Meryl's Petshop advisor was not alone - I finally got around to reading my
May 1997 FAMA and to my surprise/disappointment/amusement saw a letter from
a reader to Owen Jeffries ( who apparently is Australian) which to me
seemed to be clearly asking for help for a well-described (but not
officially diagnosed) Camallanus problem and unfortunately was told that
the likely diagnosis was tapeworms.
Obviously the subsequent advice to remove the infected fish and destroy
them is not going to help the poor reader much.By the time he got the reply
anyway he had probably lost all his other fish anyway.
However it reminds me that in every hobby there is a tendency for the
"guru" syndrome to develop where certain individuals are held in awe and
their every pronouncement is awaited with expectation by the devotees as
further contributions to "the gospel". No-one knows everything and
hopefully a forum like the RML with it's healthy diversity of opinion will
show the newcomer that there are many ways to tackle the many problems that
occur along the way. Sometimes the regular recurrence of the same old
questions from "newbies" can tend to exasperate but if we ever produce an
FAQ for the archives I hope it will be treated as a basic manual rather
than a "bible" :-)
Regards
Bruce