medicated food

[scalesojustice]

i'm feeding anti-bacteria food for my blood parrot's gill irritation and the food says feed exclusively for 5 to 10 days, and don't feed any other food.

but i'm concerned because i didn't see my dojo loach eat any. would it be alright to throw in some shrimp pellets as well. i also have frozen brine shrimp, should i alternate feedings with that?

i generally feed the fish once a day in the evening. TIA

 

[Zagz]

I would definately feed regular food for your other fish. How long have you been treating the blood parrot? What kind of food are you feeding? Have you tested your water parameters? Quite often irritated gills are either a result of ammonia or nitrite poisioning or parasites.

 

[scalesojustice]

the parrots have had irritated gills for about 3 weeks now, maybe a bit more.

they flash occassionally, but not all the time. and it's hard to tell if they are really irritated because they are juvie blood parrots, so they are turning orange/red anyway. there has been no sign of any parasites and my levels have never gone above 0, except for nitrate which is around 10.

the food i have is anti-bacteria medicated fish food from Jungle. not the best stuff, but it was cheap and not know exactly what the parrots have i wasn't ready to spend $15-$20 on something that wasn't the right stuff. so i figured i would give this a wirl.

i'll keep feeding the other food then, but i'll space it out and feed the medicated first to make sure they eat that.

 

[Zagz]

I'm not positive you need to be feeding parastic meds. If your fish had parasites for 3 weeks you would have seen more signs. I would feed the medicated food only as a supplement myself. Without actually being able to see them, you fish seem to be fine.

 

[Devilishturtles]

If your fish had irritated gills, antibacterial food would do nothing for them but antiparasitic food will. Perhaps you are feeding the wrong stuff. Irritated gills can be a number of things, like Zagz said.

 

[scalesojustice]

the thing is that i just haven't seen any sigsn of parasites at all. the food i have says 5 to 10 days, so i think i'll just continue to see if it does anything. if not, i'll switch over to some anti-parasite stuff later next week.

on a side note, they don't flash as much within the past couple days (i just started the food last night, so i don't mean that is it). i just can't seem to fix these guys.

Thanks for your help!