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need expert advise with hippo, new photos added
- Thread starter coralbeauties
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I pulled the fish tonight and took a close up pic. On the skin on the fish upper left of its eye if I enlarge it I see what looks like a pod of some sort. The body looks oblong and I swear I am seeing evenly spaced legs protruding from both sides. I am wondering if I should do a formalin dip on the fish? My buddy dipped his two hippos that were with this fish in formalin followed with a freshwater dip. He said the dip seems to have worked but it blinded one of them and the others sight was damaged. Any advise please? Would love to get this guy healed and in the display tank
Thanks
Jeff
Jay Hemdal
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Parasitic copepods are rare, but they do show up from time to time. There are also opportunistic copepods, maybe those are feeding on the margins of the HLLE lesions?
Fish don’t go blind from FW dips, but if formalin is dosed too high, I could definitely see eye damage occurring. I would not do both dips on the same day, too stressful. Formalin should be used at 150 ppm for 45 minutes with good aeration. If I were you, I’d try the FW dip first to see if anything comes off.
Jay
Fish don’t go blind from FW dips, but if formalin is dosed too high, I could definitely see eye damage occurring. I would not do both dips on the same day, too stressful. Formalin should be used at 150 ppm for 45 minutes with good aeration. If I were you, I’d try the FW dip first to see if anything comes off.
Jay
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OP
Ive dipped this guy in freshwater several times over the last month or so I have been dealing with him. I think I will do the formalin. If there are pods will one dip do it or will I need to follow up with more dips? I found out my buddy did 3x the strength on the formalin for just 5 minutes. Im sure that is what hurt the fish vision. Thanks for dealing with all my questions.
Jeff
Jeff
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I really hate to keep asking questions but I am not finding much at all on parasitic pods in saltwater fish. I dipped the fish tonight with the recommended dosage on the bottle of 20 drops per gallon. Not sure what the ppm would be. It is 37% formaldehyde. My question is how do these pods reproduce and will I need to follow up with a series of dips? Is is once and gone or are there more in the qt tank ready to attach?
thanks
Jeff
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That dose works out to be 266 ppm which is the absolute highest dose for a one hour formalin dip, only used for coldwater fish. How long did you dip for?
Formalin is completely time/dose/temperature corelated. For tropical fish, the dose is 150 to 166 ppm for one hour, under good aeration. In this case, that is 13 drops per gallon.
I really do not think this is a copepod issue, but dips only provide temporary relief, as returning them to the tank allows them to be reinfected.
Jay
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I had him in the dip for 45 minutes. So the dosing instructions on the bottle says that to treat a tank to add 2 drops per gallon. Will this kill off and stop any reinfection? In two separate pictures I think I saw some kindof bugs in the picture. In one picture I saw what looked like a bug with 2 antennas, this last pic looks to be a bug with legs on both sides of its body. This fish has been through just about every treatment other then the formalin that I did last night. Fish is still active and eating well.
Jeff
Jeff
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