How long to give deworming medicine?

[Angel*Fish]

I've determined that some of my fish have intestinal flagellates or something similar. I have been gut loading a large feeding of live adult brine once a day with prazipro for the last 3 days & am seeing significant improvement.

My question is how many more days should I keep feeding the prazipro?

Thanks

 

[leebca]

Following the directions on the medication is your first answer. If there are no directions to this effect, feed for one week. Then, wait 6 more weeks and feed another week.

If you were feeding the medication directly, the fish would need two consecutive doses, a 6 week wait, then two more doses. But you're 'gut loading' which isn't as efficient to deliver a known quantity. So, the above is my suggestion to compensate for this variance on the delivery of the med.

 

[Angel*Fish]

Thanks Lee,

I really do feel like I'm shooting in the dark.. What I do is suck up about 6 turkey baster shots of live brine then add 6-10 drops of the Prazipro to that. After about 5 hours I strain & rinse & feed to the fish. I just feed their regular diet for their second meal.

They won't eat the dried food soaked in the stuff, but maybe I'm soaking it with too much medicine & it tastes bad.

One of my tukas died - but the remaining one is taking his prazi-loaded medicine along with the other fish.

I'm worried about my 2 mandarins - any thoughts?

 

[leebca]

Your suggested feedings don't follow what I think are optimal diet/nutritional feedings. See here for details:
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=785228

I'm not sure what your mandarins are eating. Have you trained them to accept non-living pod foods? If not, then moving them to a QT where the water is treated with the med is about all I can think of.

 

[Angel*Fish]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=7094724#post7094724 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by leebca
Your suggested feedings don't follow what I think are optimal diet/nutritional feedings. See here for details:
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=785228

I'm not sure what your mandarins are eating. Have you trained them to accept non-living pod foods? If not, then moving them to a QT where the water is treated with the med is about all I can think of.

I'm not sure what you're refering to ...unless it's that I only feed twice a day most days. Would you elaborate?

I've been supplementing their diet with zoe & selcon since your earlier posts to me. And I bought a used 30g with 2x 65 w PC & plunked it in front of a west facing window to raise macros & "mini-fauna" for my angels (& yellow tang if I ever get one) The thing I haven't done is get them eating pellets/flakes. I even backed off on the frozen Cyclopeeze which I had thought was extremely nutritious & was feeding quite heavily.

The mandarins actually are not trained but do eat some of the BBS I prepare for the tuka & the other anthias. I was just hoping you'd say they are worm/fluke/flagellate resistant & that they probably wouldn't get this. Do you know if they can handle the praziquantel(sp?) in the water treatment? I can probably catch them if I have to.

To me as brain-bearing vertebrates the fish are king in my tank the corals come second


New dedicated macro tank

 

[leebca]

Marie,

Of course. . .Always glad to elaborate! I messed up. I thought I had read that you fed their 'regular diet' as more brine shrimp. Sorry.

Sounds like your feedings are optimal. Keep up the good work.

This 'old' article on mandarins you might find interesting:
http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2005-02/nftt/index.htm

Mandarins are a rather unique fish. They hang around the bottom. I think it is because of this that Natural Selection has stepped in and helped them favor those fishes that are more resistant to diseases that hang around the sea bottom (e.g., Cryptocaryon irritans). But as for flukes, I've never heard they are resistant, nor have I ever heard they are immune to attack. So, even if they are resistant like they are for Marine Ich, they still need treatment.

I would say do nothing unless you notice something like them loosing weight. Unfortunately, mandarins can loose weight quickly in the aquarium, just from 'normal' starving from lack of food. They seem to often 'live on the edge' of survival in our aquariums. Then, they could be 'incubators' for more infecting organisms, if left untreated.

They will do okay in a QT in a Praziquantel (droncit) treatment.