Sick panduros

[Kalin]

Hi, I wonder if someone can give me some advice for my panduros. I noticed a couple of weeks ago that my male panduro was spitting out his food. I also later observed his feces were pale and stringy. From the information I pieced together on this forum, I concluded he had internal parasites and that I should treat with Metronidazole. Because I couldn’t catch him and on the advice of the guy at my LFS, I treated the whole 55 gallon tank. I used 1500 mg Metronidazole/day for 7 days with a 10% water change each treatment. The fish just got worse each day. Increasingly, it became difficult for him to breathe. I put in an airstone and helped support him at the surface with a plastic strainer as he became weaker. The guy at my LFS said I had a resistant strain of bug and to isolate the fish from the others, which I did. He finally died. I stopped treating the main tank with the Metronidazole 6 days ago, but this evening I noticed two of the panduros are spitting out their food and I can see that one has pale stringy feces. Any suggestions on how to treat this? Should I go to a higher dosage of Metronidazole or try something else?

I appreciate any suggestions.

 

[fishgeek]

white stringy faeces just suggests increased mucous prduction due to some intestinal irritant
this is often 'diagnosed' as protozoa and hence the metronidazol treatment is suggested

correctly a feacal examination under microscope should be performed
most likly options for cause would still be protozoan, nematode or cestode in my mind

ideally medication is best given orally as it is not the most water soluble medication
if the fish are eating , in feed medication is best, and feed solely for 3 days
if the fish are not eating 25mgs/litre is suggested as a permanent bath (refreshed every 48hrs 3 times)
if i call your tank 250litres then the dose you have administered is only 6mgs/l and even if we accept that you used it twice as frequently , the dose is still oly 1/2 to 1/4 what i would advise

that all assumes the protozoa are the cause

what do your fish eat?
i often use crushed metronidazol in fish oil with white worms crawling through it .. they dont like te taste as much and do tend to take them

ted on here has suggested making a solution in which to presoak food/pellets that the fish
or again you could try and compound dry foods and crushed tablets with some binder(gelatin,agar?) etc

if you can get american medications i believe metronidazol is available in metrozol, paragon II,general cure and prehaps some others

otherwise i use levamisol for nematodes and praziquantel should be effective for cestodes

andrew

 

[beleg]

Hi Andrew..

Got a question. If our source of daphnia is risk free (i.e home bred) isn't daphnia a great way to give medicine to fish? The little buggers are great water filters and if you put them in a medicated water column in about 15 mins they become totally loaded with medicine.

I had a female killi that didn't eat anything that didn't move and she had become the tiniest because of 4 camallanus worms in her. She has been cured thanks to medicated daphnia and interestingly she is recovering now..

 

[Kalin]

Thanks for your reply Andrew. The dose I used was what was advised by my LFS, however when my fish failed to show signs of recovery, I did some internet searches to ascertain whether my dose of Metronidazole was too low and this seemed to be right on. I will try the higher dose, maybe that will make the difference if, as you said, it’s protozoan.

I feed them frozen bloodworms, live Daphnia magna, and flake. As they seem to be spitting everything out right now, I think I’m only going to be able to treat it through the bath.

Is there a broad spectrum medication that would treat protozoa, nematodes and cestodes or do I just take my best guess since I don’t have a microscope?

Thanks again for your help, it’s much appreciated.

 

[fishgeek]

where are you from kalin?
benzimidazols woud in thory be best for broad spectrum potential, though unfortunately proof of this and safety is an issue

prehaps depending on what is available to you fenbendazol(prehaps increased safety in feed- so not so good) flubendazol dissolved with acetone to use as water treatment, mebendazol dont know much about this as to best application

i would tend to use the one's i have listed in the first post, mainly because that is what ihave experience with

beleg your suggestion is a good idea, as long as the medication does not kill the daphnia.. for ab's this may be a very useful method , for antiparasitic medications there may be death of the daphnia?!
to be honest i think it is a neat idea and will be trying it

andrew

 

[Kalin]

I'm from San Francisco. I'll check around to see what I can get here but maybe the problem was I wasn't using a sufficient dose of Metronidazole.

I'm trying Beleg's idea just in case they take in a few of the daphnia. I know daphnia are really sensitive to any toxins so I'm starting with a bunch of them in 100mL of water with 100 mg Metronidazole to sit for 30 min. then I'll feed them to my fish. Depending on how the daphnia seem to do during the course of that time, I'll modify conditons for next time.

 

[fishgeek]

kalin you shoud already be able to get proprietary metronidazol medications (see my intial list) in america

 

[beleg]

I tried this with levamisole and it worked. The trick is to let them stay in the water just long enough to fill them up with medicines but not long enough to kill the daphnia.

I dissolved the amount i want to apply to tank in a cup and add some daphnia.
If the medicine is whitish you will see the daphnia become white in about 10 minutes. From here on i carefully put a few daphnia each time to the tank so that the fish eat them and they don't die & decay.

some medicines maybe extremely toxic to them but it worked with levamisole and i am sure it might work with others. Problem is some fish don't even show interest to daphnia when ill

Metronidazole is readily available here in a medicine called Flaggyl for human consumption and can be bought w/o prescription.

 

[fishgeek]

that sounds great , i woud have though the levamiso would have been paralysinsg to the daphnia as well.. prehaps not

i use an injectable levamisol slution and is readily absorbed in water, so for me that one is not an issue, though i think i will try it with some other treatments

andrew

 

[Kalin]

I have Metronidazole which is made by Seachem. Their directions say to use 125 mg/40 L. I'm a little confused about the wide range of suggested dosages. Could this be due to different formulations of the drug? Seachem's Metronidazole comes in powder form and is supposed to be 100% Metronidazole.

My fish still seem eager to eat. The take in the food and kind of "mouth it" for about 5 seconds, then they spit it out. This is especially true of the frozen bloodworm, they may be able to ingest a few dapnia. I found the daphnia tolerate the Metronidazole fairly well so maybe I can get some of the medicine to them this way.

Can I give them Levamisole at the same time I'm giving them Metronidazole? I still don't know what I'm fighting.

 

[fishgeek]

metronidazol is metronidazol is metronidazol
to me it is quite easy to understand , but it is part of my job for the last 12 years, the mg's/litre dosage i gave you is for the actual metronidazol not the parent solution/powder etc

it gets confusing on the internet because untrained people or those not familar with medications do not understand that a 10% medication dosed at 1 teaspoon per litre is not the same as the 22% medications - hence the standardised way of talking about drug dose's makes no mention to concentration just the total active ingredient required.

also in the case of metronidazol the dose has been revised from a intial lower one
in the case of medications without proffessional advice, ie over the couter medications, then safety margins are more important than efficacy
in other words the medication first must do no harm rather than cure the problem
think some form of painkiller, you can probably pick up a 200mg tablet or as many as you want at the supermarket, whereas if you see a pharmacist you maybe able to get a 400 or 800mg tablet with their advice on correct usage, still you can always take 4 supermarket tablets.. and if you read the internet the dosing is probably just put out there as one tablet to stop pain..
dont know whehter i have just made that less clear

anyway
metronidazol dose at 25mgs/l or get it in orally via the daphnia if that works
levamisol 2mgs/l , not detrimental in mammals when used with metronidazol, cant say i know in fish, i would use levamisol on only 1 fish intially, net it and treat him in a seperate container before returning to the rest of fish, just so any potential mishaps are reduced

andrew

 

[Kalin]

That makes sense, thanks for the explanation. I will treat with the Metronidazole for now and in the meantime get a hold of some Levamisole in case I need to treat with that. Hopefully they’ll respond to the Metronidazole.

What sort of work do you do, Andrew?

 

[fishgeek]

i'm a vet , only for land animals though :wink:

 

[Kalin]

That gives you alot more insight when it comes to fish than the average person. I appreciate your help.

I found a scientific paper where the researchers fed Metronidazole to Daphnia magna and found they could go as high as 1000 mg/L Metronidazole for 48 hours before they saw a toxic effect on the dapnia -so it's a good way to get the medicine in. I'm crossing my fingers it's protozoan.

 

[fishgeek]

got a link to that

 

[beleg]

Hey Kalin,

any update on the fish? Does Daphnia & Metronidazole work together?

 

[Kalin]

Yes, the daphnia tolerate the Metronidazole fairly well. I'm using 1000 mg/L and letting them sit in that for a couple hours. They noticeably slow down but I don't see any drop out. My fish, I'm not sure about. It's hard for me to tell if they're ingesting the daphnia because my tank is heavily planted and I can't always tell if they're not spitting out the daphnia. At least I don't see their health continuuing to deteriorate like I did the first fish. Just in case the Metronizadole doesn't work, I have ordered some Levamisole which I will hopefully get before midweek. I will then use that as you did with the daphnia. I'm hoping that something will work before their immune system becomes too overwhelmed. I'm keeping water conditions as ideal as possible.

Thanks for asking.

 

[Apistomaster]

If Daphnia can withstand enough exposure to become metro delivery vehicles the I wonder if bbs could adsorb therapeutic levels and live long enough to be used in the same way?
It's always easy to hatch bs but having Daphnia around is a matter of routinely raising them, Those I can collect are usually an early season coldwater species that does not store well let alone allow home culture.

 

[Kalin]

IME brine shrimp are more work than daphnia. You can get Daphnia magna from Dallas Discus. They ship priority mail and their prices are reasonable. Daphnia magna reach a good size (about 0.5 cm) and are really robust.

My guess is that bbs would tolerate metronidazole just fine. I was really surprised the daphnia could tolerate it because I've always heard that daphnia are especially sensitive to toxins.

 

[beleg]

Artemia also filters the water but daphnia is the best. They become literally loaded with medicine in a matter of minutes.

Kalin did the fish recover?