Flukes - prazi resistant or inadequate treatment?

[vapormd]

Hi everyone,

I'm having a difficult problem with flukes that I'm hoping someone with experience with dealing with flukes can chime in on.

I have a powder blue tang with flukes (confirmed with FW and prazi dips) along with the rest of my fish in a large hospital tank. I have been medicating with prazipro. The response initially was great, fish that were initially quick sick got better rapidly. I decided not to perform a second dose, but a few days later after the end of the first treatment, there were flukes again on the powder blue. I proceeded with a second dose of Prazi, and again, things looked great initially. Today, which is about 10 days after the second treatment, the powder blue looks like it has flukes again. I went ahead and decided to do a double strength dose of prazi, and saw the flukes falling off the powder blue.

I'm worried that the flukes will come back again after this third treatment, even with the double dose of prazi. Any ideas of what else to treat with in case this is ineffective? Copper?

Interestingly, I have multiple fish in this hospital tank, while all the fish initially had signs of flukes, the powder blue is the only one in which the flukes seem to keep coming back.

Thanks for the help!

 

[RBU1]

Do you know for a fact they are flukes?

 

[vapormd]

As far as I can tell, I performed a FW dip and then a prazipro dip when I first noticed the white spots, and saw flukes falling off. Also, each time they've come back, I've noticed flukes falling off the powder blue shortly after dosing. The only treatment I've done is the prazi pro, so if it had been another disease, I figured I would have seen signs of some progression since the prazi pro would only kill flukes.

 

[LargeAngels]

I performed a FW dip and then a prazipro dip when I first noticed the white spots

You saw white spots? White spots is either ich or velvet and not flukes.

I would not double dose Prazipro and a single treatment usually doesn't work. Many flukes lay eggs on the fish and the Prazi doesn't kill the eggs. Best way I have found is 3 treatments. One every seven days. JHemdal recommends once every 10 days.

 

[vapormd]

Thanks for the help! Well, I guess I followed your treatment plan without even knowing it! . Except for the double dose of prazi on this third round (everything seems to be tolerating it well, so far at least). It's reassuring to know that you treat multiple times, from my initial research and from reading on the prazi bottle, I was under the impression that 1 or 2 treatments should have been sufficient.

As for the white spots - I should have been more clear. I first noticed eye cloudiness and very small disclored patches of skin that looked lighter (almost white). I didn't look like ich to me (there were never any discrete white spots), but I tried to convince myself it was since I'd never seen flukes before. After doing a little reading I decided to do the dips to see if the fish had flukes, and saw massive amounts of flukes with the first dips. With each prazi treatment now, I can see the flukes falling off, so I'm pretty sure they keep coming back, and with each treatment the powder blue looks like new again. He's looking great today after the third round of dosing yesterday, I'm just hoping this last treatment does the trick

So I know the fish have flukes, and I figured if they had velvet or something else, I'd have seen some progression at this point rather than improvement, since all I've medicated with is the prazi