Home-study of fish disease/parasites

[GHsaltie]

Aw man that's tough, I imagine it's always a hard judgement call as to when to pull a fish. I'm glad your other fish are doing good though, hopefully it stays that way. Beautiful tank by the way! I like the setup, it's unique.

 

[Humblefish]

In regards to water changes, how do you guys go about that with a medicated QT?

You can add back what you remove, but it must be done before dumping the replacement water into the QT (to maintain therapeutic levels). For example, if I do a 5 gallon water change in a tank treated with copper... I mix enough copper in a 5 gallon bucket to ensure it matches the Cu level in my QT. Then it gets poured in, and this ensures the copper level in my QT never fluctuates.

 

[GHsaltie]

Ok, so do you do the same thing for other meds such as kanaplex, metro, furan etc. or is it mainly copper that you have to keep the levels up?
I got some new pictures from this morning and I can tell he's starting to go down hill again. He's lost even more color, he's almost completely pale brown now, and I noticed both pectoral fins have more spots on them today. He's staying in the back corner of the QT and isn't as active as he was, we'll see if he eats anything. Last night I was watching him for a good 15-20 minutes and I noticed a good deal more scratching than he had been doing. His breathing doesn't appear to be labored though. The meds were scheduled to be here by 8 but the tracking shows them still in transit, I hope they didn't get lost somewhere.....

 

[Humblefish]

Ok, so do you do the same thing for other meds such as kanaplex, metro, furan etc. or is it mainly copper that you have to keep the levels up?

Just copper & CP. All other meds aren't required to be at constant therapeutic strength in order to work.

 

[GHsaltie]

Okay thank you. That's what I thought but I wanted to be positive. Still waiting on the Coppersafe to arrive. This is like sitting on pins and needles waiting on the mailman.

 

[Humblefish]

Okay thank you. That's what I thought but I wanted to be positive. Still waiting on the Coppersafe to arrive. This is like sitting on pins and needles waiting on the mailman.

Do you have formalin or acriflavine coming as well? I feel his best chance for survival is a 5 min FW dip + a chemical bath using one of those before being treated with Coppersafe.

 

[GHsaltie]

I do not, and I'm kicking myself for not adding it to my order. I am going to buy some but I'm going to have to get it shipped being that I only have two LFS and neither of them have it. But even ordering it I won't get it until next week, so at this point it won't do this fish any good I don't think.

 

[Humblefish]

I do not, and I'm kicking myself for not adding it to my order. I am going to buy some but I'm going to have to get it shipped being that I only have two LFS and neither of them have it. But even ordering it I won't get it until next week, so at this point it won't do this fish any good I don't think.

I haven't experimented with this yet myself, but you might try Hydrogen Peroxide for the chemical bath (see below). At least you can buy that at any local drug store, supermarket, Walmart, etc.

The fish were treated for 30 minutes with 25 ppm hydrogen peroxide.

Source (see Treatment Option 12): http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-07/sp/feature/index.php

 

[GHsaltie]

The link isn't working, is there another way I can get to the article? I have about 16oz of hydrogen peroxide. Would you recommend that I start the first dose of coppersafe in the QT while he is in the bath, or wait until he is back in the QT before dosing the copper?

 

[Humblefish]

I copy & pasted it for you below. You could add a little copper in the QT (maybe 1/5 dose) while he's still in the bath. To get things going.

Treatment Option 12: Hydrogen Peroxide

This is one of the newest ideas for treating Amyloodinium ocellatum and, in my mind, one of the most interesting and promising as well. The first study used 20 juvenile Pacific Threadfin (Polydactylus sexfilis) suffering with an infection of Amyloodinium ocellatum. They were randomly divided into four open water tanks. One tank was the control and received no treatment. The control fish were examined and found to have a mean of 16.6 ± 16.2 trophonts per gill biopsy. The fish that were to be treated with varying levels of hydrogen peroxide were also examined and found to harbor a mean of 35.6 ± 38.7 trophonts per gill biopsy. Water flow to the three treatment tanks was stopped and they were dosed with hydrogen peroxide at concentrations of 75, 150, and 300 ppm. The fish were exposed for thirty minutes and then the water flow was returned to rid the tanks of the hydrogen peroxide. Within one hour of treatment, all the fish exposed to 300 ppm hydrogen peroxide had perished, but the fish exposed to only 75 and 150 ppm tolerated the treatment without any deaths. The surviving fish were examined immediately after treatment and found to harbor no more parasites. They were re-examined the following day. The treated fish were still infection free while the untreated fish were found to have an increase in the trophonts counted.

Another test was set up at the facility where the sick fish were obtained. Scientists used a grow out tank that contained fish infected at a rate of 16.3 ± 13.0 trophonts per gill biopsy. These fish were exposed to 75 ppm hydrogen peroxide for thirty minutes. One day after exposure, the trophonts' count dropped to 4.7 ± 0.6. After six days, the count was down to 1.0 ± 1.0. At this point, the fish were retreated with 75 ppm hydrogen peroxide for another thirty minutes. The day after the second treatment, no trophonts could be found. Because the study's participants were unsure of the effect of hydrogen peroxide against tomonts, they transferred the fish to a clean tank at this time.

Some of these same people then prepared an experiment on Mullet (Mugil cephalus) fry. They first studied hydrogen peroxide's effect on healthy fish. Three groups of ten healthy fish were exposed to 75, 50, and 25 ppm hydrogen peroxide for thirty minutes. After 24 hours, the survival rates were 20, 50, and 70% respectively. They then decided to test 25 ppm hydrogen peroxide on a large larvae-rearing tank. This tank held 3000 liters of water and approximately three fish per liter. The facility had been experiencing 200-1000 deaths per day from Amyloodinium ocellatum for one week prior to the test in this vessel, while the standard daily mortality should have been 0.002%. The fish were treated for 30 minutes with 25 ppm hydrogen peroxide. Within three days of the exposure, mortality dropped to less than 10 per day.

Now before you all go running off to the medicine cabinet, please remember that this treatment is experimental at best. It can easily be overdosed and cause mass mortalities. I would wait until further research has been performed to test the tolerance of various marine ornamentals to hydrogen peroxide exposure. Just to be clear, I am not currently recommending the use of hydrogen peroxide. If you choose to experiment and use it, you could very well be risking the lives of every inhabitant in your aquarium. I mention it only because it is promising, and as something to keep an eye out for in the future, after additional testing has been done. If you wipe out your aquarium with this treatment, don't come crying to me later.

 

[GHsaltie]

Thank you. So basically the same deal as when using formalin but hydrogen peroxide instead. I have a 5g bucket, that would be fine to use yes? Also, I am not all that great yet at conversions, what would be the amount of hydrogen peroxide when making a 3g bath? Should I keep aerating the water during the bath, or discontinue like with a freshwater dip?

 

[GHsaltie]

Okay so the dosage for coppersafe is 1tsp per 4 gallons. The angel is in a 10g tank so the full dosage would be 2.5tsp. But I want to only do 1/5 of the full dose, so 0.5tsp. I just want to double check and make sure I've got the dose correct for the coppersafe. And @melypr1985 recommended that I get the tank up to therapeutic levels within 24 hours, so its almost 4pm now, how much of an interval should I give between doses?

 

[GHsaltie]

I feel like I'm missing something completely obvious. I've been calculating and searching but I can't seem to figure out how much hydrogen peroxide I need to reach 25ppm for 3 gallons. I know several of you guys do this all the time, any help?
The only thing I could find is 1tsp per 5g creates a concentration of 25ppm. So for 3g I would need 3/5 of a tsp. Is that right?

@Humblefish @melypr1985 @domination2580

 

[Humblefish]

Thank you. So basically the same deal as when using formalin but hydrogen peroxide instead. I have a 5g bucket, that would be fine to use yes? Also, I am not all that great yet at conversions, what would be the amount of hydrogen peroxide when making a 3g bath? Should I keep aerating the water during the bath, or discontinue like with a freshwater dip?

You want to aerate and temperate control the water during the bath. I just read another source where it said to dose @ 75 ppm hydrogen peroxide so now I'm . Let me tag @Russ265 @twilliard for dosages, because they've actually had experiences dosing it and should know just how much a fish can tolerate.

I'm looking through this thread right now trying to figure out what dosage @Russ265 used: https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/petco-purple-tang-rescue-action.249943/

 

[Humblefish]

Found this:

if i were to dose. it would be an initial 2ml per gallon for a 1 hour dip.

1 teaspoon = 5mL, so I would dose just slightly over 1 teaspoon for 3 gallons of bath water.

 

[GHsaltie]

Okay perfect, getting the bath ready right now and I'll dose the .5tsp of coppersafe while in the bath. So just over a teaspoon and leave him in the bath for 30 minutes yes? Or should I do an hour like Russ did?

 

[Humblefish]

Okay perfect, getting the bath ready right now and I'll dose the .5tsp of coppersafe while in the bath. So just over a teaspoon and leave him in the bath for 30 minutes yes? Or should I do an hour like Russ did?

I would only do 30 mins. He looks like he's in pretty bad shape from the photo.

 

[GHsaltie]

I went with 30 minutes . He's back in QT now, stressed but still swimming around some and nibbling at the nori. I dosed the QT with .5 tsp of Coppersafe while he was in the bath, so copper treatment is on its way and I'll slowly ramp it up through the evening and night. 1.5-2.0 is the therapeutic level for Coppersafe correct? I've got the api test kit so I'm going to keep a sharp eye on the copper lvls.

 

[Humblefish]

I dosed the QT with .5 tsp of Coppersafe while he was in the bath, so copper treatment is on its way and I'll slowly ramp it up through the evening and night. 1.5-2.0 is the therapeutic level for Coppersafe correct? I've got the api test kit so I'm going to keep a sharp eye on the copper lvls.

Yes, you want to get it to at least 1.5ppm before you go to bed tonight. Add a little bit every 2-3 hours.

 

[melypr1985]

Hey! I'm late again... been working non stop lately! Looks like you've got things under control. Great job and keep us updated!