Dosage for formalin bath??maths problem...

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Jessy2363

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Wellington, New Zealand
Hi I want to bath my discus and a couple other fish who look like they have a mild case of skin flukes (not gill flukes) I can't quarantine my discus because I don't have a quarantine tank big enough for discus. Hence wanting to do 30 min bath/dip instead.

I bought some kordons rid ich plus which has formalin and malachite green in it. It is 0.05mg/l malachite green and 15mg/l formalin.

I can't use the dosage on the bottle because that's for a 24 hour quarantine. Therefore it is too weak for a short 30 min bath. I won't dose my show tank otherwise the bacteria in my filter will die and the cycle will crash.

Anyone know the dosage I should be giving of this product for a 30 min bath?


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I already used mix of formalin and malachite green, I can confirm it doesn't nuke the filter.

Also a bath of formalin is useless, it's made to threat ick pr some skin disease, and must be used for 4 days or more.

I would dose your main tank.
 
I got someone good at maths to help me. Anyway I ended up using the Kordon Rid Ich because it contains formalin and malachite green which work well together. I read quite a few articles on nuking flukes so I'm certain I got the right dosage in the end. I brought the dosage from the normal 15/L of formalin suggested on the bottle up to 150mg/L which is SO much stronger than the long term recommended treatment so I think it would have zapped anything living on the skin of the fish. Bare in mind that is the dosage for tropical fish for an hour. Cold water fish you do 250mg/L for 30 min to an hour because somehow the temperature affects the drug. So it ended up being 4 mls for 3 litres for me as I used a 3 litre container using tank water and submersed it in the tank so it didn't drop temp. I kept an eye on the fish to ensure he didn't pass out or anything. Now I'm not entirely certain if it killed the skin flukes, however the fish aren't itching or anything and seem healthy now:) As for the whole tank I was too scared to put it formalin or malachite green in there as I would hate for the malachite green to stain the seals of my precious tank. I'd be super ticked off if that happened. Anyway as for the entire tank, I dosed it with the normal dose of prazipro as that is definitely the safer option and I will continue to do that regularly for a while, maybe once a week. If there are skin flukes living in my tank substrate I doubt
I'll ever completely eradicate them unless I strip the entire tank and douse it with alcohol and leave it in the sun to dry then start all over again. Stuff that. All my fish would die from having to go through the cycle faze again as I don't have a spare cycled tank big enough to house all my discus. This tank is huge so to be honest I think i'll just worm my show tank once a month with prazipro or wormer plus and if I need to dip them occasionally I will. I prefer to dip/bath for an hour or less as i've never had much luck quarantining my fish as they get depressed and die, which I believe is from stress of being separated from their home, coupled with the illness (Although I would if I had to depending on what was wrong with them). I personally think a methylene blue dip at double the strength with a bit of salt(1tsp per 3 litres) for 30 min is almost as effective and a whole lot safer than formalin. I spoke with a discus breeder at the pet shop yesterday and he said flukes are common on discus and said he might see the odd one very occasionally on one of his discus and If he does he dips them 25mg/3 litres of prazi/droncit for half an hour and they go back to normal. Formalin has cancer forming agents (that's what the discus pet shop geek told me). He also told me he does two 50% water changes a day!!! So if that's not clean and sterile I don't know what is.

So i'd say I was somewhat successful considering...I believe two of my discus came with flukes when I bought them as my partner brought them home and didn't inspect them properly as his eye site and attention to detail is the greatest for things like this.
 
Thanks for the post back. Had to go and look a lot up but got it to make sense. I assume something like trichlorfon (can't remember the brand here) may be too strong?
 
not sure as i didn't use that. i used prazipro which is for fish.

I believe trichlorfon is droncit (praziquantel). Although if you use the pill version of it (used for worming mammals) then make sure it doesn't contain "extras". Some forms of the pill do, like 'droncit plus' for example is unsafe to use on fish whereas droncit is safe. you will need to check the packet to see how many mg each pill contains and then either dose the tank long term with whatever needed (i don't know answer) or for a 30min bath i remember the pet shop nerd told me 25/mg per 3 litres. crush it up too.

just check the ingredients of trichlorfon. praziquantel is what you're looking for on the box. if you suspect your fish have parasite, even internal ones, definitely worm them with prazi or trichlorfon as you know it, and also get hold of some levaimasol also found in a brand of bird wormer called aviverm which is what i used to target the species of worm that prazi can't target. They both target different parasites. I didn't see any worms but i hate worms and was paranoid as one fish looked bloated ages ago. In NZ we struggle to get fish medications due to insane laws so got to make do with sourcing stuff in other ways...
 
:)

Yes, know what you mean.

Even there though I've had 2 or 3 parcels which seemed to send correctly but got stopped at state quarantine. One was the API liquid carbon for plants that I could actually buy in the shops so it made no sense.
 
how frustrating would that be if you spend a heap of money and customs stopped it all. The pet shop nerd showed me in their cupboard and they had a medicine container of metronidazole pills. He said they got them from the vet and dose their tanks when they get fresh imports from Malaysia.. I might try that before spending heaps on Amazon. I like to have a stash of every fish medicine available to treat them if something does go wrong. I know Furan 2 treats gram negative and gram positive bacteria so that's good as it is the only antibiotic we can get in the shops here. Over priced of course.
 
I don't actually know why it is such a problem with customs. We can get tetracycline here which is pretty useless I've found. I have managed to get kanaplax and furan 2 plus one other. Hoping to never use them but otherwise there if needed.
 
Hmmm am thinking I will try get some . Furan 2 just got banned here as apparently it's toxic to humans like formalin is. I have some furan 2 left over and am afraid of using it in case I somehow inhale it from the tank fumes rising or something. If it's so toxic to humans why would it be okay for fish I wonder.


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I think you have nailed it. IMO it is more when it is not used correctly. As fish keepers I've yet to hear of any actual problems. Although (I've forgotten what it was called) but there was one old med that included mercury in the formula that I wouldn't touch at all.
 
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