Has anyone ever tried using a low dose potassium permanganate solution to kill parasites and bacteria on newly purchased fish as opposed to a long quarantine? I have seen YouTube videos and have read articles on this being done successfully and directions on how to do it.
Potassium Permanganate
- Thread starter FranM
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haha
Potassium Pomegranate
Jokes aside, i would not use that on fish...
if you were to use a med instead of qt, use something like a reputable antibiotic.
also i reccomend qt for a few days even if you have treated
Please just make sure your fish are clear of parasites and bacteria before you purchase them.
DON'T USE ANTIBIOTICS ON FISH UNLESS THEY HAVE A KNOWN BACTERIAL INFECTION THAT HASN'T RESPONDED TO OTHER TYPES OF MEDICATIONS/ TREATMENTS. and yes it is meant to be caps.
Antibiotics only kill bacteria and they don't kill all bacteria. There are gram positive and gram negative bacteria and some antibiotics work on gram negative and others work on gram positive.
Most fish have worms, flukes, protozoa, fungus and viruses that are completely unaffected by antibiotics. And a lot of diseases don't show up straight away and things like white spot are immune to all treatments while they are attached to the fish.
The whole purpose of a 2-4 week quarantine period is to allow new fish a chance to settle into a new environment, get use to the new water chemistry, and for any health issues to appear. You can then treat the fish for those particular health issues.
There isn't a one treatment fixes all solution and there are no treatments that can replace quarantining new fish. If you don't want to quarantine new fish, just add them to the current display tank and hope they don't introduce something and you then have to treat the main tank.
There is a thing with many new hobbyists where they look to dangerous 'cures' for problems not likely to exist. It connects to the "too clean" tank and the idea that nothing can be collected from nature because it isn't clean. I mean no disrespect saying this, but you are in a group here, and of course there are videos. There are people who post on this forum with some wild ideas and practices they're convinced of. It's the Internet.
Potassium permanganate can kill the fish. Easily. It has a use as a means of quickly killing mostly snails and hydra on plants collected from local rivers, as was the practice 75 years ago when it was common. I originally mentioned it as it had appeared in a wonderful 1940s fishbook as a plant cleaner, when you used it for short fast dips and rinsed thoroughly to keep it away from fish.
The only external parasites you are likely to meet are Ich, velvet, flukes or once in my 55 years of fish, fish lice. It isn't suggested for any of them, and the fish louse is tougher than the fish.
The common internal parasite are helminth worms (white or tapeworm types) and red Camallanus nematodes. Again, they are safe from P.P. They're internal. If the stuff gets into the fish, the fish is a goner.
People kill a lot of fish by medicating QT tanks just in case. The Net is full of 3 year fishkeeping experts who suggest doing this. If you dip the fish in Potassium permanganate, or hit them with antibiotics for no reason and they don't die from either, it must have worked, right? I use zero antibiotics, my potassium permanganate (I have some) is a lovely jar of colourful stuff I haven't opened and I haven't lost new fish in ages.
The tricks? Only buy sight unseen online if you know the seller personally, or if good friends have checked the fish from the place out. Never buy from tanks in a store where you see diseased fish for sale. Never buy from a tank where there is even one suspect looking fish. Ideally, never buy from a tank you see once. Go back in a day or so, and take a second, or even third look. Go online and look up external parasite photos and learn to spot them.
Potassium permanganate can kill the fish. Easily. It has a use as a means of quickly killing mostly snails and hydra on plants collected from local rivers, as was the practice 75 years ago when it was common. I originally mentioned it as it had appeared in a wonderful 1940s fishbook as a plant cleaner, when you used it for short fast dips and rinsed thoroughly to keep it away from fish.
The only external parasites you are likely to meet are Ich, velvet, flukes or once in my 55 years of fish, fish lice. It isn't suggested for any of them, and the fish louse is tougher than the fish.
The common internal parasite are helminth worms (white or tapeworm types) and red Camallanus nematodes. Again, they are safe from P.P. They're internal. If the stuff gets into the fish, the fish is a goner.
People kill a lot of fish by medicating QT tanks just in case. The Net is full of 3 year fishkeeping experts who suggest doing this. If you dip the fish in Potassium permanganate, or hit them with antibiotics for no reason and they don't die from either, it must have worked, right? I use zero antibiotics, my potassium permanganate (I have some) is a lovely jar of colourful stuff I haven't opened and I haven't lost new fish in ages.
The tricks? Only buy sight unseen online if you know the seller personally, or if good friends have checked the fish from the place out. Never buy from tanks in a store where you see diseased fish for sale. Never buy from a tank where there is even one suspect looking fish. Ideally, never buy from a tank you see once. Go back in a day or so, and take a second, or even third look. Go online and look up external parasite photos and learn to spot them.
Yes. I understand everyone! I will have to keep a quarantine tank at my mother’s. We rent a lovely condo and the owner was nice enough to allow me this massive aquarium. I don’t want to push my luck. Yes, I was looking for a quicker way of getting what I wanted accomplished. Thank you all for your honest advice and opinions without rudeness!
Is it possible, though, that I could get a batch of seemingly healthy fish. They are quarantined for a month and never displayed illness, then I add them to my aquarium and they become ill? Can my tank harbor illness that my fish are immune to??
Is it possible, though, that I could get a batch of seemingly healthy fish. They are quarantined for a month and never displayed illness, then I add them to my aquarium and they become ill? Can my tank harbor illness that my fish are immune to??
The question is a good one. I doubt the tank can, but the fish in it? Certainly. If you find a wild caught fish in stores, probably brought from a fairly uncrowded natural environment, and you add it to a tank of farmed fish that were raised in crowded, disease filled conditions and survived because they had a degree of immunity, the wild fish will often die. It's a first contact situation. The things farmed fish have survived are usually unknown in the wild. I never, ever combine wild caught with farmed, as I assume the farmed fish will be carrying pathogens.
I learned that the hard way, through several disasters.
We know very little about the virus and bacterial enemies our fish encounter. As hobbyists, we don't have the ability to research. So we make up diseases like "swim bladder" or wallop the struggling fish with totally inappropriate remedies as it makes us feel better. It often kills the fish.
Clean water, good food. They are our real remedies.
I learned that the hard way, through several disasters.
We know very little about the virus and bacterial enemies our fish encounter. As hobbyists, we don't have the ability to research. So we make up diseases like "swim bladder" or wallop the struggling fish with totally inappropriate remedies as it makes us feel better. It often kills the fish.
Clean water, good food. They are our real remedies.
I agree with the advice above from Colin and Gary.
Another aspect that is not understood by many is that 90-95% of all disease affecting aquarium fish is directly due to stress, and this is caused by us, the aquarist. Inappropriate water parameters, nitrogen issues, inappropriate aquascaping, inappropriate stocking including keeping non-compatible species together (involving behaviours but also habitat conditions vary)--all these are stressful to varying degrees and all are caused entirely by the aquarist. Avoid stress and the fish will in that majority of cases deal with the issue themselves. It is only when they are stressed that their resistance and immune system weakens and sometimes fails completely. The fish in their respective habitats do not have someone dumping medications into their water, yet they survive very well.
I always kept a quarantine tank for new fish acquisitions running, with a shallow sand substrate, plants, especially floating plants, and a couple chunks of wood for cover. This tank ran permanently, so that any new fish I acquired could go into an established tank. Using a temporary tank is not the same thing, and causes more stress because you are now shifting the fish twice instead of once, and the temporary tank is no where even close to being established which causes stress for most fish.
To add more scientific data, the following is cited from “An assessment of the use of drug and non-drug interventions in the treatment of Ichthyophthirius multifiliis Fouquet, 1876, a protozoan parasite of freshwater fish,” S. M. PICÓN-CAMACHO, M. MARCOS-LOPEZ , J. E. BRON and A. P. SHINN (2011).
Another aspect that is not understood by many is that 90-95% of all disease affecting aquarium fish is directly due to stress, and this is caused by us, the aquarist. Inappropriate water parameters, nitrogen issues, inappropriate aquascaping, inappropriate stocking including keeping non-compatible species together (involving behaviours but also habitat conditions vary)--all these are stressful to varying degrees and all are caused entirely by the aquarist. Avoid stress and the fish will in that majority of cases deal with the issue themselves. It is only when they are stressed that their resistance and immune system weakens and sometimes fails completely. The fish in their respective habitats do not have someone dumping medications into their water, yet they survive very well.
I always kept a quarantine tank for new fish acquisitions running, with a shallow sand substrate, plants, especially floating plants, and a couple chunks of wood for cover. This tank ran permanently, so that any new fish I acquired could go into an established tank. Using a temporary tank is not the same thing, and causes more stress because you are now shifting the fish twice instead of once, and the temporary tank is no where even close to being established which causes stress for most fish.
To add more scientific data, the following is cited from “An assessment of the use of drug and non-drug interventions in the treatment of Ichthyophthirius multifiliis Fouquet, 1876, a protozoan parasite of freshwater fish,” S. M. PICÓN-CAMACHO, M. MARCOS-LOPEZ , J. E. BRON and A. P. SHINN (2011).
Potassium permanganate is an algaecide which oxidizes organic matter, reducing dissolved oxygen levels; its effects are notable when used in ponds. This compound has a low therapeutic index and can be very toxic when used in waters of a high pH when it can precipitate on gills leading to high mortalities (Tucker, 1987; Dolezelova et al. 2009; Noga, 2010). The application of higher concentrations (e.g. 10–20 mg l−1 ) for 30 min was found to be toxic to treated fish (Balta et al. 2008).
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