 | I promised you some gory pictures of parasites, so here they are. You can see there are quite a lot of them all over the front end of this sailfin sculpin. I read somewhere that one way to rid saltwater fish of parasites is to dip them in freshwater for a few minutes. The theory is that the parasites die because they are less able than fish to cope with the osmotic shock. |
 | It's true - I netted the sailfin and put him in freshwater for a few minutes. The parasites start to stiffen, their bodies turn white or red, and then they fall off. The sailfin started to look as if he'd been drugged so that's when I took him out and put him back in the saltwater. All of the parasites fell off except perhaps two. One was pulled off by an anemone that the sailfin ran into, and the last one I picked off myself.
This is a picture of the dead parasites in the freshwater bath. You can see their little sucker-ends that they use to attach to their host. |
 | The sailfin is now free of parasites. The End. |
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