Search the Community

HELP! I used to have 15 fish. 13 panda corydoras and 2 angelfish. I am now down to 5 panda corydoras after a month of havoc and losing all of my fish, to these survivors who have survived an extra month compared to the rest. ph: 7.5 ammonia 0 nitrite 0 nitrate 5 ppm kh 4dkh gh 10dgh Temp 75 Fahrenheit They have been undergoing treatment pretty much the entire month, but different medications. First- Melafix. Second- EM Erythromacyn Third- Paracleanse (mostly metronidazole with a little praziquental in it). Paracleanse has only been over for 3 days but plan to do another course of treatment in two weeks. However, I'm not even sure if I'm using the correct medication. I am only 6 months into the hobby and this has been a disaster. before medication, all similar symptoms included: weak, sunken belly, eyes popping out, red gills and recently noticed 2/5 Cories doing some flashing (a day after treatment of paracleanse) as well as poop sticking to their butt... kinda like parasites would do. now here are some current photos of them. They look to be struggling more than before the medication? But I don't know if it's normal? Should I be doing a different medication? Can someone please advise me on this? and yes! They're eating some bladder snails with their pellets 😂❤️

Ph:7 Ammonia:0 Nitrite:0 Nitrate:5 Temp: 25C Does anyone know what this is and how to treat it? I currently have it in a 5gallon tank. I treated the tank with kanaplex and stress guard and 1.5tablespoon of salt. I'm not sure if those meds are the right ones. Should I do water changes daily or just put meds every 2 days? Any help would be appreciated.

Hey everyone, I Have been treating my tank as shown in my journal pre-emptively for internal parasites simple because of lethargy and fish not really behaving the way I thought they normally should. I did recently add some otos as well, added directly to the tank because I knew I was going to treat everything shortly. So, that being said I did round 1 of paracleanse. On the 12th was when I did the WC and when I was giving the fish a break. That being said it's 5 days later and I just was looking at the amano shrimp Zoeys floating and I saw several worms in the water column. I can't identify them, I can't take a photo reliably and get a clear shot to ask for help but they are about 1/2" long and not on the glass. They don't look like detritus worms that I've seen before, smaller. I assume these were internal to the fish and a treatment would take care of them? I plan to follow up with a round of expel-p as well. Should I start the next round of paracleanse tomorrow for the sake of getting rid of these guys or do I need to wait 1.5 more days? What would you do? Would you add salt whenever the next round of meds are added? I really appreciate it, first time for me on this one and I definitely am not excited I found the worms Update, thankfully, I did manage to capture it. Update #2: Re-reading this. https://www.aquariumcoop.com/blogs/aquarium/fish-parasites Looks like I'm scheduled to wait 8-9 more days before adding more meds. Not sure what to do here. 😞

So I'm doing a parasite cleanse on 55gl, 82°,ph 7.2, gh 300, kh80, nitrite 0, nitrate 10, 3yr old Guppies, a dojo loach and a angel fish I never fully got rid of them over the years and now I'm just going to finally hit um hard so I started with posipro at 2x strength for 3 day then 50% and 5gl everyday since I use seachem safe for dechlorinator And now I'm alternating between two different types of medicated food, one in the morning and other at night Does anyone have any thoughts on this type of cleanse Too much, too little, ease off the nuclear worm Holocaust or maybe more nuclear like pea,carrot and flutabendazole diy gel food (experimenting atm)

so my big guy Brutus here has been slouching on his right side almost making a U shape for about 3 weeks now he doesn't do it all of the time. not sure if he's maybe impacted with some thing? or swim bladder? his buoyancy seems to be fine he's not floating to the surface or anything so it is leaving me too suggest a digestive issue? If you have seen this behavior in a fish or are experienced in fish diseases I welcome you to reply with any medication suggestions, ammonia is always at zero for this tank (it is a 55 gallon) and nitrates remain under 20 ppm The tank gets about a 40 to 50% water change at least once a week.

I thought this relatively new data was really interesting. The USDA, in conjunction with two independent laboratories in New Zealand and Sweden along with three fisheries on the Snake River in Idaho, performed one of the most comprehensive studies on Oxygen deprivation while medicating fish I've seen. The study is vast (almost 400 pages of data!) and examined hundreds of parameters but in this instance, what seemed to hold potential benefits for an aquarist, a portion of the study was on the effects of adding aeration vs supplemental Oxygen to fish tanks during illness, while being medicated and to offset environmental stressors. The objective was to determine if increasing the dissolved Oxygen would raise the efficacy of medicinal treatments and/or improve mortality, as well as to determine if other stress factors shared similar weight in the efficacy of treatment. * In typical aquariums with some exceptions, 7.5PPM-8.5PPM of Oxygen is considered normal and healthy. In this experiment, they stocked rainbow trout (125g avg. weight) into tanks with three different values of dissolved Oxygen.: -Tanks average dissolved Oxygen concentration was at 7.5PPM. Survival and medicinal treatment efficacy were averaged at 88% in the 7.5PPM tanks. -Tanks average dissolved Oxygen concentration was at 6.5PPM. Survival and medicinal treatment efficacy were averaged at 68% in the 6.5PPM tanks. (A third test was done with Oxygen at only 4.5PPM but I've not included that as that level of Oxygen would not normally be present in a home aquarium). Considering that some medications can drop the tank O2 as low as 6PPM (see chart below), the 20% increase in mortality observed with the 6.5PPM tanks certainly underscores the need to keep the O2 high when using medications! They then administered what they considered ‘maximum aeration’. Survival and medicinal treatment efficacies rose, but to a disappointing amount: -Survival and medicinal treatment efficacy were averaged at 93% in the 7.5PPM tanks. -Survival and medicinal treatment efficacy were averaged at 74% in the 6.5PPM tanks. Notice the fish raised in 6.5PPM & 7.5PPM only benefitted about 5%-6% or so from aeration during treatment. That is, the Oxygen levels were essentially fully normalized once aeration was applied. In fact, O2 levels reached complete normality with simple aeration alone. (Their test was taken over a 120-day period). * As above, in a typical aquarium, just simple aeration will almost fully offset these Oxygen losses from some commonly used medications known to suppress dissolved Oxygen. Charted below are six tanks treated with some common medications most of us have used at the default dosages. The O2 level of this water before adding any chemicals was 8.5PPM: The one exception of the medications I've tested being nitrofurazone. Without aeration, it dropped O2 levels to borderline stressor levels (<=7PPM), but simple aeration raises and maintains it to/at 7.5PPM. However, unlike the other popular meds in the graph, O2 levels drop again as soon as aeration is ceased. Unlike all others in this limited test, nitrofurazone keeps the O2 down for at least 48 hours if not more (I only tested up to 48h). Only water changes rectified this. Notice Seachem Prime’s O2 depletion infamy is quite short lived. In just 15 minutes, most of the O2 has normalized and fully so inside of an hour. However, the Prime 5X ‘emergency dose’ drops O2 to near dangerous levels. So, aeration is imperative. Although aggressive aeration brought the O2 to normal levels, it didn’t affect the outcome of medicative stress, recovery or mortality very much. But they weren’t done with this concept. As aeration proved to assist in treatment recovery of only 5%-6%, the Snake River facility partnered with two university laboratories below to test if super saturation of the tanks with Oxygen (hyper-oxidation) would in fact improve the recovery from disease, improve medication tolerance and reduce mortality. HYPEROXIDATION But what if aquarium Oxygen is raised above saturation? If circa 7.5PPM Oxygen is normal and healthy, what effect if any, does hyper-saturation of the aquarium with Oxygen to say, 9PPM or 10PPM have on sick fish being treated with common medications? It's easy to do, but is it worthwhile? Their findings were surprising and potentially valuable to us. A study done by the Universities of Auckland and Gothenburg cites observances of medicated fish with supplemental Oxygen. It was found that an astounding leap in reduced mortality and medicinal treatment efficacy occurs when the tank is flooded with Oxygen. The tank had its Oxygen levels raised above normal Oxygen levels (circa 7.5PPM) and held to 9PPM-10PPM during treatments. Unlike the 5%-6% improvement in illness treatment with aeration alone, once the O2 was temporarily raised to between 9PPM and 10PPM, the outcomes changed dramatically: -Increased metabolism. -It was observed that a small but significant percentage of severely ill fish that were refusing food, began to ingest small amounts of medicated foods after being hyper-oxidated for 24-48 hours. -Improved ability to endure most common stressors. -Improved a fish's temperature tolerance substantially. On average, hyper-oxidation of the tanks reduced mortality during various medicinal treatments by 38%! It also increased the success rate of treatments by the same amount or greater! (Most of the treatments in these tests were deworming's so unfortunately, no data was presented for antibiotic treatments as these fish are raised for human consumption and the USDA limits antibiotic use. However, some of their tests did in fact include “unapproved” antibiotic treatments but the antibiotics used were not specified). The elephant in the room now would be to examine if raising the tanks O2 to hyper-saturation levels would or even could do any harm. To that end, the next observation should be if in fact there are any adverse observations on hyper-oxidation. They list the following as positive to neutral; -Had no effect on fry or juvenile growth. -Insignificant rise in resting metabolism but quickly returns to normal once ceased. -Substantially increases metabolism under stress.* -Increased aerobic capacity and cardiac performance. -Dramatic improvement in temperature variation tolerance. *I'm speculating here but this observation seems to me that it might prove the most important of all these benefits for weak or stressed fishes, especially while being medicated. * An interesting note here. Well into the study is this most odd finding. I wish they provided more information. The statement below is from the study but offers no explanation so I'm simply quoting it here verbatim: "Hyperoxidation of the tanks significantly assists in penetration and kill-off of anaerobic methane pockets, especially in sand and finer gravels." I wish there was more information provided on that one! * With a simple DIY addition, you can hyper-saturate your tank with Oxygen. It may help fish recover from disease and tolerate medications and has no known adverse effects. A simple, Hydrogen Peroxide degassing rig for removing the O2 from peroxide and delivering it to the tank with zero risk of toxicity is linked below. This simply degasses the O2 out of the peroxide and you pump it into the tank with an airstone. If the amounts of peroxide, the bucket size and air pump are used as listed, it will hyper-oxidate your tank to 9PPM-10PPM for two days: Degassing Peroxide Of course, with techniques such as these, you'll never truly know if it helped! But O2 can't hurt (many thanks to @Colu @Gator @dmurray407 @Guppysnail and @OnlyGenusCaps for their input) and a potential 38% improvement in recovery from illness in their tests may make this or some more sophisticated equivalent of this worth trying, especially if you're experiencing fatalities or recovery is slow or incomplete.

Praziquantel powder general cure paracleanse

Ever since I brought my halfmoon betta home (thinking of naming him Michelangelo or something like that) from Aquashella Dallas '22, he immediately started harassing the cardinals, shrimp and guppies in my 29 gallon tank which strained and damaged his fins, so I put him in his current temporary 3-gallon cycled quarantine tank with a sponge filter, heater set to 78 (now 81), no decorations/plants, and freshwater salt and API erythromycin. I tried to use a pH neutralizer because it was at 6.2-6.6 ppm, but because its effects only lasted a day or so unlike advertised, I haven't really been giving him that since, because that seemed to be the turning point from healing going back to more damage- then (back from his 29G residence) vs now below. Ammonia and nitrites at zero, nitrates at a constant ~15, GH around 130, and KH at 50. At this point, all of the medications and additives I've used have been a big waste of money, and I'm really trying to avoid Methylene Blue, just because I don't have the time for daily water changes since I've worked my schedule around reliance on the beneficial bacteria, which been highly trustworthy in all of my tanks thus far. Any suggestions on what I can do to affordably heal him until he's ready to go back in the community 29, or a personal 5-gallon? (Note: I also have a 10-gallon with constant 0 ammonia, nitrites and nitrates, but there's 3 pea puffers in there, so I do have a last resort ready for him, at the cost of starting a war in the now-peaceful tank.)

I'm about to buy some pea puffers and am planning to use medication trio before deworming them. The problem is that my quarantine tank has lots of small ramshorn snails, so I can't prevent them from eating. What's the reason for not feeding during the medication trio treatment?

Ph: 7.4 Hardness: 9-10 KH: 7-8 (the dropper was giving me half drops at some points) Temp. : ~67 F Ammonia: 0 Nitrite: 0 Nitrate: 0-5 ppm (All parameters from the QT tank) Some backstory: Friday I went to my LFS and got a couple pygmy cories. One of them was looking a little bad when the employee got them out of the tank (as in the others were swimming and that one was practically half-buried under the gravel in the breeder box). When I pointed this out, the guy gave me it for free. Fast forward that night, I could find everyone but him, and found him "resting" in the middle of a vallisneria crown, not moving an inch except slightly moving his tail. His fins were down and clamped when on the ground and looked absolutely terrible. And I mean terrible. Of course, I panicked and set up a quarantine tank out of an old tank I had sitting around and popped an old sponge filter & some sponge from my HOB on the main tank. The QT tank is in the restroom which means its only about 65 F and I netted the very lethargic cory and dropped him in. I also put 2 tbs of aquarium salt in for good measure (the QT tank is 10 g) since I heard that those symptoms- skinny, lethargic- usually match internal parasites. The thing is the new fish really didn't eat that much so I never got to see any glimpse of white poop. Right now I don't have access to anything online because Amazon's business days start on Monday so I went to my LFS to get some general cure but they were out. I ended up getting some frozen bloodworms instead, something I never fed my fish and figured the cory would take to. Unfortunately the cory now is just sitting in random spots, barely moving except his tail and pretty much discolored. He also sometimes just leans a little sideways. Doesn't help that the QT tank is cloudy but he really just looks terrible. I want to get a medication but after hearing that general cure sometimes doesn't work, I really don't know what meds to get, there's so much. Praziquantel in Paracleanse, Levamisole in Expel-P, and god knows what else is out there. Also don't really expect him to recover. Anything you guys recommend doing? also forgive me for the really bad quality pictures I have, this wouldn’t even allow me to post the video I have of the Cory wiggling. The top one is a relatively fine Cory I have compared to the bad one at the bottom.

Ok so my 20 gallon long planted tank is cycled, and I plan on getting a betta fish for it, but I want to make sure that I do everything properly. Is it ok to put a betta fish in a planted tank that isn’t balanced yet? I wasn’t sure if the plants melting would be considered a “habitat change” and stress out the fish, especially if a plant dies and I’d have to remove it. Can I “quarantine” fish in my main display planted tank? I know it wouldn’t be quarantine technically, so I guess I’m asking if I could dose the medication trio in my main tank? I don’t know if it’s a good idea or if it will affect whether or not I could put fish in that tank I the future. Would the medicine affect the plants or beneficial bacteria? I just figured since my main tanks already cycled and if the medications are safe for plants and bacteria it might be worth considering? For an actual quarantine tank does it need to be cycled? I’ve read some conflicting information about this. Some say medication will kill beneficial bacteria so it’d be pointless to cycle the tank and to do frequent water changes instead. Others say medication will not affect beneficial bacteria and not to do water changes as it will affect the medicine dosages and what not. Thoughts? How to properly acclimate fish? I’ve seen many people say to float and drip acclimate, but I saw one person say that drip acclimation could be harmful for fish that are shipped. Something about as soon as the bag is opened the CO2 releases and causes the ph to rise and then the ammonia becomes deadly or something? Does that only applies to fish that are shipped? Should I just float or drip acclimate too? Normal vs abnormal betta fish behavior? Im very paranoid about not being able to recognize whether or not my fish is stressed or sick. What behaviors should I expect from my betta fish if it’s happy and healthy? What behaviors should I be concerned about? I know that once I add the fish to the tank it might be stressed, but how long is too long for it to be stressed out do to it’s rehoming? I’m going to do more research on this before I get the betta fish but I figured I’d also ask while I’m here. Is it ok to not feed the fish for the first week while in quarantine? I know it’s one of the steps for medicating the fish, but I just wanted to triple check and make sure that’s safe? Should I bother trying to raise kh? the kh in my tank is super low <1 and the gh is really high. Should I try to raise kh? I know most people say that messing with gh or kh can cause more headaches than they’re worth and not to worry about it, but just as many people say that kh that low is dangerous. Thoughts? Thanks in advance :)

Following recent help I've received about fish medicines and a potentially sick otocinclus I've been thinking about my own future plans for a med trio. I'm in the UK and it's hard to get hold of the 'good stuff' that you Americans get (can order some on eBay but it's expensive and not sure if it will actually arrive but fingers crossed). So in the nearish future when I have my fish room going I will mostly have species tanks - is it ok to use the med trio in a planted tank? I hope to reduce stress on the fish when I first get them by putting them straight into their planted forever homes and as they will be the first fish in the tank I was hoping I don't need a separate quarantine tank for them. Is this possible? Secondly I think I can get hold of SeaChem Kanaplex and Metroplex, and I can definitely get flubendazole based de wormer - would these work as an alternative Med Trio? If so how would I use them, just follow the instructions or just do like a single dose of each (not necessarily together) like the Co-op does their med trio? Also how would this affect the filter bacteria etc, should I keep the sponge filter out and just run an air stone until the meds are removed with water changes? Any experience/input is greatly appreciated! I sort of hope that we come up with some good solutions for myself or any future person googling meds from the UK or EU to stumble across, I know this question comes up occasionally. Hope everyone's having a great day!

While in another thread a thought occurred to me that I am wondering about both from a random thought and what I visually witnessed. So the thought...Does having plants in a tank make the medications less effective because the plants uptake the meds and weaken them? Now before you just to a conclusion what I witnessed was this. I recently get cory eggs. I harvested the eggs and put them in a specimen container with 2 drops of meth blue for fungus reasons. I knew they took 3-5 days to hatch so on the 3rd day I knew I was close so I put some guppy grass in the container so if they hatched while at work they would have some micro stuff to munch on if necessary....well in 48 hours all of the blue was gone....as if somebody did a 100% water change. That leads me to believe the plants up took the meth blue and cleaned the water. Now I do not know if they do the same with other meds.

Ok so I have another question I watch the king of diy the YouTuber in Canada and they have no fish medicine so, his fish store created supratect and he swears by it. He says it heals everything torn fins ich you name it. I got some new apistos around 2 weeks ago. And they had some fins a little damaged from shipping and started using it and it seems to be working with healing I was wondering if anybody else has used this product.

Hi! I just realized that a colony of tiny white little creatures (that look like mites) living in a piece of driftwood in my aquarium. I was wondering if somebody can help me to identify if this should be taken care of. Or, if it is part of the ecosystem. It is a 7 gallon aquarium with a HOB, a few pieces of driftwood, river rocks, and a few aquatic plants like java fern, tiger lotus and anubias. I would provide pictures but at this moment can't. I'll post them if somebody answers. Thanks!

I'm going to try a second round of treatment for my sick betta, and will try a mix of metroplex and kanaplex. I've read that when the two work together, it is more effective against culminaris. Assuming that is the cause of his dropsy. It was recommended to feed using focus to bind it with food. But if I do this, will the otherwise floating food still float?

I brought 6 Julii Corydoras home from my LFS yesterday, put them into quarantine, and fed them live bloodworms hoping to fatten them up before medicating. One had what I thought was an injured Pectoral fin and possible injury to his swim bladder. I put him into a separate nursery tank I was preparing that had already been medicated with Methylene Blue, hoping to prevent infection. This morning he had passed away, and I noticed that a few of the other Corys now had large portions of their fins missing and fraying. Other than the damaged fins, I have not seen any signs of the remaining 5 acting unusual. They are resting together in their shoal and traveling up to the top of the tank for air. I am guessing this is fin rot, but I have never dealt with this before with my livebearers. The picture I added is the one who seems to be in the worst shape. His entire tailfin has completely frayed away. I have added aquarium salt to their tank at half the usual dose; although, I know there is conflicting information about how sensitive to it corys really are. On hand, I have the Quarantine Trio, Methylene Blue, API Aquarium Salt and Malachite Green. In the past, I have known people to use Maracyn 2 for Fin rot, but I can't find it anywhere at a reasonable price or that could be shipped to me in time. Will regular Maracyn work? Should I go get Malefix from Petco? Water Parameters: pH: 7.2 Nitrates: ~15 ppm Hardness: ~200 ppm Nitrite: 0 ppm Ammonia: 0 ppm KH/Buffer: ~40 ppm Water Temperature: 79.1F

Currently trying to fight columnaris in my tank and can't find API Furan-2 anywhere - finally decided to take a shot and write an email to API off of their website...I actually got a response: "We have been suffering large out of stock issues with suppliers. We are working hard to bring back the API powdered medications to store shelves. We anticipate 2-4 weeks for all the medications to be back on shelf." Figured I would post this here for anyone else who has been looking for it - if you can find it "BiFuran+" has the same two active ingredients that Furan-2 has, but its almost as hard to find Good Luck to everyone, I will keep my fingers crossed for you (and me) that we make it through!

Hi has anyone used acriflavine I know it's used for treating ulcers on koi but is there any other uses for I.E fungus white spot ect thanks .

I’ve always used API melafix & white spot cure for quarantining new fish, and I’ve been lucky enough so far that I’ve never had to treat sick fish, but I was wondering if there are any other meds I should buy that I’ll be able to find in the UK?

I have a 10g qt tank that currently has 5 mollies. About a week or so ago I noticed one of them had a white stuff on it. Definitely not ich or fin rot. I did a large water change, cleaned the intake filter and sponge filter. Added my salt back plus a little extra. Immediately after doing the water change I noticed it was gone from the fish. I continued my qt treatment as usual and now a week later it is back and due to my lack of attention one of them has died. Does this sound like Saprolegnia or Columnaris? Like I said the strange thing is that it disappeared immediately after that water change. Thoughts??

I work at Tractor Supply and we got these fish medications in a month or so ago. So if anyone was looking for a place to get it, your local TSC should have it. Also, what exactly would you use these two medications for? What would you treat with them?

I saved my first 🐟! I have medicated others but they ended up dying (my fault, their fault, who knows). But this time, I put one of my dwarf neon rainbows in the hospital and medicated and a week and a half later he was all better and back to swimming with his little friends. I would love to say I know what I did right but I think I was just blessed and had plenty of help from people here on the forum. I LOVE THIS PLACE! I can ask newbee questions and not be criticized. Thanks everyone ❤️!

I don't have any local source for medications so I'm wanting to get some to have on hand. What would you recommend?

I'm currently treating my 40 breeder for ick using api super ick cure (only thing available locally short notice). I dont have access to a carbon filter as I am running it solely with coop sponge filters. I was curious as to the recommendations water change frequency to remove to medication after treatment?