years ago there was no mention of any kind of pore or anus, but only a blind-ended gut in trematodes. Yes, they have an excretory pore, but this is concerned with osmoregulation. I was wondering if perhaps there is some more up-to-date information that you have that would correct me here. As someone with a scientific background, I think in a scientific way and am therefore open to listening to other people's opinions and evidence to help draw conclusions of my own. I examine evidence, which is why I had offered my opinions on this thread, but was open to other people's input. However, for the reasons mentioned in my initial post, I could not say exactly what anything was in the images. This is why I find it hard to believe that you can straight away say that it is "a flatworm of some type, likely a type of fluke". This image could be any number of things.
"one end appears disc-like which usually means a scolex, which means parasite" - again, I refer you to my above comment that scolices are found in cestodes, not trematodes, although trematodes do have attachement organs.
"In addition most of the slides show some type of egg cyst, likely the flatworms" - what is an "egg cyst"? Trematodes produce eggs or ova, not cysts. They are either helminth eggs, protozoan cysts or something completeely different. I can tell straight away from looking at them that it is unlikely that these are trematode eggs as they are larger than the trematodes and look nothing like trematode eggs that I am aware of. I looked at a lot of them during my final year project of my BSc in Biological Sciences. I also saw many different eggs when I was teaching how to examine faecal smears to MSc Parasitology students.
" and the forth slide clearly shows a sac open at one end discharging its contents, which is some type of cyst, could be worms or bacterial;appears far too large to be viral." - it clearly shows something that appears to have a membrane or wall-type structure, that has burst - it does not "clearly show a cyst discharging its contents". You'll notice the difference between my scientific view and way of thinking as opposed to your unscientific, yet extremely confident view of coming to a conclusion with very little evidence. This is fine, it doesn't bother me. I accept that many people are not capable of scientific thought which is why they do not go into science. It would be a boring world if we were all good at the same thing (and a very dysfunctional one!), however, I am really quite annoyed as you have then gone on to recommend, on the basis of a few extremely tentative diagnoses, a very drastic method of pulling somebody's tank apart and disinfecting everything and more - why not just nuke it?
If you had credible evidence, then yes, perhaps take that method, but it is the confidence with which you conduct yourself that concerns me. You seem to jump to rather large conclusions with the slightest piece of tentative evidence.

"Dactylogyridae and gyrodactylidae are monogenetic trematodes with complete guts [they don't have complete guts - I concede the term "anus" was probably incorrect on my part, but, still, the gut is blind-ended - this is why I gave you the benefit of the doubt by asking where you got this information from as I assumed you were just mis-informed or had more up-to-date information than I, but, to be honest, I am beginning to suspect that you are just incorrect], both have incompletely developed scolex that appears somewhat disc-shaped under lower magnifications [it's not a scolex, but a type of attachment organ - scolex is a term specific to the Cestoda]". If you use these as an example, then surely you are suggesting that it may be one of these. Why would they be in a feacal smear?
You later mention that the cyst could be "Ich" - again, why would this be in the faeces? It is possible the cyst could have been ingested, but this isn't the normal mode of infection.

This brings me to "Most parasitic worms have an anal pore of necessity. If they discharged wastes directly into the bloodstream the autoimmune system would respond and infection would set in"
First point is that whilst many parasitic nematodes have a complete gut and an anal pore/anus, other parasitic worms - namely cestodes and trematodes do not. Cestodes absorb nutrition through their surface and do not have a gut of any kind and therefore no connection with the bloodstream whatsoever. Trematodes have blind-ended guts and release any undigested intestinal contents back through the pharynx. Some of them may be connected directly to the blood stream, but many are not.
Also, wastes in the bloodstream may act as antigens and stimulate the immune response, which could cause an inflammatory response, however, wastes themselves do not cause infections. However, they may cause toxicity. There must be an organism to cause an infection and you suggest the waste causes an autoimmune response and infection sets in. Auto immunity is when the immune system "attacks" things that the body should recognise as "self".


I'm sorry, but I'm finding a lot of what you're saying hard to swallow. You seem to know the vocabulary, but frequently mis-use it, preaching it to others as fact when it is, infact not so. As someone who believes in people knowing the truth, I felt that I had to write this, as I cannot cope with what to me, appears to be a stream of repeated mis-information, then trying to make me feel like you are teaching me something. I'm the first to admit that I do not know everything, however, I am, alas not prepared to let others be misled either deliberatley or through ignorance.
 

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