Please help, my clownfish has an internal parasite!

[alaska clowns]

I have a false perc. clownfish that has, I believe an internal parasite. He has the white stringy poop, but that has kind of come and gone for a couple of weeks. On another forum someone advised to just feed him nutritiously. I soak their food in garlic, I've been feeding new life spectrum thera-a pellets, and I'm waiting to receive selcon and vitachem in the mail. Now he has a swollen belly, and more stringy poop. He has started hosting in one of my mushrooms, and he just sits there all day. Last night was the first time he has ever not eaten, usually he's a pig. I was wondering if anyone has any suggestions of how I can help him; has anyone used ultra cure PX? I read the description and it says it is completely invert safe; I have snails and a cleaner shrimp.

Thank you for you help!

 

[Gwynhidwy]

Do you have a hospital tank? If possible, I would move the fish to a hospital tank and treat there. I treat for internal parasites with prazipro (praziquantel) and many people consider it reef safe, so you could look into using it in your DT. You can also soak the fish's food in prazi, but many fish don't seem to like the taste.

 

[alaska clowns]

Thank you for your help! I will look to see if I can find some prazipro here in town. My lfs said they had metronidizol (I'm sure that's not how to spell it)- I could add that to their food also. I do have a tank for hospital use, the first and only time I ever used it the fish was in there overnight and died for unknown reasons, so I'm not real excited to employ it again.....but I think I must in this instance. Thank you again!

 

[Gwynhidwy]

You are most welcome. I'm a big proponent of treating in hospital tanks, but if you aren't comfortable with that you might be better off treating your DT. Many people, including myself, have used prazipro in reef tanks with little/no problem. It will likely kill any ornamental worms that you have, but in my experience even my feather dusters were fine. They lost their crowns/feathers, but otherwise recovered.

Keep in mind that any other fish you have in the tank may be infected as well.

I have not used metronidazole, but I know that is available in medicated fish foods, which if your fish will eat could work well.

 

[alaska clowns]

Do you think that there is a good chance that the other fish are infected too? I also have a female clown, a bicolored blenny and a red scooter blenny. A few times, the female clown has had stringy poop also, but it seemingly cured itself. As for the other 2 fish, I've never noticed a problem.
SO my options are, 1. treat the DT with prazipro..... which would cure every fish without having to chase them, but I'm mostly concerned about my cleaner shrimp.
2. remove all fish to hospital tank and treat with prazipro.
3. remove only the clowns to the hospital tank and treat with prazipro.

Two more questions....
Does the treatment process only take 5-7 days for a cure? I thought that was what I read on the website...
If it is that short of a treatment, would I be able to get away with putting them in a 10 gallon tank without a biological filter, and just monitor for ammonia and do a WC every day?
Thank you again!

 

[Gwynhidwy]

Definitely do your research and decide what you are comfortable with, but for what its worth, in my quarantine tank which I keep up 24/7 I have some snails and a scarlet cleaner shrimp. I place all new fish in this tank and treat them with prazi for two 7 day rounds of treatment. I have never seen any ill effects in my shrimp. When I treated my DT with prazi a couple of years ago the only problem that I saw was my mushrooms were shrunken for a day or so.

Its hard to say if all your fish are infected or not. Some parasites spread easily in aquariums where others do not. I tend to assume that they will spread if I have no way of correctly identifying the parasite and treat all potentially infected animals, so if it were my tank I would treat all the fish.

The directions on Prazipro do say that one 5-7 day course is usually effective, and that may be true. I have had prazi take two courses to cure flukes before, so now I just always treat for two courses with a 50% water change in between.

If you don't have any cycled filter media to use in the treatment tank, I would wait a few days to begin treatment and place some filter media in an area of your DT that gets some flow to allow the media to be seeded by nitrifying bacteria. Trying to deal with ammonia through water changes during treatment is a huge pain in my experience and usually a fair amount of additional stress on the fish. I also have live rock in my quarantine, so you could consider taking a piece of your live rock and using it in the treatment tank for biological filtration. Don't pick a piece with ornamental worms like feather dusters though, the prazi may kill them.

 

[lkc]

I have a clown that's doing the same thing, swollen belly, laying around and not eating. How can you medicate a fish that won't eat?

 

[jnc914]

Metro is the way to go for internal, Prazi is most effective on external. Metro tastes horrible to fish and they have a hard time eating it, plus it also doesn't bind to food. Sechem has a product called Focus that will actually help bind the metro to the food and seems to make it taste a bit better. I have had luck with this in the past. Do not dose Prazi-pro in the food. There have been people on this board that have overdosed the fish and had them die because they mixed too Prazi in the food.

 

[alaska clowns]

Thank you again, Gwynhidwy, for all your help! I think I'll be treating all the fish.

 

[alaska clowns]

I have a clown that's doing the same thing, swollen belly, laying around and not eating. How can you medicate a fish that won't eat?

I obviously am in the same boat you are in, and I've never encountered this problem before, but I figure that if he won't eat, the least I can do is put medication in the water he's swimming in. I know that the use of garlic is controversial, but last night I followed the directions on the bottle of Kent Garlic Extreme and put a couple drops in my tank. I know that the garlic entices them to eat sometimes. I'm hoping to use prazipro in the water and metro in some of his food, and more garlic. Good luck with your clown!

 

[Gwynhidwy]

Ikc, some internal parasites can be treated with baths and do not require medicated food.

jnc914, that's interesting. It is my understanding that prazi as a bath is the treatment of choice for internal cestodes and trematodes. I haven't used Focus, but there are pelleted foods available that have metronidazole in them that are at least supposed to be pallatable.

alaska clowns, you are very welcome. I hope your fishies get well soon!

 

[lkc]

Gwynn and AK Clowns ( I lived in Alaska Once)
I can't belive it! I did a freshwater/quickcure bath for 12 minutes and she is eating and swimming around, not a hundred percent, but so much better. Then she put out a long thread of poop. I didn't think a dip would do it but obviously breathing/swallowing the formalin and malachite green did SOMETHING to help. I have ordered some Jungle internal parasite food and am keeping her and her husband in quarantine for a week or so and make them eat the medicated food.

Thanks for this thread AK Clowns and I hope your girl gets better.

 

[alaska clowns]

Thanks for the update, lkc. I hope your clown continues to improve!

I have been dosing garlic into my tank, as well as some vitachem that I had ordered, and soaking the food in both of those and selcon. My clown's tummy is no longer bloated, and he's swimming around normally, though he still has the occasional sting of poop every once in a while. He took a few bites of food last night. If he continues to do ok, I'm going to wait a few days and treat the whole tank after I take my feather duster and a few of my live rocks with dusters on them out of the tank, because I'm doing an upgrade in a little over a week. Plus I haven't had a chance to get to the store yet. Probably ordering would be my best bet too!