Butterfly fish “first aid kit”

[OneArmedBandit]

I'm planning a 150 gal. Butterfly tank (FOWLR) and I'm looking for ideas on what items I should have on hand for treating common diseases like Velvet, Flukes and I've also heard a lot of talk about Brook lately too. I have Formalin already since I needed to treat a Pearlscale for Marine Black Spot Disease, which was quite successful. What products have you used to successfully treat the diseases listed above?

I do a five minute fresh water dip and quarantine all my new fish for safety's sake, just want to know what else to have at my disposal if I notice something needs attention. Thank you for your help. -Steve

 

[RBU1]

The best thing you can have if you don't have a treatment tank up and running all the time is something you can put in your main tank to colonize bacteria that can be transfered over to the treatment tank. By doing this if the need arises to set up a treatment tank you have some bacteria established to get the tank started......

I would have,,,

Cuprmaine
Prazipro
and a good gram negative and positive antibiotic.

 

[OneArmedBandit]

I keep a bag of bio-max ceramic in my sump at all times so I can just toss it in my AQ70 when I put a fish in QT (unless it's getting medicated). Thanks for the suggestions on medications. -Steve

 

[wooden_reefer]

I keep a bag of bio-max ceramic in my sump at all times so I can just toss it in my AQ70 when I put a fish in QT (unless it's getting medicated). Thanks for the suggestions on medications. -Steve

This method works on margin. You decrease the bacteria population in DT for a while to be used in QT. This works well if you have a large DT with good bioload, and the bioload that your need to treat in QT is small, in comparison to that in the DT.

You cannot always expect this to be true.

What if you want to QT and then add one single very large fish into an existent DT cycled a year earlier?

What if ich break out and you have to treat all fish at once in QT?

What is collect in DT can well be used as seed; it is far better to have sizeable amount of cycled medium as standby, separate and independent from the DT. One that you can feed with enough ammonia periodically.

Plus, only some medications harm nitrification.