Possible flukes

fsbbn@hotmail

New member
Hi!

I have a 2000 Gal system FOWLR. The water parameters are great and I will be posting some photos soon. I have a question for some of the fish disease experts:

I recently acquired a 12" chrismas island orange tail emperor. It is gorgeous. I have other large angels in the tank but this is the largest angel and no one challanges him. It came from a close friend who had it in a 450 Gal where it was beating up on another emperor he had. he had this for a year and the fish had no health issues. He strictly QTs all his fish and there is no disease in his tank.

So I put it directly into my tank, having seen this fish for the last few months with no issues. In my tank he is the boss but does not seem as active as he was in the 450. He eats but not with as much gusto as he did in my friend's tank. Finally, he shakes his head from time to time like he might have flukes. My friend QTs with only quinine sulfate so he does not treat for flukes.

I am not sure the fish has flukes and I can't catch him in such a huge tank. So should I wait to see if some other fish are showing the head shake and then treat with prazi pro or should I treat now for the whole tank? His condition does not seem to be any worse than it was a week ago.

Is it possible he is just adjusting? None of the fish have ick and there are no spots on any. No one is rubbing against anything. The emperor though seems to rub against the floor about once every six hours.

Please let me know what you think. There are no visible signs of disease on any of the fish in the tank.

thanks.
 
Not that I am any expert on this but, I had no ich or any other parasites in my FOWLR for 5 years. I had bought all my fish from a trusted source who QT's all fish. I bought a fish from the same place but it had changed hands. I saw what looked like the fish had cloudy eyes. After a week, that fish cleared up but everything else got ill. Two came down with ich and a couple others got the cloudy looking eyes. I knew nothing of fukes or how to treat. After about 4 weeks, I lost everything but a hippo tang. And that was not the fish I last put in. Anyways, after a hypo treatment of the DT for the ich and lots of research on flukes, I treated the DT with PraziPro. I then restocked the tank with a couple other fish after it set almost empty for a couple of months with no breakouts of anything. Now, after a month with the new livestock was added, two of the tangs started hiding and not eating. I immediately started a treatment with PraziPro again. I did one dose then another in 3 days. After a week, the two fish started being active again and eating. This lasted another three weeks. The same two fish started hiding and not eating again. So here I am again, treating them with PraziPro. I found some info on RC about treating with PraziPro and realized maybe in have not been given enough time for it to work.

So, I treated 7 days ago, did a water change and redosed again for another 7 days. I am at the start of the second week. So far, after the 1st week, the fish are active and eating again. I hope this time it kills all the flukes that have since hatched.

And to clarify, I did QT all the new livestock and the other fish have not had any issues since added after QT. Only the two tangs.

So, if you do in fact have flukes and you do not treat, it could end with problems or death. I hope this helps.

Jim
 
This the info I found and quote from RegalAngel:


PraziPro

Q & A w/Hikari.....

Q. The directions indicate it is ok to use after 3-5 days. Does
Prazipro disipate after 72hrs?

A. "It is intented for use for at least 3 days, this is the minimum amount of time we have found in our research to knock down an infestation of flukes or worms. For improved results let the treatment run for a longer period of time."

"...you can redose after 3 days (just make sure you do a large water change before dosing again) but I would suggest unless you have a severe issue to let the treatment run for 7 days, do the major water change and then redose. This will provide the more cost effective treatment."

Q. What's a large water change?
A. "a water change is required, the directions on the bottle clearly state to start with as large a water change as practical or start with new water. Our concern here is that the dying parasites will put toxins in to the water and the biggest risk to the other inhabitants are these toxins, the bio-load and the reduced oxygen level this process can cause. With a large water change we reduce the impact of this process in a big way. The risk is not the product, it's what is being eliminated in the closed environment."


Jim
 
Has anyone had a negative reaction from PraziPro? I have over ten thousand dollars in fish not to mention the emotional attachment. Every other fish in the tank if just fine. The Emperor too comes out to eat but does hide and act reclusieve. His only sign is the head bobbing. I would really hate to treat if this is something that will go away on its own. Having a large tank is not always a good thing.
 
So I have dozed the entire tank with half the dosage. The fish seem to all be acting normal. I will let everyone know how it goes. If the emperor gets better i will not go to full dosage but if it does not I may have to. Everyone eats fine.
 
i think it needs to be at full dose to be completely effective. i've used it on a lot of fish and have never notice any ill-effects from the prazirpo. at half dose, you might get some flukes that will "slip thru the cracks"...
 
The thing w/Prazi is it doesn't kill the eggs so you have to keep treating to completely eradicate the Flukes. I had to end up treating a group of fish 4 consecutive times, at 5-day intervals to finally knock it out. I battled with it for over a month, doing only 2 and 3 treatments at first. The Flukes would always come back. Four times was the charm for me. The thing that sucks is it's really important to do WCs in-between treatments, and that became a pain in the @$$. But if you value your fishs' lives, you'll do it.
 
Thanks for sharing. I added another quater doze today. So we are up to 3/4 doze. The emperor seems more normal. He was always eating but he is not shaking his head as much. However, on the bad side his temper seems to have gotten worse as he is doing some chasing around.

Attached are some photos. I have a 300 Gal Sump, 600 Gal refugium (not attached at the moment), 60 gal algea tank and 50 gal QT tank. The skimmers are H&S. One uses three pumps and the other 5 pumps (Ehime 1260s).

The main tank is 17.5' x 6' by 33"
 

Attachments

  • IMG_0860.jpg
    IMG_0860.jpg
    35.7 KB · Views: 0
  • IMG_0861.jpg
    IMG_0861.jpg
    46.1 KB · Views: 0
  • IMG_0862.jpg
    IMG_0862.jpg
    54.3 KB · Views: 0
  • IMG_0866.jpg
    IMG_0866.jpg
    59.1 KB · Views: 0
Beautiful tank! With a 2000 gal tank, you're gonna need lots of Prazi! The biggest challenge I think that you face is the WCs. How big of a WC can you do? It's very important to do a WC before each new treatment. Basically, as the Flukes die off they contaminate the water, making it more difficult for your fish to breathe. The WC removes the dead Flukes and adds more oxygen to the water. Btw, I would increase the oxygen levels to your tank while treating with Prazi. Maybe add some air stones. Can't hurt, right? Also, some people say to turn off your protein skimmer as it might take the medication out of the water. Anyone else care to chime in on that?
 
I am planning to do a 200 Gal water change, turn on the UV (160 W), the protein skimmers and carbon. I figure if I do this for three days, I can doze again. I think I am going to stop at the 3/4 doze as the fish seems better. But if it still continues to shake its head I will go the full doze. i have enough prazirpo to do three treatments of the whole tank and then I am out. I have enough salt but I can only change 200 gal water at a time. Will I could 500 gal if I disconnected the sump and used it also to mix salt. Do you sugest then that I should definitely do more than one treatment?

thansks for sharing.

on the topic does anyone know when PE Mysis goes bad during shipping and how to tell? i got 20 packets and some of them were still cold but had thawed.
 
With that big of a system the bigger challenge will be to know the actual water volume to treat properly.

That tank and setup looks like it would be perfect for a nighttime capture of the angel. If possible I would catch the angel at night while it is resting. Then you can do a FW dip. In a FW dip the flukes fall off like dead flies so you can know for sure if it is flukes.
 
Well, I can tell you what happened to me. I had a CB Angel w/Flukes and he gave it to my prized Powder Blue Tang. I knew they both had Flukes because they were twitching their heads like crazy. So, the first go-around I only treated 2x at 7-day intervals. Everything seemed fine at first, but then after about a week the tang was twitching again. The twitching kept getting worse. So, I treated again, but this time 3x at 5-day intervals. Same thing happened. Dude, I was so frustrated. But then I read on here that sometimes it can take up to 4 consecutive treatments, so I treated 4x at 5-day intervals and now the Flukes are completely gone. I think it's because the Prazi only kills the flukes, not their eggs. So you have to keep treating and treating to finally break the cycle.

Here's my old thread when I was having problems w/Flukes:

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2006184

In the first response, a guy on there recommends this stuff called De-Los. I've never tried it, so I can't say, but supposedly it kills the Flukes and eggs in one shot.

Also, here is a huge Flukes thread (566 responses) if you want to read up on it:

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1260067
 
I added 1/4 doze tonight. So I am now at full strength. I will let this go till Friday. That should be about 5 days at full strength. all fish in the tank have been eating well and other than the emperor who has no signs but shakes his head from time to time no fish show symptoms. On Friday I will do a 200 gal water change, turn on the skimmers, carbon and UV. I will let that play out for a week unless i see more scratching/head shake and then doze again for a week. We will see. The emperor has been acting more normal. It is hard to tell with large angels sometimes as they have strange personalities and this emperor is new to me.
 
If the Emperor starts twitching again, LargeAngels had a good suggestion about catching him and doing a FW bath. You should see the Flukes fall right off, if that's what it is. If it's not, then you might be dealing with a parasite, such as Ich. In any case, since you've gone to the trouble of catching the Emperor, you should QT him afterwards and hope he didn't contaminate the rest of your tank.
 
I came home this evening and the water was a bit cloudy. All the fish eating well and behaving normal. It has been five days since i started dozing so I decided to do a 200 Gal water changem turned on the 4 40W UVs, the two skimmers and carbon. I will clean in out for two days unless I see some head shaking or scratching. On Saturday, I will doze again for 5 days. Hopefully that will take care of the issue. I have a two year old and a 2 month old. My wife is not happy with the kind of time I have been speding on my fish project lately.

On a side note, does anyone think having six large angels in the tank is too many. There is no fighting but some grunting and once in a while a small chase.
 
Back
Top