qt and medicating fish

[sergifed91]

when buying new fish what all does everyone do? I'm about to start up my tank again. it's almost been 8 week. but in the process I am looking at a couple fish. I guess my thing here is when I get the first 2 fish and put into my QT. I know I am going to do a FW Dip to make sure there are no flukes. but do I still do the fluke treatment anyway. even if they don't show signs of flukes after the FW Dip? and what about copper treatment for ich? do I do that anyway even if they don't show signs of ich. do I treat them for anything if they don't show signs of anything at all? what does everyone else do? I was looking online. there seems to be a lot of people out there that treat for velvet, worms, parasites and etc. even if there fish don't show signs of anything. I just don't want to put any fish through any unnessary stress if it can be avoided.

 

[KJ]

@4FordFamily @HotRocks @Brew12

 

[Brett newell]

Search the forum for the threads that @Humblefish has made on qt and also on any specific disease you would like to know more about.

 

[4FordFamily]

@HotRocks and I acclimate fish to the same specific gravity they came from (by knowing ahead of time) in to 1PPM copper power measured by a Hanna copper checker.

BioSpira is dosed 1-2 days prior for beneficial bacteria. Ammonia alert badge to ensure it’s successful.

It’s brought up over a few days as they start to eat and thrive to 1.75 where it’s held for 14 days. This will kill velvet and ich. Almost immediately spectrogram (an antibiotic) is used concurrently with copper for 12-14 days. This treats the plethora of nasty infections going around. They’re far more deadly than velvet.

Once they start eating somewhat well, their food is medicated (soaked in) general cure and seachem focus to bind it. This will treat internal infections and parasites.

They’re then transferred to another sterile tank transferred in two buckets matched to temp and salinity along the way to the new quarantine and then they’re treated with general cure two treatments 5-6 days apart.

@HotRocks, is that properly laid out for “our” process? He’s the one doing it this time

 

[HotRocks]

@HotRocks and I acclimate fish to the same specific gravity they came from (by knowing ahead of time) in to 1PPM copper power measured by a Hanna copper checker.

BioSpira is dosed 1-2 days prior for beneficial bacteria. Ammonia alert badge to ensure it’s successful.

It’s brought up over a few days as they start to eat and thrive to 1.75 where it’s held for 14 days. This will kill velvet and ich. Almost immediately spectrogram (an antibiotic) is used concurrently with copper for 12-14 days. This treats the plethora of nasty infections going around. They’re far more deadly than velvet.

Once they start eating somewhat well, their food is medicated (soaked in) general cure and seachem focus to bind it. This will treat internal infections and parasites.

They’re then transferred to another sterile tank transferred in two buckets matched to temp and salinity along the way to the new quarantine and then they’re treated with general cure two treatments 5-6 days apart.

@HotRocks, is that properly laid out for “our” process? He’s the one doing it this time

Yep, that is how we have adapted our protocol. This is a recent change I/we have made, with much help of @Humblefish in order to keep fish alive through the QT process.

While this method takes multiple tanks and increased effort to maintian therapuetic copper levels while doing WCs every other day to re-dose antibiotics it is working well.

Although it is not necessarily recommend to use ABX prophylactically, so far I have increased my survival rate significantly. It actually wouldn't be considered prophylactic as the two current QT tanks I have both had fish that showed symptoms of bacterial infections upon arrival (or within 3 days of arrival). I have also started bleaching tanks after every batch as a precaution with these gram negative bacterial infections.

 

[drstardust]

@HotRocks and I acclimate fish to the same specific gravity they came from (by knowing ahead of time) in to 1PPM copper power measured by a Hanna copper checker.

BioSpira is dosed 1-2 days prior for beneficial bacteria. Ammonia alert badge to ensure it’s successful.

It’s brought up over a few days as they start to eat and thrive to 1.75 where it’s held for 14 days. This will kill velvet and ich. Almost immediately spectrogram (an antibiotic) is used concurrently with copper for 12-14 days. This treats the plethora of nasty infections going around. They’re far more deadly than velvet.

Once they start eating somewhat well, their food is medicated (soaked in) general cure and seachem focus to bind it. This will treat internal infections and parasites.

They’re then transferred to another sterile tank transferred in two buckets matched to temp and salinity along the way to the new quarantine and then they’re treated with general cure two treatments 5-6 days apart.

@HotRocks, is that properly laid out for “our” process? He’s the one doing it this time

Interesting, I take it fish handle being plopped into chelated copper at 1.0ppm ok in your experience? Certainly not the conventional wisdom of ramping up slowly from zero. Have wrasses done ok with this?

So you dose spectrogram. Had to look this up. Wow, kanamycin and nitro. No bacteria should survive that, until resistance develops
Water change every other day I'm assuming because dosing this every other day?

Lastly, I feel like I'm missing something obvious with the transfer using two buckets...is this because there are too many fish to fit in one bucket at a time? lol I feel dumb asking this.

(P.S. I ask these questions hoping to be helpful to the OP and anyone else looking on. This was not an attempt to hijack )

 

[HotRocks]

The two buckets is just like this, in order to prevent transferring a tomont since only in copper for 14 days:

Fish from Copper tank to bucket one.

Get new sterile net. From bucket one to bucket two.

Get another sterile net. Go from bucket 2 to sterile QT. It's freakishly cautious. I know.

Fish do absolutely fine dropped into 1.0ppm copper. I have done it with several Wrasse. Radiant, labouti, lineatus, cleaner, leopards. Even a Anampses fem, who ate an hour out of the shipping bag. Also regal angel, Achilles tang, gem tang.

 

[4FordFamily]

Interesting, I take it fish handle being plopped into chelated copper at 1.0ppm ok in your experience? Certainly not the conventional wisdom of ramping up slowly from zero. Have wrasses done ok with this?

So you dose spectrogram. Had to look this up. Wow, kanamycin and nitro. No bacteria should survive that, until resistance develops
Water change every other day I'm assuming because dosing this every other day?

Lastly, I feel like I'm missing something obvious with the transfer using two buckets...is this because there are too many fish to fit in one bucket at a time? lol I feel dumb asking this.

(P.S. I ask these questions hoping to be helpful to the OP and anyone else looking on. This was not an attempt to hijack )

Surprisingly, wrasse have handled it much better than expected although in fairness only ten or so have been tested on. Anampses, fairy, and leopard. No real difference from acclimation to zero copper but it’s a small sample size from which to draw any real conclusions ourselves.

Correct on dosing. After losing thousands of dollars to horrendous bacterial infections that show up out of nowhere that kill within. 24-60 hours from initial symptom change — too late by the time you treat — on three different occasions... we got aggressive at @Humblefish’s suggestion.

It’s ugly out there right now... I don’t think I had a fish with an infection for the first 12-13 years I was in this hobby. A few of those years I quarantined, until the Hanna copper checker I didn’t know I was poisoning fish and they still had far higher survival rates and no infections! Now every batch seems to come with them, particularly from some distributors. I won’t name names but they’re very large. I’m not comfortable throwing anyone under a bus with limited data.

The buckets are to reduce the changes of water from original tank making it to the new one. It’s overkill, without a doubt.

 

[4FordFamily]

The two buckets is just like this, in order to prevent transferring a tomont since only in copper for 14 days:

Fish from Copper tank to bucket one.

Get new sterile net. From bucket one to bucket two.

Get another sterile net. Go from bucket 2 to sterile QT. It's freakishly cautious. I know.

Fish do absolutely fine dropped into 1.0ppm copper. I have done it with several Wrasse. Radiant, labouti, lineatus, cleaner, leopards. Even a Anampses fem, who ate an hour out of the shipping bag. Also regal angel, Achilles tang, gem tang.

I guess we were typing at the same time LOL

 

[drstardust]

Thanks for clarifying, guys.

Oh man, that's some really good success! And that makes sense now, and that's just my kind of cautious. I use 2 nets as well, but only one bucket . I keep my QTs in separate rooms, and use shoulder length rubber gloves that I take off before leaving one room and putting on a new pair when I enter another. So I get overkill, trust me

In case anyone cares I have overall done something similar except without prophylactic abx...though I'm tempted to do this now. I've also started from scratch with copper, but may change this as well.

I also prophylactically do "the velvet dips" before fish go into QT #1: 5 min freshwater dip followed by 90 minute rally bath. The 6 or so fish I've done this on so far have tolerated it well.

I do the exact same things with GC (fed w/ focus in QT1, dosed to the tank x2 in QT2)

The successes: A toby puffer (gasp, I know, but he handled copper just fine), 3 lyretail anthias, a butterfly, and a melanurus wrasse.
The only "failure" was a suicidal anthias, and better believe I've since covered every inch of my QT tops.

 

[Khwee]

@HotRocks and I acclimate fish to the same specific gravity they came from (by knowing ahead of time) in to 1PPM copper power measured by a Hanna copper checker.

BioSpira is dosed 1-2 days prior for beneficial bacteria. Ammonia alert badge to ensure it’s successful.

It’s brought up over a few days as they start to eat and thrive to 1.75 where it’s held for 14 days. This will kill velvet and ich. Almost immediately spectrogram (an antibiotic) is used concurrently with copper for 12-14 days. This treats the plethora of nasty infections going around. They’re far more deadly than velvet.

Once they start eating somewhat well, their food is medicated (soaked in) general cure and seachem focus to bind it. This will treat internal infections and parasites.

They’re then transferred to another sterile tank transferred in two buckets matched to temp and salinity along the way to the new quarantine and then they’re treated with general cure two treatments 5-6 days apart.

@HotRocks, is that properly laid out for “our” process? He’s the one doing it this time

Sorry im an idiot... but this means u can use spectro and copper together right?

 

[4FordFamily]

Sorry im an idiot... but this means u can use spectro and copper together right?

Yes

 

[Khwee]

Yes

Ive also read that u can use spectro and GC together. Does that mean i can use all 3 concurrently?

 

[Fallenreef]

Does general cure work with the powder form vs medicated food form

 

[4FordFamily]

Ive also read that u can use spectro and GC together. Does that mean i can use all 3 concurrently?

You can, certainly. Mixing meds has it's disadvantages/risks, however. One of them is algae blooms (spectrogram will actually not allow this to happen), another is reduced oxygen levels in the tank (bubblers AND powerhead breaking the surface are advised), and another is weakening a fish due to the chemicals/medication combinations -- more meds increases this risk and also can reduce the immune response of the fish. In some cases, it is a necessary evil -- but unless you see a need to do all at once, I wouldn't.

I've brought several batches through recently by just mixing copper, metroplex (for uronema) for 14 days - then transferring to an entirely new, sterile quarantine that shares nothing with the first for prazipro. I feed general cure and focus generally for 2 weeks in-between transfers --- in other words the second week in the first QT and the first week in the new observation QT. I also treat with prazi pro at 1.25% normal dosage 5-7 days apart during observation as well. I haven't been seeing much flukes recently, but if i saw scratching or flashing or evidence of them in the first 14 days I WOULD combine them. In the absence of such, I wait to for the aforementioned reasons.

I've also switched to CP because I've had two failed Copper batches. Full disclosure -- I used 2.25-2.5PPM both times HOWEVER I have been sloppy and multi-tasking so it's possible both failed attempts were cross-contamination with food, hands in tanks, drain hoses, and a myriad of other ways. I am unsure if velvet survived copper or if it was user error. It did happen twice in a row so I've moved to CP recently with good success. CP is difficult to get right now, obviously, but I had a bit left over. I am still pretty confident in Copper Power at 2-2.5PPM, but it is POSSIBLE perhaps that velvet is surviving even higher concentrations of copper. I am unsure.

Because of my working from home, being a kindergarten teacher to my 6 year old daughter, a daycare for my 4 year old son, and a massive uptick in business for me with all of this coranavirus stuff, I am stretched very thin and when I try to multi-task (talk to clients while working in fish room) I have caught myself making silly errors I wouldn't under less pressure and under normal circumstances. In short, I am stretched very thin.

Does general cure work with the powder form vs medicated food form

General cure in powder form is typically used for both. I add it to food, with seachem focus, and mix up with a touch of garlic to improve flavor to make it more "palatable". For dosing in the tank, I also use powder form. The only liquid form medications I use are Prazipro (prazi is one of two main ingredients in general cure, the other is metroplex) and Copper Power.

 

[monti mike]

This is my experience only so please don’t take this as a recommendation! I’ve always done the “plop and pray” method and fortunately haven’t had any health issues.