Treating giganteas with Bactrim

[taphil]

Thanks to Minh and schprock for info/advice....

Found this green/brown gigantea at LFS. They said they'd had it for a week. It was in a low flow tank, and gigantea took on a flat pancake shape.

Day 1: Put in into display tank, and within 10 mins clowns went into it. Looked good so far. Started getting it's character folded shape.

Day 2: Looked ok, no deflating.

Day 3: Started deflating/inflating.

Day 4: Began to deflate a lot.

So I quickly set up a "treatment bucket" late night, using what I could muster up.

Started treatment per Minh's post, 1/4 of a Bactrim 800mg/160mg tablet per 2.5 gal water. I used Bactrim instead of Cipro because I had it lying around.

 

[taphil]

Went to LFS to buy frozen food, and they had just received another green gigantea, so I bought it straight out of the shipping box fresh from LAX.

So now both giganteas undergo treatment, and I upgraded to a 5.5 gal treatment tank with two HOB filters. Dose of Bactrim is the same (1/2 tablet per 5 gal) with 100% water change every night. I also added a Philips PAR30 5000K daylight LED bulb that I found at Home Depot. The light sits right on top of the glass cover of the tank, and is on for about 12-14h per day.

Treatment Day 1/3 (old/new gigantea treatment day): The old gigantea is getting bleached, and the new one looks good.

Treatment Day 2/4: The new gigantea looks good, but the old gigantea looks totally bleached/white.

Treatment Day 3/6: the new one looks excellent, and surprisingly the old one over the course of 48h has gotten some neon green/yellow back.

Treatment Day 6/8: Last day of treatment for both, time to go into display tank. But ooops, looks like the old gigantea got a part of itself sucked up into filter intake. So I use some wire cutters and cut away the plastic to free the gigantea, and both go into display tank.

 

[taphil]

Pics from day 1, 2, 3, 5 in the display tank. Haven't seen either of them deflate even once since treatment. Both are looking good and sticky. I try to feed them some PE mysis, half they eat and the other half the clowns steal from their tentacles.

 

[OrionN]

They both look good but bleached. Keep them well feed and they should get better quickly for you.
Try to feed larger piece of fish, then the clowns will not steal them. Feed the clowns well first also help. Healthy Gigantea can eat quite a lot and grow very fast.
I am glad that the Bactrim treatment works for you

Is that a Malu or Crispa behind one of the Gigantea?

 

[Donly1]

Where do you buy Bactrim and Cipro? I need to treat my gig I think.

 

[OrionN]

You can get them online, Ebay, Amazon, Drs F&S...,... ... ...

 

[ThRoewer]

Thomas Lab's Fishflox is Cipro, precisely the kind you get at the pharmacy to take yourself, just labeled "not for human use" so it can be sold without prescription.
You find it at online stores (I found it at Amazon but it was pricy there) or ask your LFS to order it for you.