Internal Parasites Keep Coming Back - Doing something wrong?

Eclyps19 · Jul 23, 2020

I have 7 fish in a 110g. All are seemingly healthy, except one of them will occasionally have stringy poop. If one has it, I'm sure they all have it. I've been treating their food on and off for the past couple months, but I cannot seem to get rid of them. I want to just lay out my process to see if anyone can tell me what I'm doing wrong.

Get a small glass container
Put about 2 days worth of dry food in the container.
Put in about 1 scoop of metro OR a similar amount of general cure (I'll use the same medication for the full course)
Put in about 1 scoop of Focus
Mix the food and the powder up
Add a few drops of Selcon vitamins
Mix around some more
Add a bit of tank water (not to over-saturate, but to allow the powders to fully dissolve).
Feed the mix once in the morning and once in the afternooon.
Refrigerate remaining food, use the rest within a day or two.
Repeat for about two weeks.

I have gone through two cycles of medicating using the above process. The first time was two weeks. The second time was nearly 3 weeks. I feel like I *must* be doing something wrong. No livestock has been added to the tank for months, so I know they aren't coming from somewhere else. Could I be using too little medication? Am I doing something to prevent the focus from binding properly? Should I just dose the whole tank (been avoiding to prevent stress to corals and massive WCs)?

Spare time · Jul 23, 2020

Could be bad food? I had some frozen nano mysis shrimp that I believe gave my fish some sort of parasite. Both times I used it the fish began experience fluke like symptoms. Prazipro saved my fish

HairyGary · Jul 23, 2020

Sounds like you are doing it correctly. I let the mix sit for at least 30 minutes for the food to absorb when you first mix it up.

Do you see the fish in question actually consume the food? Sometimes fish will eat it and then spit it out. There are also really stubborn internal parasites and worms out there that seem resistant to certain meds. You could try this as well:

Fenbendazole

** This information was originally posted here: https://humble.fish/community/index.php?threads/fenbendazole.18/ ** Fenbendazole (dewormer) What It Treats – Flukes (Monogeneans), and gastrointestinal parasites (worms). Particularly useful to treat strains of flukes & intestinal worms which are...

www.reef2reef.com

Good luck

Halal Hotdog · Jul 23, 2020

Are you sure they are internal parasites? When my tangs eat a lot of chaeto there feces look long and stringy like internal parasites.

Eclyps19 · Jul 23, 2020

Thanks for the replies. They do all seem to furiously devour the food when I feed them, so I’m pretty sure they aren’t spitting it all out. Maybe I should increase the amount that I feed, though, to make sure that they are getting enough of it.

My first feeding after mixing is usually only about 5 mins after preparation, so good call on letting it sit a bit longer.

As for identifying if parasites are the cause, I really can’t say for sure. I haven’t seen any white poop for a few weeks now, but there was definitely some VERY long string coming from one yesterday. It was brown, but longer than the length of the whole fish. Just sort of sssuming that’s what it is. I have a decent microscope, I wonder if I was able to grab some if I could confirm under the scope...

Halal Hotdog · Jul 24, 2020

GI issues can also cause a fish to have long stringy feces, void of parasites. If the previous medication did not work then trying it again will unlikely yield different results. You could try different medication if you are suspecting parasites.