Quarantining Fish

[Poseidon27]

Hi All,

I currently have a quarantine tank set up, nothing fancy. A 1.2 m, with a Reef Octopus BH1000 Skimmer, 2 airstones, a wave maker and some PVC pipes.

I am quarantining all fish that I will be acquiring. I have a few fish in at the moment and have started with my quarantine process.

I have added Seachem Cupramine, I have halved the dose so it should be at 0.25mg/L. I have left it at this dose for 14 days. My main focus was to prevent Marine Velvet and Marine Ich.

I would like to make sure that I can prevent Gill Flukes as well. However, Seachem advises against the use of any other medication while treating with Cupramine.

I purchased Praziquantel from a local pharmacy and would like to administer it now. Does anyone have experience with doing this? What is the most effective way of treating? Do you mix it in and administer it directly to the water column or do you mix it in with the food and then feed the fish? Also, what is the best dose to use? I purchased 600 mg tablets.

Any input would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Spar]

With Cupramine, you need to always keep it above .35ppm to be effective against Ich (recommended .5ppm), and I would assume the same for Velvet. And 28 days is the recommended minimum time for it to work.

The main thing you want to absolutely avoid with Copper/Cupramine is dosing ammonia detox products, as that will likely kill your fish. I'm not sure if PraziPro (what you should use for Flukes) will impact the water negatively when coupled with Cupramine, but I'd advise against that.... will see if others come in saying they have 'experimented' successfully.

 

[Deinonych]

With Cupramine, you need to always keep it above .35ppm to be effective against Ich (recommended .5ppm), and I would assume the same for Velvet. And 28 days is the recommended minimum time for it to work.

+1

Sub-therapeutic dosages can actually mask the parasite, making you believe the fish is clear of disease when in fact it is just infected at a sub-clinical level.

 

[Poseidon27]

I have a few angels and tangs and I have been advised to half the dose because of their sensitivity to copper.

I am having difficulty finding a test kit because I would like to see what my copper levels are at the moment.

I am considering removing the copper and then dosing flukes and then go back to copper should the need be.

Yeah I saw that, I am not using ammonia detox products. I read up on that and its definitely not the way to go.

 

[ThRoewer]

I have a few angels and tangs and I have been advised to half the dose because of their sensitivity to copper.

I am having difficulty finding a test kit because I would like to see what my copper levels are at the moment.

I am considering removing the copper and then dosing flukes and then go back to copper should the need be.

Yeah I saw that, I am not using ammonia detox products. I read up on that and its definitely not the way to go.

In quarantine I would ditch copper as it isn't effective against all the possible protozoan parasites.
Chloroquine Phosphate would be the better choice (unless you have pipefish, seahorses and the like). It has been proven to be highly effective against Amyloodinium and works also against Cryptocaryon. While CP hasn't been "scientifically" evaluated against all others either, there are enough reports to indicate that it will also kill Uronema (may require double the standard dose) and likely also Brooklynella.
Copper for sure can't treat the last two and may also be ineffective against Amyloodinium if it was previously exposed to copper and developed tolerance.
And for Cryptocaryon TTM would still be better than copper.

Copper is only good for fish stores and wholesalers to keep Cryptocaryon and Amyloodinium infection levels low enough to not cause losses.

 

[Newsmyrna80]

Hi All,

I purchased Praziquantel from a local pharmacy and would like to administer it now. Does anyone have experience with doing this? What is the most effective way of treating? Do you mix it in and administer it directly to the water column or do you mix it in with the food and then feed the fish? Also, what is the best dose to use? I purchased 600 mg tablets.

Any input would be greatly appreciated.

If prazipro is available to you (not sure where you live) then I would go with that since it's already dissolved otherwise if you have powdered Prazi you will need to get it in to a solution to dose into the tank. I've dissolved it into a very small amount (1/4 teaspoon) vodka. Be very careful doing this as it can cause oxygen depletion.

 

[Deinonych]

Copper is only good for fish stores and wholesalers to keep Cryptocaryon and Amyloodinium infection levels low enough to not cause losses.

+1

Copper is simply not a great medication given its narrow range of effectiveness and risk of long-term toxicity.

 

[nuxx]

Typically I'll do the following:
- Acclimate and get fish eating in QT for a few days.
- Do 15 days of ParaGuard everyday with 3 rounds of Prazi every 5 days with a water change on the 5th day.
- Do 4 weeks of Cupramine .3-.4 based on the fish species.
- Observe.

ParaGuard is a pretty good catch all med and can run with Prazi.

I wouldn't skim personally while medicating. I stopped using HOB skimmers in my QT tanks.

 

[Poseidon27]

I am in South Africa and have attempted to obtain Chloroquine Phosphate before and I have not been able to locate a company that can assist.

None of my fish have displayed any sign of disease and are all eating ferociously. I am just trying to prevent an outbreak of disease rather than having to cure them at a later stage.

Unfortunately, also no Prazipro on my side of the world. So we use Praziquantel directly from the pharmacy. I have used it before and it seemed to work well, however, last time I never used it with Cupramine in the aquarium.

Cupramine seems to be the much safer type of copper. Well atleast what Seachem say online.

From what Seachem say on their website it shows that Paraguard has quite a large spectrum. However, I have seen that a lot of people don't use it because they say it is not really an effective medication. Does anyone else have any experience with Paraguard?

I leave the skimmer on, I just remove the cup. It sounds like a really good quarantine process you have going there Peter. You have many loses when executing it?

 

[ThRoewer]

Have you tried to order NLS Ick-Shield Powder via Amazon? It is pure CP. Amazon ships most things worldwide.