Prazipro & fish appetite

[asylumdown]

My normal prophylactic QT procedure is a tank transfer protocol, dosing prazipro for the last two transfers. I'm presently in the middle of the protocol for a new addition and just dosed Prazi yesterday.

Any other fish and I wouldn't be concerned, but this fish is of a particularly fickle variety and is already pretty underweight. It's refused all food since I dosed, but was eating an increasing number of pellets for the past week. I'm not going to dose it for the final transfer, but do you all think I should do a 100% water change now just to get it out? It would mean it was only exposed to Prazi for 24 hours.

[Wheelman76]

If the fish has been eating for the past week then I wouldn't be too concerned if it's only been one day that he stopped eating. I don't think you will get much benefit with 24 hours of prazi treatment. I treat for 5 days and then do a water change add some carbon and then start another 5 day treatment the next day. I've never done the tank transfer method , how long is your usual treatment of prazi? Or how long is each transfer ?

[George]

I would leave the fish in PP water for the length of current transfer which is 72 hours. The fish won't die in 3 days if it was eating before the PP.
Sounds like you are doing PP back to back. You might want to wait a few days (anywhere from 3-5 days) between 2 treatments. The idea is PP can't kill fluke egg. The few days between treatments are there for the egg to hatch.

[asylumdown]

I've typically been doing a single dose at the start of one of the transfer periods (3 days), then another dose at the start of the second, for a total of 6 days under treatment. The bottle says 5 days is usually sufficient, so it seems like a convenient thing to incorporate.

There's no evidence of flukes on this fish, which is why it seemed like a big risk for little benefit if it was going to kill his appetite completely. It's a moorish idol, which is already supposedly the hardest fish in the sea to keep, so I'm being hyper vigilant.

[hackerberry]

Try offering Doc Eco's egg. Tried it for the first time and all my picky eaters are out and eating like crazy whenever I offer it. Hope the fish gets better.

[asylumdown]

Where do you get it? I've never seen it at any of the stores in calgary

[The Codfather]

Talk to Denny, think they carry it at concept.

[Myka]

I would finish the treatment too. If you don't, then you just need to repeat it, and chances are it will cause anorexia again as Prazi is known to do this.

[asylumdown]

On a slightly related note, does anyone know how much live rock if need to "instantly" cycle a QT tank with one 2.5" fish? My canister filter got hijacked to keep goldfish from my pond that I didn't really mean to keep all winter going. When the TT is done I want to keep him isolated and fatten him up, but I'll have to poach rock from my sump for a biofilter

[Wheelman76]

+1 on the docs Eco eggs , great product and im pretty sure the stock it at Concept. Also even if you don't see any flukes on the fish , prazi will treat for any internal parasites as well which is a good reason to try and treat for as long as you can.

[asylumdown]

Well that's a major bummer. Fish didn't make it. I know moorish idols are like rainbow unicorns, but.... 6 days of being alert, interested in food, interactive, etc. it was eating handfuls of new life spectrum pellets. Dose prazipro yesterday morning, it then immediately starts refusing food, tonight as I was posting it wasn't coming up to the glass of the tank, and I just pulled its nearly dead body off the powerhead.

Gah. I'll never know if it would have died anyway, but man. This fish was doing great until I dosed. I thought to myself as I was posting earlier "that sort of looks like the thousand yard stare". I'm kicking myself for not doing a massive water change to remove the Prazi right then and there.

Perhaps a word of warning - generally considered safe, but probably best not administered to new arrivals if they're of the extremely sensitive, fickle, or skinny variety. I'm going to remove Prazi from my tank transfer protocol. It's too sensitive a time for the fish.

I just put him in a bucket of water from my display, which is medication free. He's still looking around in a rather alert manner and breathing, and he's reacting to me as I move, but he's not holding himself up (laying flat on his side). I've never seen a fish come back from this, but does anyone have any last ditch emergency suggestions?

[asylumdown]

Is it worth making up a new batch of water?

[Myka]

Interesting. Did he make the night?

You can see many threads on all sorts of sites of people using PraziPro with Moorish Idols, so I wouldn't take too much blame if I were you. PP is known to cause anorexia, so that's not a surprise. You didn't overdose though, did you?

[asylumdown]

I made 20 gallons of new water and added a much weaker pump last night. He was still technically alive this morning, but barely. I actually thought he was dead until I pulled him from the water and saw his gills were still moving slightly. I finished it with clove oil.

It could have been anything - sensitive to Prazi, damage from collection, it might have had a ton of gill flukes I never saw and the Prazi treatment knocked them off too quickly and it lost the ability to regulate some critical parameter...

It was a skinny fish, but I dunno, you start to get a sense of how a fish is doing after a while, and this one was showing all the "right" signs until Prazi. However, it will never be conclusive given these fish's reputation.

[Myka]

Bummer. Glad to hear you know about Clove Oil - most humane, easily accessible thing we have.