Stronger antibiotics?

[anabechara]

Hi all!
So on June 16th 2023 all my euphyllias took a turn for the worse. Since then I have been trying to save them...
Since then I have dipped them in iodine, Revive, Coral MD, KFC dip. No teal changes with those treatments.
Finally treated the tank with Ciprofloxacin and that helped but not back to normal.
So I then treated the tank again with Chemiclean x2 and that made a huge difference. Over the course of 3 days they recovered their colors and are almost back to normal... even some other corals that seemingly were normal are doing much better after the chemiclean.

So, my question is: does anybody have experience treating corals with other types of antibiotics? Say Meropenem perhaps?

Thank you for any help and insight!!

 

[zoomonster]

IMO Cipro is about as good as it gets, and it has been the silver bullet for BJD in Euphyllia. Read around for different opinions on dosing as you may not have dosed enough/long enough. For my 200g I used 2x500mg tabs in 100ml of RO water dosed at 10ml every night for 10 days with carbon removed and skimmer off at night. Of course, you never said they actually had BJD but just not doing well which could be other things like water quality, flow and lighting.

 

[anabechara]

IMO Cipro is about as good as it gets, and it has been the silver bullet for BJD in Euphyllia. Read around for different opinions on dosing as you may not have dosed enough/long enough. For my 200g I used 2x500mg tabs in 100ml of RO water dosed at 10ml every night for 10 days with carbon removed and skimmer off at night. Of course, you never said they actually had BJD but just not doing well which could be other things like water quality, flow and lighting.

You are right, I did not give a lot of info on the corals themselves.
So they were doing perfect until the day I decided to switch some rocks around.
No flow or light was changed, and has been the same since the setting of the tank 1 year ago. The euphyllias had been with me for at least 4 months before this happened.
I don't know if the had BJD but I never saw any coating or slime of any kind and the did not loose any tissue. They just stopped opening up and just looking deflated in general. I never saw bugs and the dips with iodine and Revive and coral MD did not yield anything.
By your description I gather you dose 100mg daily. I dosed 50mg daily for 10 days, but my tank is 45 gallons. No carbon, no skimmer and extra O2 during treatment.
Also I test my water weekly and the parameters have been pretty stable for months now as follows:
T 78 sal 1.026 pH 8.0 KH 8.5-9.0 Ca 470 Mg 1480 NO ~10 PO ~0.03-0.05

Thank you so very much for your reply!

 

[Pod_01]

PO ~0.03-0.05

Before you try more antibiotics that can do harm/irritate the beneficial bacteria found inside the corals, you could try to bump the PO4 up to 0.1-0.15 level for 3-4 weeks and see if that helps…

Just a suggestion.

 

[bushdoc]

Meropenem is a broad spectrum antibiotic, used to treat some infections in often immunocompromised patients and often, but not alwayc in ICU settings. It has been FDA approved to treat only certain type of infections and in hospital settings it's administration frequently requires "culture and sensitivity" testing and in some institution has to be approved by infectious diseases specialists. I hope general public will never be able to use it without prescription and I hope no veterinarian would prescribe it to use in aquarium.

 

[leemont]

Cipro for teeters a line for me and even those who see 100% nothing wrong with it would probably look at you funny if they knew you wanted to use meropenem on your reef tank

 

[formallydehyde]

IIRC cipro is more effective against Gram-negative bacteria than Gram-positive, whereas erythromycin is the opposite. I think Chemiclean is just erythromycin or an erythromycin-class antibiotic last I checked. I'm guessing the effectiveness might more depend on what exactly is infecting them rather than whether or not its a strong antibiotic. But yeah I don't think meropenem in a tank is a good idea either.

 

[MnFish1]

Hi all!
So on June 16th 2023 all my euphyllias took a turn for the worse. Since then I have been trying to save them...
Since then I have dipped them in iodine, Revive, Coral MD, KFC dip. No teal changes with those treatments.
Finally treated the tank with Ciprofloxacin and that helped but not back to normal.
So I then treated the tank again with Chemiclean x2 and that made a huge difference. Over the course of 3 days they recovered their colors and are almost back to normal... even some other corals that seemingly were normal are doing much better after the chemiclean.

So, my question is: does anybody have experience treating corals with other types of antibiotics? Say Meropenem perhaps?

Thank you for any help and insight!!

Meropenem? This has to be a joke post, right? If presumably tylosin worked, why would be wondering about meropenem? Hopefully, no one has experience using that type of antibiotic in a tank.

 

[anabechara]

Meropenem? This has to be a joke post, right? If presumably tylosin worked, why would be wondering about meropenem? Hopefully, no one has experience using that type of antibiotic in a tank.

It was not a joke. I was asking a legitimate question.

 

[MnFish1]

IMO Cipro is about as good as it gets, and it has been the silver bullet for BJD in Euphyllia. Read around for different opinions on dosing as you may not have dosed enough/long enough. For my 200g I used 2x500mg tabs in 100ml of RO water dosed at 10ml every night for 10 days with carbon removed and skimmer off at night. Of course, you never said they actually had BJD but just not doing well which could be other things like water quality, flow and lighting.

It was not a joke. I was asking a legitimate question.

Meropenem is an antibiotic that is one of few active against certain strains of bacteria. It is restricted to use by an infectious disease specialists in many places.

Here is a study from the NIH. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/ar...re,sensitivity to other antimicrobials agents.

However it's interesting to see that chemiclean (which has an unknown ingredient, but assumed by some to be tylosin - a relative of erythromycin. If you look at various studies for BJD and SCTlD, erythromycin is more active against some of these bacteria than cipro (or as active). perhaps that why you had success with Chemiclean.

Here is a quote from Aquabiomics:
"Aquarists considering antibiotic treatments should consider the following:

• Antibiotics should only be used therapeutically, never as a preventative measure. The routine preventative use of antibiotics leads to the emergence of antibiotic resistance in microbial communities, which can lead to serious health risks.
• Antibiotic treatments are likely to impact beneficial microbes in addition to pathogens. This can be minimized by the choice of antibiotics and dosages. Testing the microbiome can help users determine whether supplementation is needed to restore the community after an especially aggressive antibiotic treatment."

 

[MnFish1]

It was not a joke. I was asking a legitimate question.

Sorry - I wasn't talking about the whole post, just the meropenem comment

 

[anabechara]

Meropenem is an antibiotic that is one of few active against certain strains of bacteria. It is restricted to use by an infectious disease specialists in many places.

Here is a study from the NIH. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3813286/#:~:text=Carbapenems (imipenem and meropenem) were,sensitivity to other antimicrobials agents.

However it's interesting to see that chemiclean (which has an unknown ingredient, but assumed by some to be tylosin - a relative of erythromycin. If you look at various studies for BJD and SCTlD, erythromycin is more active against some of these bacteria than cipro (or as active). perhaps that why you had success with Chemiclean.

Here is a quote from Aquabiomics:
"Aquarists considering antibiotic treatments should consider the following:

• Antibiotics should only be used therapeutically, never as a preventative measure. The routine preventative use of antibiotics leads to the emergence of antibiotic resistance in microbial communities, which can lead to serious health risks.
• Antibiotic treatments are likely to impact beneficial microbes in addition to pathogens. This can be minimized by the choice of antibiotics and dosages. Testing the microbiome can help users determine whether supplementation is needed to restore the community after an especially aggressive antibiotic treatment."

Thank you for you thorough answer.

I get that many people here ask questions that might sound silly for seasoned reefers.

Nonetheless, this is suppose to be a space for everyone, specially new people to voice their questions and concerns.

We all come from very different backgrounds and that is why we all might have different questions and different ideas as to how we can best help our reefs thrive and solve the problems that arise every day.

Thank you for giving me a legitimate answer. This encourages the community to continue to be curious and move forward in the right direction.

PS. I am a physician. So I know what Meropenem is and what it should be used for. And I am also a new reefer trying to do what is best for my mixed reef. Since I couldn't find any evidence in microbiology or pharmacology that could support my idea, I did not use the Meropenem.
Luckily after the chemiclean in tank treatment, and a few months of TLC, all my Euphyllias recovered and are doing great now! (Knock on wood)