Treating Flukes

[a;lksdjf]

I recently bought a royal gramma for my 45 gallon tank. Thank goodness I put it in the QT first because it has flukes. The only sort of medication I have in the tank is Cupramine. Does anyone know if I could possibly mix Cupramine with something like PraziPro to help kill them off?

 

[Crabs McJones]

Give this thread by Humblefish a read through. Looks like a freshwater dip for relief, and then prazipro for treatment.
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/flukes-–-general-guidelines.224423/

 

[HotRocks]

I recently bought a royal gramma for my 45 gallon tank. Thank goodness I put it in the QT first because it has flukes. The only sort of medication I have in the tank is Cupramine. Does anyone know if I could possibly mix Cupramine with something like PraziPro to help kill them off?

Praziquantel can be mixed. It is better mixed in powder form (General Cure contains Praziquantel). There is a slight risk of a bacterial bloom.

 

[Lifelongaquaria]

Hello I am treating a Coral beauty for eye flukes(flat worms). I am waiting on prazipro to arrive so have been doing a fw dip every other day. Two adults came off in the first dip but none since. Pretty sure I can see at least one more but may be the healing wound. Has anyone here seen them adapt to fw? Ie not seize and fall off?

 

[deedubz]

Hello I am treating a Coral beauty for eye flukes(flat worms). I am waiting on prazipro to arrive so have been doing a fw dip every other day. Two adults came off in the first dip but none since. Pretty sure I can see at least one more but may be the healing wound. Has anyone here seen them adapt to fw? Ie not seize and fall off?

Unfortunately, a fw dip isn't going to kill all of the parasites. It will give them some much needed relief though. It generally takes 5-7 days in hyposalinity to kill adult flukes and prevent eggs from hatching. I think your regimen of fw dips is a great idea until the prazi arrives. Just know, and I say this with experience, that some flukes are immune to prazi. I'd do 3 treatments 5 days apart and observe for a couple weeks. If they return then you'll want to either do hypo for 5-7 days or do 2 formalin baths a week apart.

 

[Lifelongaquaria]

Unfortunately, a fw dip isn't going to kill all of the parasites. It will give them some much needed relief though. It generally takes 5-7 days in hyposalinity to kill adult flukes and prevent eggs from hatching. I think your regimen of fw dips is a great idea until the prazi arrives. Just know, and I say this with experience, that some flukes are immune to prazi. I'd do 3 treatments 5 days apart and observe for a couple weeks. If they return then you'll want to either do hypo for 5-7 days or do 2 formalin baths a week apart.

Thank you very much I have actually never treated flukes before so your experience is valued. Out of curiosity what salinity do you suggest. Ran at 1.023 for about two weeks.

 

[deedubz]

Thank you very much I have actually never treated flukes before so your experience is valued. Out of curiosity what salinity do you suggest. Ran at 1.023 for about two weeks.

For flukes you'll actually need to drop it down to 1.011 over the course of a couple days. I generally shoot for 1.009 to give me some extra wiggle room so it doesn't creep back up over .011. You then keep it there for 5-7 days. I do 7 just to make sure. The treatment needs to be done in a QT, as corals and inverts are very intolerant of hyposalinity. You'll also want to use a precisely calibrated refractometer. Too high and it won't work, too low and it will be harmful to the fish too.

A couple things to keep in mind are pH and raising salinity back up after treatment. While fish can handle the rapid drop, increasing it too quickly can be fatal. You want to raise it no more than .002 a day. I usually just let the tank evaporate some and top off with 1.025 water. It should take about a week or two to get back up, but that's fine.

As far as pH goes, lower salinity causes lower pH. What I like to do is buy a 1 gallon bottle of distilled water and a small box of baking soda. You then spread the baking soda on a baking sheet. Bake the soda at 300° for about an hour. You then put about 1- 1 1/8 cups of it into that bottle of distilled, shake vigorously, and you now have a pH buffer. I like to test twice a day, morning and evening, and add about a shot glass worth of the mixture (shaking well before each use) also twice a day. This keeps my pH between 7.8-8.
*Edit- I use a 29g qt with ~25-26 gallons of water. The amount of buffer needed will depend on the size of your qt*

Hopefully that made sense. Let me know if you have any other questions

 

[deedubz]

Welcome to R2R by the way!

 

[deedubz]

Thank you very much I have actually never treated flukes before so your experience is valued. Out of curiosity what salinity do you suggest. Ran at 1.023 for about two weeks.

I'm sorry.. To clarify did you mean to treat flukes or your reef in general?

 

[Lifelongaquaria]

To treat flukes

 

[Lifelongaquaria]

Thank you for the welcome

 

[deedubz]

Thank you for the welcome

You're welcome!

To treat flukes

I figured as much but I wanted to make sure. I would recommend trying a couple rounds of prazi first and then using hypo as the next step if need be since it's a little more difficult than dosing the prazipro

 

[HotRocks]

Welcome to R2R! Great place, great people, and tons of great info!

You are in good hands!

 

[Lifelongaquaria]

I am under the impression prazi is invert and polyp safe. Am acclimating a pencil urchin and as the Dt has nothing in it but the infected Coral beauty am planning to treat the whole system. I have zero experience with prazi and have never trusted anything that said reef safe but hear good things. Will my urchin and macro alges be safe or should I do this old school?

 

[Lifelongaquaria]

By old school I mean sperate inverts from vertabrites etc.

 

[Lifelongaquaria]

Has anyone treated prazipro in a tank with urchins?

 

[deedubz]

I've never treated with urchins.

I have, however, on a few occasions treated in a tank that had 6 anemones, 2 starfish, 2 pistol shrimp, a fire shrimp, a skunk cleaner shrimp, chaeto in my refugium, and even hundreds of little hitchhiker red feather duster. It says on the bottle it can potentially kill feather duster and bristle worms, but I never saw a dent in my population of either. I never noticed a dip in my pod population either, as prior to my velvet/brook outbreak my scooter dragonet was fat and happy.

 

[deedubz]

I noticed coral polyps would close up immediately after dosing. They look agitated during treatment but I never lost a single frag/colony

 

[Lifelongaquaria]

Thank you very much. Parzipro just arrived

 

[Lifelongaquaria]

Ok. Has shown great improvement after first treatment however there is still something on his eye. I fear that I have run into a prazi resistant species of fluke. Does this sound right or am I seeing damage left after the fluke. Am thinking to go another round at least until refractometer arrives and I can properly go the hyposalinity route as I am ashamed to say I have always used the swing arm hydrometer and taken multiple readings.