How to medicate with Masstick?

[arking_mark]

@Jay Hemdal @Humblefish

I have a Orange Spotted Filefish that may have white stringy poop. No pinched stomach...actually almost always fat. I mysteriously lost 3 other fat OSFs and would like to feed some medicated food. However, this one only eats Masstick stuck to the glass (not in water column)....

How do I medicate with Masstick cubes (play dough like consistency)?

I know the general recommendation is 1/8 tsp Metro or General Cure with 1/8 tsp of focus with 1 tblsp of food to make a reef-safe concoction that should be fed 1-2 times a day

It takes about 12 smahed cubes to fill a tablespoon which would provide about 96 feedings (8 feeding per cube).

So a couple of questions:
1. Is the recommended medicated concoction recipe correct?
2. Do I need to add water to the concoction? If so, how much? (It needs to keep a play dough like consistency to stick to the glass.)
3. If I only dose 1-2 times a day, this medicated food would last for months. I'm assuming the fish only needs a couple of weeks of this medicated concoction and I can just half the recipe.
4. Is this really really reef safe with either Metro or General Cure?
5. Any other suggestions?

 

[Spare time]

I'll let jay write his part out as he has said that feeding the medicine is a lot harder than it seems, but I would think prazipro would be a good starting medicine for internal parasites (since it can be dosed into the tank and is half of the general cure formula). I have fed some fish some medicated food before and the corals didn't react but the system was far larger than what anyone normally keeps so it would have been diluted down.

 

[arking_mark]

I'll let jay write his part out as he has said that feeding the medicine is a lot harder than it seems, but I would think prazipro would be a good starting medicine for internal parasites (since it can be dosed into the tank and is half of the general cure formula). I have fed some fish some medicated food before and the corals didn't react but the system was far larger than what anyone normally keeps so it would have been diluted down.

I have Prazipro ready to go and was going to use the food in addition...especially for the Metro.

 

[Jay Hemdal]

@Jay Hemdal @Humblefish

I have a Orange Spotted Filefish that may have white stringy poop. No pinched stomach...actually almost always fat. I mysteriously lost 3 other fat OSFs and would like to feed some medicated food. However, this one only eats Masstick stuck to the glass (not in water column)....

How do I medicate with Masstick cubes (play dough like consistency)?

I know the general recommendation is 1/8 tsp Metro or General Cure with 1/8 tsp of focus with 1 tblsp of food to make a reef-safe concoction that should be fed 1-2 times a day

It takes about 12 smahed cubes to fill a tablespoon which would provide about 96 feedings (8 feeding per cube).

So a couple of questions:
1. Is the recommended medicated concoction recipe correct?
2. Do I need to add water to the concoction? If so, how much? (It needs to keep a play dough like consistency to stick to the glass.)
3. If I only dose 1-2 times a day, this medicated food would last for months. I'm assuming the fish only needs a couple of weeks of this medicated concoction and I can just half the recipe.
4. Is this really really reef safe with either Metro or General Cure?
5. Any other suggestions?

Medicated food is a huge issue. Virtually everyone except some public aquarists do it wrong. Even the Focus bottle differs from what it says on the label. You can't just add some medication to some food and then feed some amount to the fish. With three uncontrolled variables, there is almost no chance of getting the dose correct. In addition, most times, the medication being used is just a guess anyway. So in effect, it is like reaching into a bag of different medicine bottles, opening one, throwing the pills into the air, catching what you can and then swallowing those (grin).

Almost all medicated foods are dosed as mg of medication in kg of food, fed to kg of fish biomass. The typical dose for prazi is 50/mg per kg of fish biomass, fed once a day.

Two medications can be more easily dosed on just medication to food mass; metronidazole (5000 ppm) and Epsom salts (3%). With a good gram scale (I bought one on Amazon for around $16) you can measure out a dose and mix it into the masstick. Word of warning though - metro is really bitter and fish often refuse to eat it.

Here is my article on medicated foods:

Proper Dosing of Medicated Foods

This article offers information about developing medicated foods for aquarium fish

www.reef2reef.com

Here is a medicated food calculator written by @threebuoys

Fish Weight Calculator / Medicated Fish Food Mix Calculator

If you follow threads on the Fish Disease Treatment and Diagnosis forum, you know that whenever oral medication is the recommended treatment, @Jay Hemdal cautions that achieving the proper dosage is critical to success. He often refers to his article Proper Dosing of Medicated Foods. That...

www.reef2reef.com

Jay Hemdal