Atomic bomb for protozoans

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mattcham

Aquarium Advice FINatic
Joined
Mar 7, 2014
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I have been fighting a battle with protozoans for several months. I seem to eradicate them completely after 30 days of daily Seachem Paraguard (malachite green) plus Ken's Metronidazole flakes, but the protozoans just come back a month later. I have a dozen tanks and this problem is is affecting one of my tanks. I was using these medications to preserve my biological filter, but I am tired of this guerilla warfare and I am now ready to drop the motherload on these protozoans.

Is copper based treatment still the best? If so, which one?
 
What are you seeing for symptoms? What species of fish is this? And what are you feeding them?

These are chocolate marble mollies. The symptoms are white spots, mostly on tails or fins. The spots are about 1/2 mm in diameter. Looks almost like ich but I know that it is not because the body is never affected. Also, their behavior seems normal and none have died so far. I normally feed them tetra flakes, new life spectrum pellets, and frozen brine shrimp, but lately I have been feeding them only Metronidazole flakes (from Ken's Fish dot com).

The Seachem Paraguard and Metronidazole get rid of them within ~2 weeks, and I continue treatment for another 2 weeks after that. However when I resume regular feeds, the disease returns in about a month. I repeat treatment, it goes away, but comes back again. The tank is bare bottom glass. No sand and no decor. Just an Aquaclear HOB filter.

These protozoans came from the fish store that sold me the fish and I see it on some of the fish that they are selling. I am calling them protozoans because I have over 20 years experience keeping hundreds of fish per day and no other infectious process looks like this. I have about a dozen tanks and hundreds of fish right now, all healthy except for this chronically ill tank.

Unfortunately I don't have a microscope to get a definite ID on this bug. It's also been many years since I've used any medication containing copper, so I'm not so familiar with the most potent copper based medications.
 
I guess I could give brackish a try. I'm just so tired of this recurrent problem and am looking to eradicate this permanently.
 
I've been at this just as long and I've never heard of a reoccurring case like that, esecially after continued treatment. My go to medication if medicated flakes from Angels fails or the fish is refusing to eat is Clout. The majority of my cichlids in my fish room are wild caught from central America so quarentine and treatment is a must and Clout has never once let me down.

http://www.amazon.com/Sentry-Mardel...?ie=UTF8&qid=1419086658&sr=8-2&keywords=Clout
 
Do they still sell Clout? I have not seen that since 30 years ago when I was a kid.

The fish are eating well. They are devouring the metronidazole flakes like hungry hippos. This parasite is not deadly, just ugly to see, so I'd like to get rid of it for good and prevent any chance of spreading to my other tanks.
 
Do they still sell Clout? I have not seen that since 30 years ago when I was a kid.

The fish are eating well. They are devouring the metronidazole flakes like hungry hippos. This parasite is not deadly, just ugly to see, so I'd like to get rid of it for good and prevent any chance of spreading to my other tanks.

Yes I had a link to Amazon where I purchase nearly all my medications and NLS.
 
I have used copper in the past. I no longer remember why, but the dose was to be around 2 ppm. I made a solution of copper sulphate and water. Exact amount isn't important. Added a couple of snails to the tank and started to dose a few drops at a time, allowing time for it to circulate through the tank. When the snails died, I stopped. Snails die at 2 ppm. Copper sulphate is available at most drug stores. I have also used it as an algae preventative in my swimming pool.
 
Have you considered turning it brackish for a while?

This. From what little I understand about marine tanks, mollys were often used to start a cycle back in the day, don't know if this holds true today. Copper does work best with harder water, increasing the s.g. will certainly make that water harder. If it's just mollys in the tank I'd go brackish more towards the marine end, and dose with copper, increasing the s.g slowly over several days.
 
In my search for Clout on Amazon dot com, I came across Seachem Cupramine which is copper based. I'll give that a try. Hopefully I won't need both medications to completely eradicate this bug.

http://www.seachem.com/Library/SeaGrams/Cupramine.pdf

Also, I decided not to go the salt / brackish route because some protozoans can survive in marine environments and i don't want to waste another month of trial and error. There seems to be a concensus that copper based treatment is the atomic bomb for protozoans. Clout seems to be more of a broad spectrum non-antibiotic chemical.

Fortunately, Cupramine will not harm the biological filter, but Clout is controversial in this regard:

Cupramine & biofilter info:
http://www.americanaquariumproducts.com/aquariummedication3.html

Clout safe for biofilter:
http://www.tropical-fish-centre.com/tfc/freshwater-tropical/91233-will-clout-kill-my-biofilter.html

Clout not safe for biofilter:
http://www.oscarfish.com/article-home/healthdisease/120-the-essential-aquarists-medkit.html

Note that both of these medications will harm invertebrates, plants, and scaleless fish like catfish.
 
I'm not sure if anyone else noticed this but op goes from mdcham with 10 posts to mattcham with 500+ posts?? Anyways...
seems as though you've shot down the salt but I think it's a solid plan, way cheaper and easier than meds.. If its more of an eyesore at this point? Makes sense to rule it out sooner than later as a failed treatment. Mollies prefer a bit of salt anyways?? No??

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G900A using Aquarium Advice mobile app
 
Yeah I sometimes use the aquarium advice app as mdcham, but when I use the Tapatalk app for some reason it logs me in using a different account name mattcham which I'm guessing it extracted from my Facebook credentials or something else. I dunno...

Anyway, I think salt is potentially effective. My cupramine has arrived but I have not started medicating. I'm still weighing my options including salt. The only thing I am sure about is that I will treat for 40 consecutive days instead of the 30 days which has failed me a few times already.
 
Try the marine salt and turn up the temp to 86 for a week, and if you want use the clout, or coppersafe, its cheap. No reason to keep dosing the tank with MG, it should work right away if its a protozoan parasite......
 
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