Quarantine med for 1 day?

[Any Huit]

Hi!

I started the quarantine meds trio - maracyn, ichx and paracleanse in a 10g tank. I think I see mild fin rot in one betta, so i wanted to be safe!

I only did one dose yesterday, and before adding anything else, I've just been watching the water parameters. nitrite nitrate ph kh and gh are good, but ammonia is a little bit higher - the caution zone of the aquarium coop test trips. I've also got an air stone and increased it to help them breathe betta (pun intended) & they've got indian almond leaves. I also did a water change yesterday and vacuumed the substrate before starting the treatment.

Should I stop the meds now (after only 1 day of treatment) since ammonia went up, and stick to a) clean water changes and b) maybe add a bacteria starter to reduce ammonia? Any advice & patience is much appreciated!

sincerely, a betta lover

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

Meds and fish stress will sometimes cause an ammonia spike. I handle it by adding Prime to the water. Prime has an ammo-lock feature which makes the ammonia harmless (you will still have the ammonia reading when you test the water though). It’s my understanding that Prime detoxifies ammonia for 48 hours. I would add bacteria too. That really helps.

[nabokovfan87]

On 7/15/2022 at 12:23 PM, Any Huit said:

Should I stop the meds now (after only 1 day of treatment) since ammonia went up, and stick to a) clean water changes and b) maybe add a bacteria starter to reduce ammonia? Any advice & patience is much appreciated!

Welcome to the Forums!

I was listening to a members only talk by a betta breeder and their advice was that bettas tend to do "better" when it comes to some diseases if there is a little bit of salt in their water.  I can't speak to this, but I wanted to pass along their information and recommend dosing salt in your tank as well, at least level 1, if you haven't.

https://www.aquariumcoop.com/blogs/aquarium/aquarium-salt-for-sick-fish
https://www.aquariumcoop.com/blogs/faqs/how-to-treat-fin-rot

My recommendation would be that if ammonia is very high, do your water change and then go ahead and re-dose meds.  You can focus on clean water as treatment 1 for the betta and then dose the meds as a recovery step to treat the disease once the tank is cycled.  Second to that, yes, I would recommend dosing bacteria in a bottle.  Dosing bacteria and anti-bacterial meds might be counter intuitive but it's difficult to say if the bacteria will be impacted in this scenario.  I typically do a large dose on day 1, then dose 6+ days as need be until parameters stabilize. 

 

 

On 7/15/2022 at 1:02 PM, Chick-In-Of-TheSea said:

I handle it by adding Prime to the water. Prime has an ammo-lock feature which makes the ammonia harmless (you will still have the ammonia reading when you test the water though). It’s my understanding that Prime detoxifies ammonia for 48 hours. I would add bacteria too. That really helps.

Correct.  I think they give a range of 24-48 hours to "be safe" on their side.  The advice that seachem gives is to only dose 1 time per 24 hours as a maximum.  There's an FAQ on their website if you have any concerns.  It's a good reference for some situations!

[Any Huit]

On 7/15/2022 at 9:02 PM, Chick-In-Of-TheSea said:

Meds and fish stress will sometimes cause an ammonia spike. I handle it by adding Prime to the water. Prime has an ammo-lock feature which makes the ammonia harmless (you will still have the ammonia reading when you test the water though). It’s my understanding that Prime detoxifies ammonia for 48 hours. I would add bacteria too. That really helps.

Thank you! I just did this, I ran out to get seachem Prime & used the top fin bacteria starter. I suppose this means it's safe to continue the med trio for 5 total days? if I wait til sunday (48 hours) to add more prime, and add the bacteria dose once a day for 5 days? I've also been adding a dose of stress guard per day

[Any Huit]

On 7/15/2022 at 10:04 PM, nabokovfan87 said:

Welcome to the Forums!

I was listening to a members only talk by a betta breeder and their advice was that bettas tend to do "better" when it comes to some diseases if there is a little bit of salt in their water.  I can't speak to this, but I wanted to pass along their information and recommend dosing salt in your tank as well, at least level 1, if you haven't.

https://www.aquariumcoop.com/blogs/aquarium/aquarium-salt-for-sick-fish
https://www.aquariumcoop.com/blogs/faqs/how-to-treat-fin-rot

My recommendation would be that if ammonia is very high, do your water change and then go ahead and re-dose meds.  You can focus on clean water as treatment 1 for the betta and then dose the meds as a recovery step to treat the disease once the tank is cycled.  Second to that, yes, I would recommend dosing bacteria in a bottle.  Dosing bacteria and anti-bacterial meds might be counter intuitive but it's difficult to say if the bacteria will be impacted in this scenario.  I typically do a large dose on day 1, then dose 6+ days as need be until parameters stabilize. 

 

 

Correct.  I think they give a range of 24-48 hours to "be safe" on their side.  The advice that seachem gives is to only dose 1 time per 24 hours as a maximum.  There's an FAQ on their website if you have any concerns.  It's a good reference for some situations!

Thanks for the warm welcome 🙂 I feel like an amateur next to everyone here!

This is such a good idea, thanks! The only reason I hesitated with aquarium salt is I have snails & live plants, but I just need to get a separate quarantine tank set up, this would be the perfect in between of low response water changes and high response medication trio. I heard about doing salt baths with epsom salt, and did that with my previous betta, but my current betta is a jumper and I don't want to stress her out even more!

My ammonia isn't too high, but I'm going to keep monitoring it, and if it gets too high I will do your suggestion, water change and redose. And I've added top fin bacteria starter! do let me know if there's another brand you recommend. "I typically do a large dose on day 1, then dose 6+ days as need be until parameters stabilize." I'll try to follow this schedule

 

Edited July 15, 2022 by Any Huit

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

On 7/15/2022 at 6:34 PM, Any Huit said:

Thank you! I just did this, I ran out to get seachem Prime & used the top fin bacteria starter. I suppose this means it's safe to continue the med trio for 5 total days? if I wait til sunday (48 hours) to add more prime, and add the bacteria dose once a day for 5 days? I've also been adding a dose of stress guard per day

Is this a new tank or is it a well seasoned filter?

[Any Huit]

On 7/15/2022 at 11:56 PM, Chick-In-Of-TheSea said:

Is this a new tank or is it a well seasoned filter?

It's 7 months old now, so I think it's well seasoned-ish. I just changed from using carbon activated filters to a brand new sponge filter, and put my air stone inside the sponge filter. So in that sense, it's also new?

[Chick-In-Of-TheSea]

On 7/15/2022 at 6:59 PM, Any Huit said:

It's 7 months old now, so I think it's well seasoned-ish. I just changed from using carbon activated filters to a brand new sponge filter, and put my air stone inside the sponge filter. So in that sense, it's also new?

The ammonia spike is caused by a lack of beneficial bacteria on the sponge filter. Changing filters has caused your tank to go through the nitrogen cycle. If there is a recommendation on the bacteria bottle for new tanks, I would recommend following that dosage.
 

However, if ammonia spikes pretty high, you should do a big water change and redose as @nabokovfan87 suggested.

What would also help us if you had some of the old, grimy filter media from your previous filter. That can still be used to help out the cycle as well.

 

Edited July 15, 2022 by Chick-In-Of-TheSea

[Colu]

There's some debate as to weather prime actually detoxify ammonia if your getting high levels of ammonia I would always do daily water change to get the ammonia levels down and add a double dose of prime just to be on the safe side 

[nabokovfan87]

On 7/15/2022 at 3:59 PM, Any Huit said:

It's 7 months old now, so I think it's well seasoned-ish. I just changed from using carbon activated filters to a brand new sponge filter, and put my air stone inside the sponge filter. So in that sense, it's also new?

New* essentially, yeah.  The tank itself, substrate, hardscape, would have enough bacteria to cycle things up fairly quickly.  If the sponge has been in there for ~2 weeks I would expect things to be able to "hold their own".  That being said, if you ever have any issue like that in future it might be worth adding ceramic media / sponge, letting it sit in the HoB with the cartridge just to try to keep that bacteria locally right by the new media you're trying to cycle.

 

On 7/15/2022 at 5:06 PM, Colu said:

There's some debate as to weather prime actually detoxify ammonia if your getting high levels of ammonia I would always do daily water change to get the ammonia levels down and add a double dose of prime just to be on the safe side 

It might make sense to verify chloramines didn't decide to show up in the tap water also. Just a sidenote.