Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations BG With One Bulging Eye

At least it is distinctive. We'll certainly be able to pick out your posts without looking at your signature.

All seems to be well and good with Todd's avatar.

Now we need to starting working on the moderators who don't have avatars. Since the avatar requirement will be written into their next quarterly review this has become a more important and pressing issue.

You know who they are; let the suggestions begin flowing.....

I vote this one should be Ken's!

Ha ha The King of Road Kill!

One the same theme:

And the great thing is he could turn that sucker into something everyone here would salivate over!

Yes. I added a road kill raccoon to my post. I didn't think that the deer was gross enough.

Nice. I found a couple of pretty gross dead deer pics, but I figured I wouldn't post them for three reasons:

1. I have too much respect for Ken to go that far.
2. This is a family friendly forum.
3. I want to have the grossest avatar out there for now!

I'm quite happy with my avatar.

However, if the "powers that be" were to change my avatar -- roadkill might be OK. But, wouldn't it be best if the specimen was one of Bruce's or Cecil's bluegill that had been attempting to cross an interstate highway?

Who's got a picture of the 'possum in the road that had a centerline stripe painted over it?

never mind, I think I found the one I was thinking of.....

Classic. That surely must've come from my local highway dept.

On second thought, they probably would've stomped the possum into a pothole as filler, and applied chip and seal over top of it.

The comment "since the avatar requirement will be written into their next quarterly review this has become a more important and pressing issue" caused Bob Lusk to swing into action with a nice new avatar.

I thought he wrote the reviews....

Moderator holdouts:

Bill Cody
Dave Davidson1
ewest
Theo Gallus

Where is Theo?

I see he is logged in quite often, but not a squeak out of him.

Maybe just waiting to hit the bottom of the five top posters, then crank it up to the top.

I think he likes challenges!

Hold out ?

Looks like a parasitic worm. One stage is the worm enters the eye and keeps growing. You can slit it open and pull out the worm.

That looks terrible. Does the fish usually die from parasitic worm?

I like Ken's avatar just the way it is. Why?, because he chose it!

Gestapo use to choose everything for everyone!

Not from the one in the eye. Sometimes they can even do ok with both eyes gone (blind).

How about this one

Eye fluke (Diplostomum spp.)
These have fish as intermediate hosts, but the final hosts are either birds or mammals feeding on fish. This infection is common in wild arctic charr in Iceland. Eggs are released from a final host in feaces. The eggs hatch into ciliate larvae, that look for water snails. There they multiply in number and leave the snail as cercariate larvae. These have to find a fish host within two days to survive. When found, the larvae penetrate in through the skin or the gills. In the fish further development takes place (metacercaria) with the fluke moving to the eyes of the fish. In this stage the larva looks like the fully mature fluke, except it is without reproductive organs.

I hope this isn't very common!

Thanks for those ideas, Eric. This guy did not appear to be doing too well, as evidenced by the fact that my daughter was able to walk into the pond near it and catch it with a dip net with virtually no resistance. Yet, at the same time, it was an otherwise very healthy looking fish with very good body shape and mass.

I sort of wondered about the possibility of a worm, but didn't do enough dissecting to find out if there was, in fact, a worm in the eye. I do know that when I pierced the eye after I had dispatched the BG, I did not see anything resembling a worm come out, but I simply may not have gotten to where it was located. I recall a thread here some time back that showed images of a worm in a fish's eye and this whole life cycle was explained.

We do have snails in the pond, but have never had fish with many parasites in them or on them. They have been consistently clean for the three years we've had the farm. I did add 100 RES a couple of years ago but don't know how many of them survived. I haven't caught one yet.

It could be a number of things and not limited to worms. If you did not see a long worm it was likely something else.

Definitely no worm - just a lot of puss. Seems like it just got into something and ended up with a bad infection. I'm just glad it wasn't some sort of nasty that is going to impact more fish.

Cross your fingers Todd!

Remember the cottage cheese. Kinda ICK,ey!

Fluke makes some really great handheld meters, along with instrumentation. Highly recommended!

Did it taste like chicken?