Did PraziPro kill all of my fish?

[jwalker314]

So I've spent the last 4 days reading everything I can find about adverse reactions to Prazipro and can't seem to find anything solid. So I am hoping to get some feedback here.

I have a 300 gallon quarantine system ( 2 40 breeders, 2 30 breeders, 1 20 gal, 1 10 gallon, 1 125 gallon, 30 Gallon Sump) that is all connected. I have two ammonia alert badges, one at each end of the system as well as pH probe/temp probe connected to my Apex and a in-sump skimmer (mostly for aeration)


I started running hypo-salinity (1.009) about two weeks ago and at that time I decided to get two boxes of fish in (transship) so I can run them through hypo at the same time. I acclimated all of these fish (25 of them) to hypo and they were doing fine, took a few days for some of them to eat but in the end they all seemed to be doing well.

This past week I noticed all of the fish in the tank (about 35-40) breathing heavy. Several were also head twitching and my Blue hippo was scratching on the rocks (no external symptoms were present.) Ammonia badges were still yellow (0) and I even bought an ammonia test kit that read zero. I had a few chromis fish that were hanging out in the corners with ragged fins and a clown fish that wasn't eating in the past two weeks.

After doing quite a bit of research I concluded this could be caused by gill flukes so I dosed the system with Prazipro. (figured this wouldn't hurt since I didn't treat any of the new fish for anything except hypo [Crypto/Ich])

The next morning I had 15 dead fish in the tank. I removed them and checked ammonia levels (still 0 on both badges and kits) At this point I thought that maybe those fish were so heavily infested that the sudden dead of the flukes/parasites caused their death so I left everything go. When I came home from work that day another 10 fish were dead. I decided to run carbon and dosed some prime just to be safe. (ammonia still 0)

At this point I have about 10 fish left and will have less than that by the time I get home today. I am stumped as to how this happened. The only thing I can come up with is that due to mass die-off of the gill flukes this left the fish lethargic and they bled to death/suffocated (I've been running an air-stone in the sump in conjunction with the aeration caused by the returns and drains)


TLDR: 300 gallon quarantine system was dosed with Prazipro and a massive die-off occurred.

 

[dweber618]

My guess would be low oxygen. I always have a LOT of extra oxygen going in the water with prazi as it brings the o2 level down.

 

[jwalker314]

I did have an airstone running in the tank (placed it in the 125 initially then moved to the sump) but that didn't seem to make a difference. Would I need to invest in something more powerful for this treatment in the future? I would think that the return and the drains would add a significant amount of O2 in the water as it circulates as well.

Also it seems some of the larger fish are the last ones left (blue hippo, purple tang, butterfly, foxface) In my experience with lack of oxygen the large fish go first.

 

[jwalker314]

Here is a pic of my system for reference. The top 30 breeders drain into the 40 breeders.

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[ThRoewer]

My guess would be that you are dealing with Amyloodinium or another protozoan gill parasite.

PraziPro may not have been the primary reason for the deaths, but fish that have already significant gill damage from parasites may not handle it well unless extremely well oxygenated. A few airstones may not be sufficient. The ideal solution would be an oxygen reactor.

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[jwalker314]

That was my thought. I assumed the running of a skimmer (not collecting any skimmate) combined with the aeration​ on the system would have been enough. It seems I should invest in an O2 sensor for the future.

Also I am down to about 5 fish left. 2 seem perfectly fine.

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[MatnNatsReef]

What a bummer. Sorry to read this and hope that the help here keeps it from happening again.

 

[LobsterOfJustice]

I can't help with your specific situation other than to say that Prazi pro is generally very safe. There are mass fluke death and bleed out situations as you describe but that wouldn't happen to 30 fish.

The main thing I wanted to add was that if it were me, I would have an air stone in each one of those tanks.


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[jwalker314]

I understand the O2 issue but I am currently running hypo (has more oxygen in the water) and all the tanks are drilled and overflow into a sump. Generally aerating the water pretty well. So neither a mass dieoff due to bleeding or low oxygen seem to fit. I'll do some reading on velvet but none of the fish had external signs.

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[ThRoewer]

One of the primary symptoms of Amyloodinium is heavy breathing. Unlike Cryptocaryon, Amyloodinium is primarily a gill parasite that doesn't need to show on the rest of the body and if it shows there it is usually difficult to spot. So the absence of external symptoms doesn't exclude velvet.

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[jwalker314]

One of the primary symptoms of Amyloodinium is heavy breathing. Unlike Cryptocaryon, Amyloodinium is primarily a gill parasite that doesn't need to show on the rest of the body and if it shows there it is usually difficult to spot. So the absence of external symptoms doesn't exclude velvet.

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Thanks. After further research it seems the culprit is velvet. What I thought were flukeworms on the bottom of the tank appear to have actually been scales. Since velvet impacts the gills it seems the dosing of prazi could have lowered the amount of oxygen the fish were getting and in combination with the velvet it got set off.

None of the fish ended up making it. I cleaned out the QT tanks today and am in the process of refilling with 1.025 water. I plan on ordering some fish next week and treating them with a round of chlorquine phosphate.

Thanks.

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[tkeracer619]

Treating this volume of water is not an easy task. I would separate the systems into smaller groups of tanks. It will be incredibly difficult to treat them as needed if they are all connected as a single system.

 

[Swayze27]

I've always been advised to not mix meds with other meds and to not dose meds or anything else while in hypo salinity treatment. I'm sure people do it all the time but I have always been told not to. And always aerate/ oxygenate the tank heavily when dosing most meds. Awesome qt setup by the way, sorry for the loss though. Best of luck.

 

[ThRoewer]

I've always been advised to not mix meds with other meds and to not dose meds or anything else while in hypo salinity treatment. I'm sure people do it all the time but I have always been told not to. And always aerate/ oxygenate the tank heavily when dosing most meds. Awesome qt setup by the way, sorry for the loss though. Best of luck.

Hyposalinity treatment can be safely combined with a lot of medications. Generally, if a medication is for fresh and saltwater it is safe​ to be used in hyposalinity. Since hyposalinity is not a medication you should not have any unforseeable drug interaction like you may have wen mixing actual medications.

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