Pajama Cardinalfish not eating after starting CP treatment

[l8_apex_it]

I should have posted sooner!

I purchased two Pajama Cardinalfish 9 days ago and added them to a 10g QT. Aquaclear 50 with sponge that has been in sump of my DT for months. Ammonia shows no reading.

* I took a few days and found that they were warming up to mysis shrimp. I felt they were eating well so moved on
* On the 3rd night I treated with CP. I calculated the tank to by about 8.5 gallons and treated with about 50ml (1gram added to 100ml should have been about 500 mg) which should have put me around 15mg/l of CP.
* Fish basically stopped eating. No longer eating mysis, Rods Food, or live brine ( I know there is no nutritional value but was hoping to start them eating)
* Last night, day 8, I added carbon to remove meds and changed 20% water. Still no eating

I looked closely and thought that I saw red spots on the front of one of them. But after looking at photos it appears as though that is normal. Then I noticed one is lighter than the other and possibly pale but see photos online similar to the one. So not necessarily velvet.

At this point I have likely waited to long and am guessing they will die of starvation. What would you do? What should I have done differently? Should I treat with an antibiotic, formalin or something else? I just don't see anything to point me in any one direction other than not eating.

 

[Newsmyrna80]

IME CP can suppress appetite. I wouldn't use formalin unless you see specific symptoms that warrants it. Fish can go quite a few days without eating. Since you just took the CP out I would give them a little time for the CP to work itself out of their system. We're treating with CP prophylactically or are there obvious symptoms of disease?

 

[l8_apex_it]

I was treating prophylacticly.
I deliberately didn't use cupramine this time because of the appetite suppression I saw with a previous tang. Not to mention the fine line between adequate treatment and death.
Next time I may feed them for longer before starting treatment and add the dosage over two days. Not sure if that helps or not. Well hopefully they come around.

 

[l8_apex_it]

Well one of the fish has taken up eating again. I have not seen the other one eat at all. I've tried live brine shrimp, Rod's food, Mysis, spirulina enriched brine shrimp, Prime soaked in garlic and it just doesn't even seem interested.

The one that is eating now was pretty picky and only ate Mysis. Now it seems to be eating the spirulina enriched brine shrimp too.

Any suggestion for the one that isn't eating? Treat the tank with...?

 

[HumbleFish]

* On the 3rd night I treated with CP. I calculated the tank to by about 8.5 gallons and treated with about 50ml (1gram added to 100ml should have been about 500 mg) which should have put me around 15mg/l of CP.

I don't really understand all this. The appropriate dosage for 8.5 gals of water would be 340 mg. This would put you at 40 mg/gal (or roughly 10.5 mg/L). Dosing at 15 mg/L is equivalent to 56.78 mg/gal, and IMO that is too much to dose all at one time.

As a general rule, I dose 40 mg/gal for prophylactic treatment. 60 mg/gal (over the course of 2-3 days) only to treat for active infections.

 

[l8_apex_it]

Thanks for the input.

Well I intentionally went straight for the active treatment. I had not heard of any downside based on the threads that I had read and it appeared to be under the tolerable max dosage. Also, I had also not read of others reaching the total treatment dosage over the course of days.

I have used Cupramine in the past and saw the effects of appetite suppression and the other havoc it creates. I was happy to try another approach which according to all I have read is gentler than the other treatments. (Okay, aside from tank transfer method)

Well, lesson learned. Next time, I will treat at the 10.5 mg/L dosage and probably get to that level over the course of 2 to 3 days unless there is an active infection. I will also assure they are feeding for about a week before starting the treatment.