Gannon

I'll see if I can source live food anywhere but I've been unable to in the past, at least beyond insects like dubia roaches and mealworms intended for reptiles but these guys may eat on occasion. Garlic guard is on the way for this very purpose so glad that was a good choice.

Blackout for the first 24 hours or whole treatment since I've been told 24 hours. And I'll do my best with this, thanks. I am concerned about the archers since in the last week of expel p treatment they have not wanted to eat and have been acting more flighty and upset so I'm a bit heasitant to continue for so long but ill give it a go. At least for 1-2 more weeks.

Perhaps it could be some kind of digestive blockage? Maybe this could be linked to the yawning, the lethargy, the lack of eating, but not obvious wasting?

Only major loss of appetite and lethargy for both of the archer fish to struggle and die from this over the last 2 months. the others spat out food once but that’s when I treated with expel p which is normal from what k understand.

It is indeed really tough. I really love these amazing and intelligent animals and I just feel all kinds of awful for them.

Onto next steps. He’s almost certainly not going to make it. What should I do. This is now something contagious, seemingly only hitting the archers, so what can I do to figure this out? Should I try to preserve the fish for a necropsy? How can I find someone who’d be able to do that? Anyone know anything about this? im so clueless and stressed on this. I would give so much to have Ich, columnaris, or any other normal, common disease once in my hobby instead of ambiguous strange stuff like this. It’s so crushing!

No improvement. Moving the archer to QT and hoping for the best with an antibacterial treatment paired with continuing for parasites just in case.

Gotcha that makes sense. I’ll get some salt and do the best I can. I am just so stressed about all this. And it just compounds with real life stress! My aquarium hobby has been really struggling in the last year and losing one of the archers was already a major gut punch. I just want to do all I can right by these guys.

Ah. Then how can you be confident you get them all if it can’t kill them? Would something like paracleanse at the same time kill them more easily when they’re paralyzed outside of the fish?

Also other details. When I treated, my archers spit up their food they recently ate, probably should’ve waited a few hours, my mistake. And I’ve seen that not eating archer do a few yawns today, which I can’t remember seeing more than once before in the last 3 years.

Well I treated yesterday and today I couldn’t find any parasites on the substrate. Couldn’t even find a picture of what I’m looking for. Tried my best to vacuum the whole substrate but just how much I got and just how well I got those areas are questionable values. I did try to focus on areas where they hover over constantly. I did find a couple somewhat suspicious looking grayish solid poops. But nothing else. Feel like I’m screwing up and wasting time/money/fish stress. Ugh

You’ll never know the nightmare that was getting SMALL archerfish out of a QT. I genuinely can’t imagine getting the giant powerful ones out of a huge tank. They’ll cause seriously harm to themselves before they get caught in a net it’s unbelievably tricky. Only one that could rival them is Denison barbs.

Archerfish tend to be so net adverse i think I’d do more harm than good doing QT. I’ll see if I get some results in the 125 and continue treating if I do, probably at least do 2 rounds as instructed on the box But assuming this works I’ll stick to your schedule. Seems like it’s well thought out. I’ll start tomorrow.

Similar size probably, but archerfish more flighty, active Also I imagine the parasites aren’t only afflicting one fish, assuming this is a parasite issue at all So if I treat successfully and add back I would kinda not have accomplished much besides defining the problem which I guess isn’t so bad. But then I’d have to treat again and for the whole big tank

My only quarantine tank is 10 gallons regrettably. Don’t think it would be wise to put a 5 inch + archerfish in there. But maybe.