Looking for feedback on fish quarantine protocol

ichthyogeek

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I'm working on designing my quarantine protocols for fish. Can I get some feedback on this? I don't want to kill everything. Just...most things. I acknowledge that killing bacteria outside bacterial infections is overkill, and the same with viruses. I just really don't want to deal with parasites. The following is meant to wipe out ich, velvet, brooklynella, flukes, uronema, internal parasites, and turbellarians. All of the info was taken from humble.fish (Humblefish' website!), and Jay Hemdal's manuscript on feeding medicated foods (attached here, but it was somewhere in the forum).
  1. Acquire fish.
  2. Acclimate fish into 5 gallon bucket, filled to 4 gallons at original salinity of shipping bag, heated and with medium aeration. Wait 24 hours.
  3. Prepare a freshwater dip. Transfer fish to freshwater dip, removing after 2-5 minutes. Transfer fish into new 5 gallon bucket, filled to 4 gallons at original salinity of shipping bag, heated and with medium aeration; add freshly hatched baby brine shrimp or appropriately sized live foods (gut loaded artemia are favored due to staying alive). Add Metronidazole to water. Wait 24 hours. Bleach all equipment used in a bath of .5 cup bleach + water, soaked for at least an hour, rinsed until no bleach smell is detected, and set to dry for 48 hours far away from the quarantine area.
  4. Repeat step 3, 4 more times, for a total of changing fish into a new bucket for 6 days.
  5. Prepare a freshwater dip. Transfer fish to freshwater dip, removing after 2-5 minutes. Transfer fish into aquarium filled to 10 gallons, heated and with medium aeration. Add freshly hatched baby brine shrimp or appropriately sized live foods. Add metronidazole to the water. Bleach all equipment used in a bath of .5 cup bleach + water, soaked for at least an hour, rinsed until no bleach smell is detected, and set to dry for 48 hours far away from the quarantine area. Wait 24 hours.
  6. Introduce gel bound food with metronidazole (100mg/kg fish). Wait 24 hours.
  7. Repeat steps 5 and 6, 3 more times, for total of changing fish into a new 10 gallons for 8 days.
  8. Do a 100% water change. Add a cycled sponge filter to the quarantine tank. Remove water from the tank, and set up a 48 hour drip of BUFFERED freshwater to bring the specific gravity to 1.008. Feed live foods (BBS, etc.), and maintain SG for a period of 6 days.
  9. Over the course of a week, bring SG up to optimal level (ex. 1.025, 1.022, etc.).
  10. Treat fish with Fenbendazole bound to food.
This is very much a modification of the Tank Transfer Method to eliminate Velvet and Ich, while dosing metronidazole to address Uronema and Brooklynella, a dip into hyposalinity to address turbellarians and flukes, and finally wrapping up with an antiparasitic in the form of fenbendazole.


Fenbendazole was chosen instead of praziquantel due to its added effectivity against hydroids and safety in regards to macroalgae. The protocol is for small groups of fish (no more than 6-8 very small fish). The freshwater dip is more for washing off tomites and other water mobile pathogens, rather than as a treatment.

Here are my questions so far:
Fenbendazole - @Jay Hemdal , your manuscript cites "50 mg/kg body weight weekly for two treatments" . Can you elaborate a bit more on what you mean by this? Like...does this mean feed the fish 50 mg/kg fenbendazole daily for 14 days? Or is it one feeding of fenbendazole @ 50 mg/kg, and then one week later doing the same feeding?

Metronidazole - I've seen varying statements about how much Metro to dose into the water column. Because fish find it bitter and avoid it, I think it might be more beneficial to just dose it into the water column to be passively taken up in addition to feeding it via bioaccumulation in live foods, and ingestion by saltwater fish. But...how much should I be dosing? I've seen anywhere from 12.5-25 mg/gallon, which is enormous variability in terms of medication. Dosing on the higher end of the spectrum is expensive and may lead to overdose, but dosing on the lower end may result in metronidazole resistant brooklynella and uronema, something nobody wants.

Hyposalinity - ideally, I'd like to incorporate hyposalinity into the TTM. Since it's deliberately only for fluke and turbellarian management, it makes sense for me to combine the two for the relatively short period of time necessary to eliminate them. But is it feasible to incorporate a short amount of hyposalinity into TTM?
 

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Jay Hemdal

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It is: one feeding of fenbendazole @ 50 mg/kg, and then one week later repeating the dose. This is from Noga 2010 and he is citing Langdon 1992. As you know, I'm a bit down on using Fenbendazole in water, but orally, it seems to be a bit safer.

Jay
 

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