Parasites of Fresh Water Fish Part II

Protein deficiency is one of the major global challenges facing the third world today. In Egypt, the continuous increase in human population requires more food production to meet the consequent increasing demands. With the increasing demands for animal protein, the poultry sources were expensive and insufficient. Fish are considered to compensate the continuous lack of such element due to its comparatively low price. Therefore, more attention is being now focused on the development of the natural fish resources in general and aquaculture in particular in order to compensate for both deficiency and the expensive price of food of animal origin.Trichodina sp is one of the most common ciliates present on the skin and gills of fish. Trichodina sp is very common ectoparasite which in most cases is pathogenic to both freshwater and marine fish. Members of the phylum Myxozoa are obligate parasites infecting ectothermic vertebrates, most of them are fish with a few representatives of amphibians, reptiles and some invertebrates.The present study investigated some of the trichodinid and myxozoan parasites infecting economically important fresh water fish from the River Nile, Egypt.