Bristlenose Pleco with long thread like poo

[AdrianBru]

Hello and a happy New Year to all - Newbie here with an 8 month old 200 litre tank with 2 Bristlenose plecos with thread like long poos. I have been having problems for a month or so and lost several platys exhibiting shimmying, clamped fins and weight loss. My local aquarium shops have suggested that it could be either internal parasites or bacteria, so I have treated twice with a combination of esha 2000, gdex and exit. Some improvement but in desperation treated with esha ndx (twice). All appear to be ok now except the plecos with their stringy poo although in all other respects seem to be happy and healthy. Water parameters are all ok with ammonia at 0, No2 at 0, No3 at 25, Ph 7.6, Kh 10 and Gh 14. The question is do I wait and see if the plecos improve or do I treat the tank (I don't have a QT) and if so with what medication that is available in the UK. Any advice would be gratefully received. Many thanks

 

[Guppylover3x]

Welcome to tropical fish forums! I am sorry to hear you are having difficulties with your fish, I agree with the advice your LFS provided. The symptoms you describe indicate internal parasites. If however the fish have already been treated for this and water parameters are fine, then the next option would be to look at the fishes diet, if there has been any overfeeding, or stress. Could there be anything in the tank that could be stressing your fish? Good luck!

 

[Colin_T]

When livebearers (mollies, guppies, platies, swordtails) are shimmying (swimming in one spot), it is either poor water quality or soft water. Your GH is 14 (about 250ppm), which is fine for livebearers so that is not the problem. The fact they have clamped fins and are shimmying and the GH is fine would suggest poor water quality and a protozoan infection. However, without pictures and a short video of the fish we are only guessing. If you can post some clear pictures of the fish and a short 20 second video showing their unusual swimming it will help confirm this.

If the images are too big to fit on the website, set the camera's resolution to its lowest setting and take some more. Use the camera flash. Take a number of pictures and put them on your computer and check them. Post a couple of good pictures here.

Same deal with the plecos, post pictures of them and their poop. If their poop is white and stringy then it's a problem. If it's dark but long that is normal.

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What do you feed the plecos?
How much algae is in their tank?
Do you have driftwood in the tank for them to graze on?

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What are the ingredients in "esha 2000, gdex and exit"?

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How often do you do water changes and how much water do you change?
Do you gravel clean the substrate when you do a water change?
How often do you clean the filter and how do you clean it?

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Wipe the inside of the glass down. Do a 75% water change and gravel clean the substrate every day for a week. Make sure any new water is free of chlorine/ chloramine before it is added to the tank. Clean the filter if it hasn't been done in the last 2 weeks. Post pictures and video.

The following link has some info on what to do if your fish gets sick. It's pretty long and boring but worth knowing. I recommend printing it out and reading it in bed to help fall asleep.
http://www.fishforums.net/threads/what-to-do-if-your-fish-gets-sick.450268/

 

[AdrianBru]

Welcome to tropical fish forums! I am sorry to hear you are having difficulties with your fish, I agree with the advice your LFS provided. The symptoms you describe indicate internal parasites. If however the fish have already been treated for this and water parameters are fine, then the next option would be to look at the fishes diet, if there has been any overfeeding, or stress. Could there be anything in the tank that could be stressing your fish? Good luck!

Hi Guppover3x and thank you for your reply. The fish have a varied diet of flake food + algae wafers and a daily cube of various frozen food. I have now started to soak the flake food and algae wafers in garlic guard to see if this helps. I can't think of anything that could be stressing my fish other than possibly my vacuuming the gravel every weekend during the water change. I'm going to hold off further medication to see if the plecos poo improves as all the other fish are absolutely fine. Thanks again

 

[Essjay]

What are the ingredients in "esha 2000, gdex and exit"?

eSHa 2000 "Fungus, finrot & bacteria treatment"
Ethacridine lactate, copper sulphate, proflavine hemisulphate

eSHa gdex "Against skin flukes, gill flukes & tapeworms"
Praziquantel
https://www.eshalabs.eu/english/products/esha-gdexsupregsup.html ingredients given under 'product information'

eSHa Exit "Anti whitespot. Stops all Spot & Velvet"
Ethacridine lactate, malachite green oxalate, methyene blue

The instructions say that it is safe to use all three together.


On eSHa's website, neither Exit nor 2000's product information, dated 2008, give the ingredients. But I have leaflets dated 2010 from bottles which do give the ingredients.

 

[Cichlid4life]

Pleco poo can always be in long strands, if it is a thin, white poo then that would arise for treatments, but if it is brown and long, it is likely that it is just normal pleco poo and that they are fine.

About the platies, i am no livebearer expert by far, but do you know if you have only males, only females or a mix of both in you tank? With livebearers i have noticed that they tend to act different based on what the genders of the other platies are. Have any of your platies had fry yet? if so then you might have a male or it could be that the eggs were fertilized at the store.

Weight loss means your fish can't be having bloat, but it could be internal parasites or a bacterial infection, both of which are hard to treat if they can be treated at all.

 

[AdrianBru]

Thanks for that essjay - I knew that it was ok to use all three together as esha recommend doing so when any diagnosis is uncertain. The NDX can only be used on its own and should be used again two weeks after the initial dosing to eradicate any parasites that may have hatched after the first application. I'm going to hold off further medication for the time being to see whether the pleco situation resolves itself with the addition of garlic guard to their food. I may well have been overmedicating

 

[AdrianBru]

Pleco poo can always be in long strands, if it is a thin, white poo then that would arise for treatments, but if it is brown and long, it is likely that it is just normal pleco poo and that they are fine.

About the platies, i am no livebearer expert by far, but do you know if you have only males, only females or a mix of both in you tank? With livebearers i have noticed that they tend to act different based on what the genders of the other platies are. Have any of your platies had fry yet? if so then you might have a male or it could be that the eggs were fertilized at the store.

Weight loss means your fish can't be having bloat, but it could be internal parasites or a bacterial infection, both of which are hard to treat if they can be treated at all.

Hi Cichlid4life and thank you for your reply. The pleco poo does not appear to be constantly stringy sometimes it seems to be ok - I'll watch and wait to see what happens. The platys started off at 4 males and 4 females, they are now down to 2 of each but one female was born in the tank a couple of months ago and survived all of the treatments used. At the moment all appears to be well and the only issue I may have is with the plecos. Thanks for your advice, all of which is gratefully received.

 

[Guppylover3x]

No problem, I agree frequent water changes and pristine water may help their condition. I also agree that adding more medicine could possibly do more harm than good if we are not a 100% sure what the problem is. I hope you manage to get sorted! Please ensure to keep everything in the tank clean and continue to check water parameters. Best of luck.

 

[Colin_T]

eSHa 2000 "Fungus, finrot & bacteria treatment"
Ethacridine lactate, copper sulphate, proflavine hemisulphate

eSHa gdex "Against skin flukes, gill flukes & tapeworms"
Praziquantel
https://www.eshalabs.eu/english/products/esha-gdexsupregsup.html ingredients given under 'product information'

eSHa Exit "Anti whitespot. Stops all Spot & Velvet"
Ethacridine lactate, malachite green oxalate, methyene blue

The instructions say that it is safe to use all three together...

I wouldn't mix those chemicals together. Copper sulphate is toxic enough as it is, when mixed with Methylene Blue and Malachite green you have a nasty mixture. And mixing anything with Praziquantel can easily poison the fish. I have no idea what the other stuff is but the more chemicals you put in the tank, the more chance of overdosing the fish.

 

[Cichlid4life]

I wouldn't mix those chemicals together. Copper sulphate is toxic enough as it is, when mixed with Methylene Blue and Malachite green you have a nasty mixture. And mixing anything with Praziquantel can easily poison the fish. I have no idea what the other stuff is but the more chemicals you put in the tank, the more chance of overdosing the fish.

one part of me strongly argges wiht you on that one, as copper is harmful to all scaless fish and in stronger doses it could be dangerous to almost any fish, and especially with the fact that i have never heard of these three medications before, i don't have any idea about what they have in them, but what ever it is, it most likely is a lot of chemicals. Lots of chemicals are not good for any living organism, and since fish tanks keep fish in a certain body of water, they are traped swimming in the chemicals that get into the water.

@AdrianBru Do you know what carbon is and what it does? Do you know about the different types of carbon (active carbon low active carbon i.e.)? If you don't know anything about the above it is okay, but you should make sure that you at least do research about it all because carbon is important to have on hand for when you are treating with medications, especially when it is more than one medication.

 

[Colin_T]

re: carbon. This is a black granulated substance used to remove chemicals and heavy metals from air and water. There are numerous sizes of carbon and the smaller the granules, the better it works. There are also several grades of carbon starting with normal carbon, then activated carbon and highly activated carbon. The highly activated carbon is the best, then activated carbon, and normal carbon is the least effective out of the 3 different grades.

If you are treating fish you should remove carbon from the filter. If you want to remove chemicals from the water after treating, do a 75% water change and gravel clean the substrate each day for a week.

If you want to add carbon to a filter then buy a carbon sachet or a box of loose carbon and put it in a stocking. Rinse it under tap water to remove any fine black dust and then put it in the filter.

Carbon will remove plant fertilisers as well as medications so if you are adding plant fertilisers to an aquarium, you should not use carbon.

 

[AdrianBru]

re: carbon. This is a black granulated substance used to remove chemicals and heavy metals from air and water. There are numerous sizes of carbon and the smaller the granules, the better it works. There are also several grades of carbon starting with normal carbon, then activated carbon and highly activated carbon. The highly activated carbon is the best, then activated carbon, and normal carbon is the least effective out of the 3 different grades.

If you are treating fish you should remove carbon from the filter. If you want to remove chemicals from the water after treating, do a 75% water change and gravel clean the substrate each day for a week.

If you want to add carbon to a filter then buy a carbon sachet or a box of loose carbon and put it in a stocking. Rinse it under tap water to remove any fine black dust and then put it in the filter.

Carbon will remove plant fertilisers as well as medications so if you are adding plant fertilisers to an aquarium, you should not use carbon.

Thank you for the advice Colin - I do know something about activated carbon and always remove both carbon pads whilst medicating and replace them when finished. I use Fluval carbon which I buy in bulk and fill netting bags when required. The filter maintenance is carried out as per the fluval manual and water changes are done every week and usually a minimum of 30%, I generally vacuum the gravel at the same time. One question I have however is should new carbon pads be used after each treatment or is it acceptable to replace the removed ones having sterilised in boiling water to kill any parasites which may have inhabited the pads? It seems to be an expensive waste to renew otherwise serviceable carbon.

 

[Cichlid4life]

Parasites can't live in nor on the carbon, because like all parasites, aquatic parasites need a host or else they die in the following 48-86 hours depending on the type of parasite. Any parasites in the filter will have a hard time getting out of the filter (if your using a canister filter), the carbon should be fine if you put them in an empty tank for 5 five, because you you think a few got onto your carbon, an aquarium with water but with out a host will kill the parasites.