What the fluke!

Treefer32 · Dec 23, 2020

So, Thank you to @Jay Hemdal for helping me identify I have flukes in my 350 gallon mixed reef. My copperband butterfly fish definitely has something on one of his eyes. (only one eye has the bluish white coloration. The center of the other eye is black.

My Caribbean blue tang has a white patch just a half inch above his gills. He's probably an 8 inch fish. So, I don't know how much flukes can affect that large of a fish, but he's acting weird too. He'll swim side ways along my toadstool leather, rubbing his belly on the toadstool. He'll swim sideways into the sand and then act perfectly normal most of the time.

My Canary blenny occasionally scratches and my Dragon Wrasse and another wrasse both tend to scratch their bellies and their sides against the sand.

The Dragon wrasse actually had a damage to his side a couple months back. I thought it was fighting, but, thinking that twice now, I'm wondering if there's varying degrees of fluke infestation. I don't like catching and stressing my fish out. (Plus it stresses me out.)

I've read prazipro or prazi quintel is a treatment for flukes. That it could kill fan worms. (I have no fan worms, just tons of sponge and tons of pods.) Will it affect pod populations or anything else if I were to dose the display?

Is there anything I can add to their food or give them that would eliminate flukes both on the inside and outside in the display?

I don't want to hurt anything, and I've got everything looking really good and would like to make sure everything is 100% as healthy as possible before getting anymore corals or fish. Display contains 16-17 fish. (A goby that I haven't seen in 6 months was in there, it hid under the rocks with two shrimp. Haven't seen either for a while, but, I always see the sand bed moved around, so who knows.)

Thoughts?

Jay Hemdal · Dec 23, 2020

Treefer32 said:
So, Thank you to @Jay Hemdal for helping me identify I have flukes in my 350 gallon mixed reef. My copperband butterfly fish definitely has something on one of his eyes. (only one eye has the bluish white coloration. The center of the other eye is black.

My Caribbean blue tang has a white patch just a half inch above his gills. He's probably an 8 inch fish. So, I don't know how much flukes can affect that large of a fish, but he's acting weird too. He'll swim side ways along my toadstool leather, rubbing his belly on the toadstool. He'll swim sideways into the sand and then act perfectly normal most of the time.

My Canary blenny occasionally scratches and my Dragon Wrasse and another wrasse both tend to scratch their bellies and their sides against the sand.

The Dragon wrasse actually had a damage to his side a couple months back. I thought it was fighting, but, thinking that twice now, I'm wondering if there's varying degrees of fluke infestation. I don't like catching and stressing my fish out. (Plus it stresses me out.)

I've read prazipro or prazi quintel is a treatment for flukes. That it could kill fan worms. (I have no fan worms, just tons of sponge and tons of pods.) Will it affect pod populations or anything else if I were to dose the display?

Is there anything I can add to their food or give them that would eliminate flukes both on the inside and outside in the display?

I don't want to hurt anything, and I've got everything looking really good and would like to make sure everything is 100% as healthy as possible before getting anymore corals or fish. Display contains 16-17 fish. (A goby that I haven't seen in 6 months was in there, it hid under the rocks with two shrimp. Haven't seen either for a while, but, I always see the sand bed moved around, so who knows.)

Thoughts?

Oral meds can be used to dose fluke meds, but they work better when added to the water. Take a look in the article section here, about 8 files down for one I wrote on medicated foods.
Dosing the tank with prazi is going to be expensive, but other than worms, it is well tolerated by fish and invertebrates. I worry about it in delicate reef tanks because both the drug and the solvent are organic, and get broken down by bacteria. This in turn sucks oxygen out of the water.
Jay

Treefer32 · Dec 23, 2020

Jay Hemdal said:
Oral meds can be used to dose fluke meds, but they work better when added to the water. Take a look in the article section here, about 8 files down for one I wrote on medicated foods.
Dosing the tank with prazi is going to be expensive, but other than worms, it is well tolerated by fish and invertebrates. I worry about it in delicate reef tanks because both the drug and the solvent are organic, and get broken down by bacteria. This in turn sucks oxygen out of the water.
Jay

Thanks Jay! This is great information! I looked at the pricing and dosing amount on BRS. Looks like Liquid Prazipro at recommended broadcast dosages is 1 oz of liquid per 120 gallons of salt water. Overall I would rate my system with sump, minus rock density and 120 pounds of sand at around 300-340 gallons. So, 2-3 ounces should be sufficient?

16oz bottle is $45 or so. I guess if it protects and gets the fish healthier and living happier, that saves me tons of money. Thinking of treating all fish I get with this. Might have a higher chance of survival rate.

Am I thinking the dosage correctly? Is there a such thing as overdosing, If I do 3 oz = 360 gallons, and Say my volume is only 320 or 330? Would that change things or does that hurt anything? As for oxygenation. I've got two gyres at 3000 gph at the surface of my tank for suraface agitation plus another powerhead on the opposite side aimed at the surface at 3000 gph to keep the tank well oxygenated. plus how many feet of 1.5" pvc for plumbing to my sump and back. I'm hopeful I can nip this in the bud and make my fish happier, if the dosage doesn't screw something up.

Jay Hemdal · Dec 23, 2020

If you volume estimate is accurate, it would be 2 and 2/3 of a fl ounce to treat that tank: 320 gallons / 120 = 2.66 ounces.

You should dose at least twice, 7 days apart. I dose three times seven days apart, in case the fluke species is an egg layer.

For aeration, a protein skimmer works good. I like air stones as they are easy to adjust and gauge the bubbles. Circulating pumps often move a lot of water, but don't break the surface t3ension enough.

Jay

SaltyT · Dec 23, 2020

Prazipro will make your skimmer go crazy so make sure you remove the cup to keep it from overflowing

Treefer32 · Dec 24, 2020

SaltyT said:
Prazipro will make your skimmer go crazy so make sure you remove the cup to keep it from overflowing

Thanks I removed my skimmer due to other issues. Only filter now is a 25 micron Nu-clear cannister filter with carbon and An Algae turf scrubber. I did notice since removing the skimmer, my cannister filter plugs up in 2 weeks instead of three. I've ordered 200 micron filter sock, now that I have room for one, to fill with filter floss and use that as a filter that I can just throw away as it plugs up. But, no skimmer to go nuts anymore and I'm happy with this decision!

Treefer32 · Dec 24, 2020

So I'm noticing slimy sticky stuff on the outside of a pyramid butterfly's gills as well. Must be spreading now for some reason. No idea why or ho.

Treefer32 · Dec 29, 2020

Dosed 2.6 ounces of Prazipro to my 340 gallon display. that's around 330 gallons being dosed for. I removed carbon, and no skimmer. Just ATS. Anything I should watch for on the fish themselves to tell if it's working over the next 3 days? My Xenia closed up immediately. They did not like the prazipro! Be interesting if this is a treatment for Xenia as well?

djkms · Dec 29, 2020

Curious to see how your reef does dosing your dt with prazi. Please keep us updated.

Treefer32 · Dec 29, 2020

djkms said:
Curious to see how your reef does dosing your dt with prazi. Please keep us updated.

Thanks! So far, some irritation on Xenia, one acro slimed up for no apparent reason, (however, polyps fully extended more than usual. At the same time, other Acros showing no irritation. Hammers and Acans seem fine. RBTA bulged up... Didn't seem to like it, or liked eating the prazi not sure which, but, is back to looking normal. Seems like the response was mainly at dosing. So far no other signs of issues.

Jay Hemdal · Dec 29, 2020

Treefer32 said:
Dosed 2.6 ounces of Prazipro to my 340 gallon display. that's around 330 gallons being dosed for. I removed carbon, and no skimmer. Just ATS. Anything I should watch for on the fish themselves to tell if it's working over the next 3 days? My Xenia closed up immediately. They did not like the prazipro! Be interesting if this is a treatment for Xenia as well?

You should still run the skimmer for aeration, unless you added an airstone. You can take the cup off if it foams too much. Praziquantel usually doesn’t cause a reaction with inverts, but Prazipro uses a glycol related solvent that is probably causing your Xenia to react poorly.
Jay

vetteguy53081 · Dec 29, 2020

I would run skimmer and do note that PraziPro may curb the appetite of the fish and reduce oxygen, so increase oxygen if you can as a safety measure

Treefer32 · Dec 30, 2020

Still in the first 24 hours of dosing and all fish are doing well. They seemed to have increased appetites last night. I had to give them two times the amount of food I normally feed And they ate most of it. No idea what that was about. My Dragon Wrasse, hid in the sand at time of dosing but is out today. He had had some markings on his side, so I wanted to make sure he was exposed. Everything looks o.k. today so far. No signs of heavy breathing or slow movement. PH hit down to 8.01 and is already on the rise today. Xenia has fully recovered and is back to its usual spreading self.... all corals look good. Even my Asterina Starfish are still out doing their thing. I noticed snails that I didn't know I had came to the surface more than usual last night, but they're hiding again.

So far so good as far as tolerance. The pyramid butterfly fish still has what looks like mucusy / fleshy scales and the CBB still has white at the center of both eyes. When should the whites of its eyes clear up? Or will that take several periods of treatment?

Jay Hemdal · Dec 30, 2020

If the marks on the two fish ARE from flukes, they should heal over in a few days...if they are something else(by saying I know what that would be!) the spots will persist. Pyramids are well known to have scale issues that last for years, they seem pretty benign.
Darn! I forgot to warn you not to use prazi with feather dusters, hope you didn’t have any! It will also kill spirobolid worms, and possibly bristle worms.

Treefer32 · Dec 30, 2020

Jay Hemdal said:
If the marks on the two fish ARE from flukes, they should heal over in a few days...if they are something else(by saying I know what that would be!) the spots will persist. Pyramids are well known to have scale issues that last for years, they seem pretty benign.
Darn! I forgot to warn you not to use prazi with feather dusters, hope you didn’t have any! It will also kill spirobolid worms, and possibly bristle worms.

I did not have any feather dusters (and you actually did warn me about the feather dusters.

) I've always had tanks covered in feather dusters, but this one, I've had no hitchhikers in two years. I usually had hundreds growing in previous tank overflows. But none seeded from anything in this one. I have tons of yellow sponge (probably in the thousands) and thousands of Asterinas. But, no fan worms. I had seen a couple tiny serpent star fish, but no worms that I'm aware of. As long as the death of the worms (if I had any) doesn't cause a major amonia spike, I'm good.) I suspect my dragon wrasse may take care of any worms that do show up. He flips my snails all over, and digs flips rocks over for food. So, if I had any worms, he probably takes care of them.

I guess if I don't have flukes this will make sure I don't. . . The mystery flare ups of what looked like them was annoying, and if it saves future fish from dieing it's worth it.