Maracyn making water very cloudy?

[PineSong]

 

I'm QT'ing some new guppies in a 10g and two days in (so two total doses of Maracyn in the tank) the water is super cloudy, to the point where I can barely see the fish, and I lost one guppy today. It's nerve-wracking to leave fish in water that looks so cruddy and I'm itching to do a water change but the instructions say not to until after 5 doses.

I just tested again and no ammonia, nitrites or nitrates. Since I am putting in a new dose in the AM, will it really be harmful to do a water change now? 

 

[Mmiller2001]

It's probably a bacterial bloom from the die off that the antibiotic is causing. I would check ammonia twice a day to make sure you are not having a mini cycle. In the future, I would advise dosing antibiotics orally to avoid this problem, and it's more effective orally as well.

[PineSong]

On 11/2/2021 at 2:00 AM, Mmiller2001 said:

It's probably a bacterial bloom from the die off that the antibiotic is causing. I would check ammonia twice a day to make sure you are not having a mini cycle. In the future, I would advise dosing antibiotics orally to avoid this problem, and it's more effective orally as well.

That's what I thought, too. I have checked compulsively and even tested the strips in a glass of water with some ammonia added because I did not believe the test strip. I compromised and changed 1/3 before adding today's dose. I haven't tried the methods for preparing meds in gel food because I haven't done it before (I'm chicken) and with these store-bought guppies, they often have very poor appetites for a few days and I wasn't sure it would get into them. On the other hand, maybe the kind of food you put the meds into is more appealing to start with, so they actually would?

[Mmiller2001]

I use Seachem Focus to bind the meds to foods and add Garlic Guard to enhance the flavor.