Internal and External Parasites - Simultaneous

president89 · Apr 3, 2017

I feel as thought I am dealing with the perfect storm. I know i have some fish with internal parasites - white stringy poop, wasting away, losing color, and dieing. I'm also losing some fish to some unknown parasite(i think) - sudden death is what I call it. It doesn't look like ich, brook, velvet or anything else i've read about. Rapid breathing, but nothing really visible. It's very hard to diagnose, because if a fish has bad internal parasites they start to lose color.

FYI: This is all in a clownfish growout system - Fish only.

As an experiment, I took some of the larger ones - who actually seemed to be in the worst shape, and put them in a 10g standalone tank and dosed with general cure. Trying to feed them food with seachem focus/metroplex. They aren't really eating. However, I'm not losing fish. Really strong aeration in here to deal with the oxygen usage of multiple fish.

The rest are smaller fish and in the growout. They are eating the metro laced food. Deaths have slowed there. Still tons of white poop that I'm cleaning up twice daily. No medication dosed in the water.

I was thinking of doing a 90% water change on the 10g tank, continuing the metro food, and trying something like copper, CP, or formalin to tackle this unknown killer.

I've also considered putting everything in the system into the 10g or maybe 2 10g tanks and let the system go fallow. 10G tanks are cheap to medicate and large water changes to keep up with waste is cheap as well.

I realize this is very complicated. Most people have a single tank, with only a few fish to treat.

In addition to above, what medications are compatible with general cure that combat parasites? CP, Formalin, Copper?

Humblefish · Apr 3, 2017

CP treats a wider range of external parasites than copper, so I would go with that.

For internal parasites, you have to get every fish to eat the medicated food or the ones who aren't will just keep reinfecting the others. o_O

4FordFamily · Apr 3, 2017

This reminds me of my bout of velvet. Absolutely no external spots of any kind. Fish hid from light, lost color, breathed heavily, and deteriorated during quickly.

melypr1985 · Apr 3, 2017

I agree. If you can get pharmaceutical grade CP, then go that route. Otherwise go wtih copper.

president89 · Apr 3, 2017

The CP I have is from nationalfishpharm.com - not medical grade I don't think. How fast does velvet spread. The deaths are slow at this point. I have hundreds of fish and I lose 2-3 per day- usually the tiny ones.

melypr1985 · Apr 3, 2017

president89 said:
The CP I have is from nationalfishpharm.com - not medical grade I don't think. How fast does velvet spread. The deaths are slow at this point. I have hundreds of fish and I lose 2-3 per day- usually the tiny ones.

If it's a large number of fish, I would think you'd see more die in one day.... though velvet can be tricky and clowns are pretty darn hardy. It's a tuff call.

president89 · Apr 3, 2017

Can anti-biotics and CP/copper be administered at the same time?

melypr1985 · Apr 3, 2017

president89 said:
Can anti-biotics and CP/copper be administered at the same time?

Yes. You just want to add extra O2 to the tank during and keep an eye out for bacterial blooms. Be careful with CP and any liquid meds: like Prazipro which you can't mix wtih cp.

jeff williams · Apr 3, 2017

Also try soaking your food in garlic it will help entice the fish to eat and helps make metroplex more palatable

Humblefish · Apr 4, 2017

president89 said:
The CP I have is from nationalfishpharm.com - not medical grade I don't think.

CP from them is hit or miss. o_O

president89 · Apr 4, 2017

And now I think i have cross contamination into another system. These aren't acting like themselves. Seems minor at this point. All other fish look ok.

Humblefish · Apr 4, 2017

The heavy breathing is concerning. If I had to guess, velvet...

4FordFamily · Apr 4, 2017

Humblefish said:
The heavy breathing is concerning. If I had to guess, velvet...

X2

Treat quickly time is not your friend, here :(

president89 · Apr 4, 2017

Thanks everyone for your quick replies and advice. Those adult fish are in a system of a bunch of other breeders. It has a 65 watt UV running, so I'm thinking maybe that is slowing down the spread of disease. Should I just take the effected fish out, treat and wait for another fish to show symptoms? Or do I just treat the system?

president89 · Apr 4, 2017

Should I shut off my UV when treating with Copper?

Robink · Apr 4, 2017

You should treat all the fish that have been exposed.

Humblefish · Apr 4, 2017

president89 said:
Should I just take the effected fish out, treat and wait for another fish to show symptoms? Or do I just treat the system?

I would treat the entire system, so you can just put this behind you.

president89 said:
Should I shut off my UV when treating with Copper?

Yes, a UV can break down the amine complex the copper is bound to.

president89 · Apr 4, 2017

I don't know if you can see in the video, or perhaps it worsened in the past few hours, but the larger black ice has popeye. I put both fish in a tank with a copper with other fish being treated the same - they are in a hang-on breeder box because I don't want them to kill the other fish or get killed, etc. Can i put nitrofuracin in with the copper for the popeye? I've had good luck with it in the past to treat popeye.

In regards, to the system, it has 20 adult clownfish in it(seperated by pairs of course) - no other fish is showing any signs of stress. This is the system with the UV. So the consensus is to turn off the UV and dose with copper? I just want to confirm. These are extremely valuable fish. Again, thanks for everyone's input! This is such a great forum.