Treating For Flukes With Shrimp

[jglover]

Hi,

I had one of my sterbais come up dead yesterday, unexepctedly. The previous day all the cories were quite active and showing no signs of distress. Yesterday I noticed one of the sterbais dead on his side in the tank and second one breathing quite heavily. All the other inhabitants seem fine, lively, active and moving about and feeding well. I also noticed one of the guppies is flashing against the substrate, mainly the head and gill regions, so I'm suspecting this might be a gill fluke infestation. I stopped by the local pet shop on the way home and picked up a couple of course of medication, API's General Cure and Mardel's Maracide. My problem is the tank also has some shrimp and I do not want the meds for the flukes to wipe out my shrimp. I'm a bit concerned as I've read on line that the General Cure contains copper sulfate, but the box I have indicates it only contains metronidazole and praziquantel...no mention of copper sulfate. It appears API may have re-formulated this product.

The Maracide is a blend of malachite green and chitosan. It states this should not be used with invertabrates without exoskelotons, so I'm assuming it should be ok with the shrimp.

My question is which would be the more effective.

As far as the tank goes, it's a 15G cycled tank, NH3/NO2 are 0, NO3 are at about 5-10ppm, planted at 76deg F. I've got 4 panda cories, a sterbai, two male guppies, 4 male Endler's.

Thanks!

John

 

[WILDER]

Signs of skin and gills flukes are.
Red inflamed gills, or pale gills with excess mucas.
Opaque body with excess slime.
Flicking and rubbing.
Laboured breathing, gasping at the top of the tank.
Sores on the body of the fish.
Swimming in a jerky movement.
Spitting food out.
Erratic swimmming.

I would post about using the med in tropical dicussion as most parasite meds you have to remove the strimp from the tank.
Do you have a small tank you can add the strimp to.

 

[jglover]

Signs of skin and gills flukes are.
Red inflamed gills, or pale gills with excess mucas.
Opaque body with excess slime.
Flicking and rubbing.
Laboured breathing, gasping at the top of the tank.
Sores on the body of the fish.
Swimming in a jerky movement.
Spitting food out.
Erratic swimmming.

I would post about using the med in tropical dicussion as most parasite meds you have to remove the strimp from the tank.
Do you have a small tank you can add the strimp to.

Thanks, basically the symtpoms seem to be flashing/rubbing the gills against the substrate and labored, rapid breathing. It's a bit hard to see his gills as the fish tends to stay deep in the plants. The Sterbai's appetite is off though as I noted he did not feed while the Pandas attacked the sinking shrimp pellets. He seems to move fine when he moves, but he rolls off to one side a bit when he rest on the bottom.....gill flukes or some sort of parasitic gill infestation was my first thought on this. None of the other cories seem affected at the moment.

John

 

[WILDER]

You will have to remove the invertbrates out of the tank.
Once parsites affect gills and they labour breath the damage has already been done.
You will have to act fast.
Maracide dosn't say it treats flukes.
With gills flukes the gills will look red and inflamed, or pale with excess mucas.
With panda corys you are only meant to half dose, so I would read the instructions carefully that
you can use full dose with the fish you have.
You need to increase aeration in the tank with meds.
[URL="http/www.petco.com/product/102450/Mardel...Medication.aspx"]http/www.petco.com/product/102450/Mardel...Medication.aspx[/URL]

Flukes cause bacterial infections, as in there hooks they carry nasty bacteria which enters
the fish blood stream when the parasite pierces the skin.

I would go in with general cure.
http/www.marinedepot.com/ps_ViewItem~idP...&tab~0.html