8spidersayear

The sunken belly has disappeared from both tetras but both still seem to spit out food. I've been feeding them mostly live food because they don't seem to spit it out as much.

Do you personally bother with microscopes? I think X100 might be doable with the type that clips on to a smartphone camera.

also quick question in case you know, are capillaria eggs visible under an extremely simple and cheap light microscope. (says 40x) I am asking this because the sicker looking tucano tetras defecated and I decided to collect a sample. This does seem to b the question given I've only seen this fish eat something without spitting it out a couple of times.

You can at least keep the expired levamisole for dipping plants for hydra. I've heard people claim levamisole HCl has a long shelf life, maybe longer than the expiration date. Edit: Nvm you had the option of returning it.

Paracleanse in the water seems to be the only thing that will get them to swallow food but it is not enough to cure them completely. I am considering medicating the water and the food at the same time but I am afraid of overdosing. It might become my only option if this keeps up. When I consider medicating my non symptomatic fish I am considering using straight metro instead of paraguard for my loaches and corys because I've heard they are sensitive. It's hard to decide because info on what species are sensitive to what medications is very contradictory.

the paracleanse is more encouraging so far but I will follow up with levamisole. My moina culture was finally successful enough to feed out so I tried some on the tucanos and both were able to eat. I notice that the healthy one constantly chases the less healthy one from the food. Idk if based on this I should try to feed medicated frozen cyclops or baby brine or to separate them so the less healthy one can recover.

I was worried that it wouldn't be an internal parasite but fish TB, discovering that paracleanse seems to do the trick reassured me but lately I've had fish keep on dropping dead. It makes me suspicious again, especially of the less healthy one.

Yes, it seems like when I add paracleanse one of the fish starts to eat after a few hours, when I run carbon in the filter the fish stops eating after a few hours. I think this indicates that it might be hexamita or tapeworms. Of course the other one has not been able to swallow anything this entire time. They both ignore replashy unfortunately. I don't know if I should experiment with feeding the healthier one metro in food, allowing too many gaps in treatment seems to be a good way to allow the disease agent to build up resistance.

I notice that when I remove the paracleanse from the water with carbon one of my fish that was eating stops eating again. This happened once when I dosed levamisole and another time now, I will dose paracleanse again this time to see what happens.

I guess I can't count on finding out which of the two meds really worked in case I want to treat the rest of my fish prophylacticly. I've heard other people talk about how parasites like velvet or nematodes would be subclinical in their adult fish but kill off the fry. I think that might be what's happening to me.

if I notice more improvement when I dose the paracleanse than with the levamisole should I stick with the paracleanse?

should I treat more aggressively until they start swallowing food again?

if I don't see any improvement after 24 hrs with levamisole should I still wait several days before adding another dose like a lot of recommendations say?

if I wanted to medicate my replashy, I guess feeding it with levamisole or fenbendazole to it while the water is still full of levamisole iprobably a bad idea? I would think that putting kanaplex in the water and anti parasite in the food would be more effective, though it's probably better to try non medicated replashy to see if they can even eat it in the first place.

I am hesitant to use salt because I can't find info on how much Tucano Tetras in particular can handle salt. I assume most other tetras can handle that amount, I think a lot of tetras like the neon have been bred in captivity for generations but idk how much tetras that are newer to the hobby and are possibly even wild caught. Is it possible the Epistylis is caused by dirty water, I have been trying to monitor their ability to swallow food so a lot of uneaten food is in the tank. I used ammonia neutralizer to try to handle this but I guess I forgot about bacteria count. My tetras normally cannot swallow food so medicated food is probably not going to do anything, but I noticed my healthier eating a stray copepod seemingly without spitting it, is it possible to find something soft enough for them to swallow? I have been using small amounts of brewers yeast as food but they seem to have to spit that.