Massive medic over dose I need opinions

[SharkBait48]

Hey guys I bought this medic treatment to treat ich in my 75 gal with a 30 gallon sump.
My mom put in 2 CAPS instead of 2little scoops. It's about 40 times the recommended amount?
I did about a 25% water change after but I ran out of salt...


Is my tank toast? Please help me out thanks!

[windcoast reefs]

is this a fish only system, or is it a quarantine system? What treatment are you using? Is it copper based? I would start by getting another water change ready (go get more salt or borrow some). Also get some fresh carbon to help pull the meds out of the water.

At 40 times the dose I cant image much being able to live through that. Most ich medications are copper based and are very toxic to marine organisms in even low levels.

[Evilweevil]

Pet smart is still open and usually carries salt go and get more salt if you are worried it might be the best thing to do

I don't know the awnser about the meds though sorry

[SharkBait48]

It is a fowlr system so no coral, but the product is called medic and it says it's reef safe. My mom added it to the actual tank system I'm very worried about the outcome.

[SharkBait48]

The ingredients are crystalline peroxide salts apparently

[windcoast reefs]

Hmm haven't used that one, but it says not to run carbon, which usually means that carbon pulls it out of the system. Also it says thats its an oxidizer of some kind, so i would keep the skimmer on and maybe add an air bubbler to try and keep the oxygen levels up. So do another water change and get some carbon on it to help pull it out. There really isn't much you can do after that. Just a waiting game

[asylumdown]

FWIW, I just read up on the product you used. The way it describes ciliated parasites and the major treatments for them is so wrong it isn't even wrong.

For example (from the Polyp-Lab Medic page):
"Most available treatments do not target the free-swimming stage of the parasite which is one of the primary difficulties in dealing with these infections."
Wrong. The free swimming stage is the only stage that most/all treatments that actually work act on. Copper, hypo, chloroquin (sp?), etc. etc. etc. only work on the free swimming stage. If any of the 'other' treatments were effective against the 'non-free swimming stages' (trophonts, protomonts, and tomonts) as the wording on their website implies, ich would be a very easy disease to eliminate. The free swimming stage is the point in the lifecycle where the parasite is most vulnerable, and easiest to kill, but unfortunately it's also the shortest stage of the parasite's life cycle.

"Research with ciliated protozoans has shown that the "free-swimming" stage of these parasites have remarkably consistent hatching times. We have engineered our product to be most efficient during this stage."
Wrong! Research with ciliated protozoans has shown the exact opposite of that claim. Ich for example demonstrates tomont excystment times that are so asynchronous and drawn out it's been called an evolved survival strategy of the species. Marine velvet (which this product claims to work against) isn't even a protozoan - it's a dinoflagellate - and it excysts from the tomont much faster on average than ich.

I wouldn't put my faith in a product that gets such major and easy to verify claims about the diseases it claims to treat wrong. Furthermore, if there was going to be an acute reaction to the overdose, you likely would have seen it right away with things dying and such. If after a few hours none of your fish were in distress and none of the pods had started curling up and dying, you're not likely going to have any long term problems. However, +1 on the suggestions to do as many water changes as possible, because they claim their product's active ingredient is crystallized peroxide salts. Peroxide salts are just like hydrogen peroxide, only they've got something like lithium, barium, or sodium bonded to the single bonded oxygen complex instead of hydrogen. the 'peroxide' portion of whatever was poured in will have pretty quickly reacted with whatever it was going to react with, which is why if nothing has died I don't think you really need to worry, but since you don't know which of the alkali earth's they used to make the salt, I would want it as diluted as possible. One would hope it would be sodium peroxide, in which case it would probably have no lasting effects, but if they used say lithium or barium peroxide... I have no idea what large quantities of lithium or barium are any of the other elements that can form a peroxide salt would do in a tank long term. Maybe nothing, but it's better to be safe than sorry.

And finally, there's never been any evidence to suggest that any peroxide compound in concentrations that would be 'reef safe' would have any effect against any stage of the life-cycles of the parasites that they list that medication as being effective against. Considering how wrong some of their most basic product claims are, I would put this medication back on the shelf reserved for snake oil.