My experience with using Ciprofloxacin to save a BTA.

Brewman1987 · Mar 7, 2016

Hi everyone,

I wanted to post my first hand experience with using cipro to treat my BTA I had bought back in October. When I first bought a nice medium red rose it was beautiful and in my 30gal tank.

Fast forward about a month and for some reason it had started to decline (tentacles disappearing, shortening, feeding response was very low, constant inflate and deflating).
It's mouth began to stay open for long periods of time and its menestary filaments started to become exposed through the oral disc.

So I had immediately decided to order some cipro and attempt to treat this anemone.
I purchased a bottle of fish flox off eBay and used a 10gallon tank I had kicking around.
For lighting I purchased a small nano led off amazon, I did not want to cause any more stress to the anemone with high power lights. I used only a hob filter for flow with only a sponge (no carbon because it will clean out the medication).

For doseage I had followed Amoo's treatment of 250mg/10g. I treated each day for 7days and performed a 5 gallon water change everyday after 12hours of treatment.

The following photos document the recovery.
Day 1

Day 3- mouth was remaining closed, but no feeding response yet and slowly losing its zooanxthellae

Day 7- Tentacles stopped receding and mouth was fully closed.

1week after stopping treatment

Brewman1987 · Mar 7, 2016

I had then transferred into my larger tank and it slowly was improving and gaining all lost zooanxthellae.

This is the same BTA only about month and half ago.

I had began to feed it once it was transferred into the larger tank and helped with its growth. Up until about 3 weeks ago it was about 9" across when fully inflated and then it decided to split into 2 and both are healed and happy.

So just when you think your bleached anemone or one that appears to be on the way out, please try this. Medication can go a long way and save that anemone.

Dan

aabjones888 · Mar 7, 2016

Good job, thanks for posting that, good to know.

redfishbluefish · Mar 7, 2016

That's wild.....thanks for sharing. A good friend was a salesman when Cipro launched in the late 80's. He sold a ton of that stuff, touting it as the next wonder drug antibiotic. That's all he talked about. Good to see it now has uses on the fish side. It's got to be off patent by now....wonder if generic is available for pennies.

Brewman1987 · Mar 7, 2016

Yeah I bought a bottle from a pet supplier I think for 30 pills at 500mg was around 35.00 and no prescription was needed

redfishbluefish · Mar 7, 2016

Brewman1987 said:
Yeah I bought a bottle from a pet supplier I think for 30 pills at 500mg was around 35.00 and no prescription was needed

That just means it's gone OTC (over the counter) and no prescription is needed. Sure enough, I looked it up and the first hit was at $0.25 per pill (250 mg x 360 pills). The 500 mg where $0.34/pill (360 pills). Sounds like a group buy possibility! :D

Brewman1987 · Mar 4, 2017

Bump to the top to help new people. Also this anemone had split numerous times and is a hardy healthy specimen. I had around 16 from this one bta.

cromag27 · Mar 5, 2017

Unfortunately, there is no scientific proof cipro does anything for anemones, in this fashion.

Brewman1987 · Mar 5, 2017

cromag08 said:
Unfortunately, there is no scientific proof cipro does anything for anemones, in this fashion.

There may not be any scientific research done to prove that this treatment works on anemones. But having done this first hand and having a positive experience it worked for me. Could it just be a coincidence that during the treatment it healed all on its on? Maybe, but overall it saved the above bta and im sure has helped out other people.

cromag27 · Mar 5, 2017

Yes, and I wasn't trying to take away from post. I'd just like to know how/if it effects bt anemones, and in what fashion. I was trying cipro on nems 15 years ago and it was only conclusively effective on carpets.