I personally only use formalin in an emergency situation - specifically, when a fish has brook or velvet and requires immediate relief. My issue with formalin is it contains formaldehyde, a known carcinogen. So I worry about the long-term health impact of not only fish exposed to formalin, but also the human who might come into contact with it or breathe the fumes. I have experimented with acriflavine as an alternative to using formalin and have had great success.
Wrasse qt method
- Thread starter Alwmh4
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What you want is Acriflavine-MS, but it keeps selling out online. However, you can also use Ruby Reef Rally which contains acriflavine: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003TN17P2/ref=s9_dcbhz_bw_d0_g199_i1_sh
Paul B
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I see I never answered this. As I said, I get a lot of fish for practically free because I sometimes see them sick in a store and they give them to me. After I cure them they live out their life in my tank, normally dying of old age or jumping out as I have no cover on my tank. Unfortunately healthy fish jump out even more often than sick fish just because they can. I can jump higher when I am healthy than when I am sick also.
My fish never die of any disease as they are not allowed to. I have a bottle of copper/formalin in a drawer that is probably from the 70s, maybe earlier as it was made in Brooklyn. I have had fish get pop eye which I can cure in about 8 seconds but I really can't remember any fish dying from a real disease unless I bought it purposely sick. I am not counting the 70s when I killed everything. My oldest fish is 25 and has never been sick, not even a headache. He is still spawning every few weeks.
If my tank crashed due to parasites, I would probably know about it and wouldn't have old fish. I don't know for certain the age limit of all fish but I can guess from the longevity of my fish. Most gobies seem to live about 12 years, clowns probably live into their 30s. Pipefish don't live very long, maybe 4 or 5 years and tangs should go for about 15 years. These are my theories as I have kept these fish numerous times for those years (approximately) but even if you can get one fish to live to a certain age, they should all have that capacity, (same species of course) I had a pair of hermit crabs live to 12 years old so I would assume all of them could live to that age. They died a week apart, probably from a broken heart. :(
I prefer nitrofurazone green dosed at full strength and about 1/8 strength copper which I allow to dilute out through water changes during QT. Seems to be much gentler on more fragile fish such as wrasses, anthias and angels which are also usually more prone to bacterial issues than parasitic ones.
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