FW Snails & Meds

[Kerrinne]

Should I remove my golden apple snail before treating a tank with Erythromycin tablets. It does not have any indications on the packaging to remove invertebrates, so I am not sure whether to or not. Since it's an antibiotic, I don't think it contains copper. Help, suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

 

[Umberle]

generally yes. Invertebrates are more sensitive with medication. I had to nurse my black apple snail back to health after having medicated the fish. And the medicine didn't mention that it would be a problem either. I'm still not sure if Paco's going to survive and it's been almost a week and a half.

 

[smilla4]

I have a package of Myacin that contains Erythomycin - it says "Do not use in the presence of invertebrates." It also states to remove any carbon filtration before using (you can put that in afterwards to clear it from the tank). And that it can affect the beneficial bacteria in your tank (ie it can cause your tank to cycle). Recommended to use in a QT tank. The package suggests using Kanacyn for a community tank, however, I have no experience with this...

Right now I'm using the Myacin in my community tank, as it was what I had on hand, and putting in a half dose at a time, while watching for ammonia spikes. I wasn't sure how this would affect my otos, hence the half dose. Hopefully I'm not merely making the bacteria stronger... Naturally I made this decision at 2am so I wasn't thinking clearly. Now I'm hesitant to switch medications as it seems to be working. I'm on my third day. It's unclear to me whether I should do a water change during treatment. I wouldn't recommend following what I'm doing as it has the potential to end up badly. This is my first time using medication in a community tank. I have plants in the tank that hopefully won't be affected, but may help if there's an ammonia spike. I have been monitoring nitrites as well.

 

[Kerrinne]

Yeah, but what I'm using is just Erythomycin. There are no other chemicals, strictly the antibiotic itself from my LFS. I think Myacin has other chemicals in it (probably copper based), and that is what harms inverts.

 

[Menagerie]

I googled "Erythromycin invertebrates" and came up with this:
http://www.aquarium.net/996/996_1.shtml
ERYTHROMYCIN: A broad antibiotic produced by Streptomyces and used against gram-positive and a certain few gram-negative bacteria.


Oh, I read too many sites and did not find a clear cut answer...and now I have a headache :?
From what I was reading, I will say Erythomycin is fine for inverts. If someone knows differently--please tell me!!!

 

[smilla4]

<delete<

 

[Kerrinne]

Well, just FYI...I did it. And the snail has been behaving normally so far and still looks normal! My thanks to everyone who replied!!

 

[Menagerie]

smilla4--what happened to your post?? You were googling for the answer too and have a long post there yesterday....

 

[smilla4]

smilla4--what happened to your post?? You were googling for the answer too and have a long post there yesterday....

I was in a pretty hyper mental state and thought it would be best to delete some of the posts I posted I thought they might be too much or not make sense.

Basically I discovered that the reason Erytho might be harmful to inverts is that it kills off symbiotic bacteria - this was in reference to marine tanks. I don't know anything about saltwater tanks, but I guess this is in reference to live rock?? (article on marineland site)

And also greenpeace.org had a mention of shrimp farmers using erytho. as a preventative measure to keep their shrimp "healthy".

I also found mention of it as an endocrine disruptor (DDT is an endocrine disruptor, according to what I read). So that is not good. But I don't know how potent it is in comparison...

I know from experience that overdoses of amquel that fish can tolerate (even minnow) aren't handled well by ghost shrimp (ie they die). So basically there are things they're sensitive to that fish aren't (I guess copper too).

I also emailed aquatronics website (makers of myacin, etc) and someone emailed me back today saying they were no longer in business!

So basically my conclusion is that snails and shrimp are likely to be safe, but I can't be 100% sure. And I can't say my sources are 100% correct either. I guess that's not very helpful...