Ws3 Killed My 8 Year Old Clowns :(

[Bravo2zero_sps]

I had white spot turn up in my tank caused by poor water quality due to an emergency where I had to move my fish from my old tank to the new tank (about 5 weeks old but running two established fluval filters along side the main filter plus bactonet) too quickly and the water quality bombed out. As soon as the white spot turned up I went to the LFS and they gave me WS3 and I heeded the instructions and made sure I only used half doses as its hard on loaches and sharks. Well 6 days later both my 2 clown loaches were dead, this was fairly close to the 3rd application of the WS3. I had also been doing daily 10% water changes since before starting the WS3 treatement to get the nitirite levels down and turned the temp upto 81 degrees. It wasn't due to the high nitrite as they had been fine in it and had experienced high nitrite in my old tank occasionally and never suffered and had never had white spot in 8 years, I considered them to be fairly hardy for clown loaches.

The LFS said they think it was because the WS3 is so strong and the combination of that and the nitirte in the water was too much for them to take Basically after the introduction of WS3 they started laying on the bottom of the tank, not moving and gill movement increasing rapidly before slowing right down to the fact I thought they were dead. I transferred them to an emergency tank at my LFS where they looked after them for 48 hours and tried to get the oxygen levels up and get the WS3 out their system but it was too late and they died. I was gutted.

Bearing in mind white spot turns up when water quality is poor shouldn't the manufacturers of WS3 be saying don't use WS3 with loaches as they just can't take it? All my other fish including two rams were fine and recovered from the white spot and high nitrite levels and now my tank is back to zero nitrite and zero nitrate.

Has anyone else had to use WS3 but their loaches survived with no ill effects?

 

[Miss Wiggle]

sorry to hear that. When I needed to treat for white spot with cory's in the tank I used another brand to the ws3.... can't remember what it was called but it had formaldehyde in as well as the malachtite (sp) green. This apparently was safe to use where other meds weren't. I still did half doses cos I was scared for my cory's but it cleared up the white spot and all the cory's lived through it just fine.

Is the reason you can't use it with loaches because they're scaless (i.e. the same as it is for cory's) I don't know.

I'll try and find the name of the brand and post it as it may be of some use to others in the future.

 

[rfisher]

Hi,

Sorry to hear about your loaches.

I used the Interpet White Spot treatment. Treament number 8 I think it is. Yes that was what I was told about Loaches being scaleless and would absorb the medication much more easily than other fish and so to use only half doses. Mine cleared up nicely.

Rich

 

[Lateral Line]

WS3 is not available here, so I have no experience with it. Browsing the net, I have found several sites which expound it's "Full Strength" as a virtue, but heavy on the warnings for scaleless and sensitive fish. It is certainly true that many medications are tough on loaches.

You don't say how bad your water got, but this is a sure cause of complication.

Something else that struck me was the 81 temperature, thats a bit over 27, is quite high, although I've seen worse. I know people advocate heat to speed up the life cycle of white spot parasites, but as the temperature rises, it's ability to hold Oxygen in solution goes down. Without a lot of surface movement, loaches very rapidly get into a stressed state. I well remember at our clubs fish shows, we always had a stock of battery operated air pumps, because as soon as the hall got a little warm, the loaches were on their sides rapid, shallow breathing.

Perhaps it was a combination of things that turned them over. Certainly some bad luck.

 

[mikev]

Sorry to hear this.

All right, here is the likely explanation:

WS3 components are: Malachite Green, Acriflavine, Quinine Sulphate
Generally, a good mix of drugs which should be quite effective, and generally M.Green is safer for loaches than Formaline or Meth Blue. Acriflavine addition tends to make Ich drugs stronger and also stop secondary damage.

BUT: Acriflavine uses up O2. The way nitrite poisoning works, it also ties up O2. And loaches, in addition to being scaleless (not relevant here!), also need a lot of oxygen...so you suffocated them indeed.

I wonder if your bottle says just how much Acriflavine is in it.

Has anyone else had to use WS3 but their loaches survived with no ill effects?

No, but I used something quite similar successfully many times.
Ich Guard is Malachite Green+Acriflavine+Salt, one usually halfdoses it, I go with 2/3 lately since it seems to be safe and works faster. When I cannot raise temperature (non-tropical loaches), I also added Quinine to speed up the process.
(But Ich Guard has fairly little acriflavine AND in your case it would have been worked better since Salt happens to neutralize nitrites...)

hth

APPEND (noticed Lateral's post):
Yes, higher temp wil reduce O2 further AND make nitrites more dangerous as well. However, 81F is perfectly fine for clowns, some people keep them at this temp all the time. I don't but I go to 86F with Ich and never had a problem.

 

[Lateral Line]

The point being Mike, he had just raised the temperature. This would have added to the problem. I agree, some people do keep loaches at high temperatures, but with everything else that was going on there, I think it could easily have made a contribution to the disaster. The tank needed a very high gas exchange under these circumstances.

I agree, the fish almost certainly asphixiated.

 

[mikev]

The point being Mike, he had just raised the temperature.

Yeah. Triple O2 deprivation (nitrites+acriflavine+temp) for more kill power...
And if raised it quickly, it can kill too, even w/o O2 problems and ich.



Bravo2zero_sps, just in case: temp raise should be done over time. I'd usually go from my default 75f to 86f over three days in increments. And with *any* ich treatment give as much O2 as possible, one very efficient way is to simply lower the water level and falling water from a HOB will do the rest.

 

[Bravo2zero_sps]

Thanks for the replies I knew about the oxygen issues so thought I was doing enough by turning the air stone up to maximum 24/7 and I raised one of the fluval filters out of the water so it was dropping its output onto the surface causing a what I thought was a fair amount of bubbles. I was also doing cold water changes from the outside tap as the LFS advised this would put highly oxygenated water into the tank, even though its 10%.

Waiting a few weeks now to get a holiday out the way and the WS3 to leave the water before getting any more clowns

The clowns had also been used to having an air pump in the old tank from an under gravel filtration system which made the water highly oxygenated to the point where the water was full of bubbles. I guess now the change from 8 years of very highly oxygenated water to water thats oxygenated by just an air stone and surface disruption was too much of a shock for them with all the factors combined. I didn't know the clowns needed more oxygen than other fish and asumed they would cope fine in the new tank. How wrong I was! The WS3 was definately the last straw though as it was only after the addition of this that they went down hill and died. Even two days of highly oxygenated water at the LFS wasn't enough to revive them, the damage was already done.

 

[Lateral Line]

Tough break, it is always sad to loose a character fish you've had a long time. If you've learnt something from the experience, then it was not a total loss, just feels like one.