my poor betta is so messed up.....any suggestions?

[Delapool]

API tetracyline:

"TC Tetracycline is an anti-bacterial medication for common tropical fish diseases such as fin & tail rot, open red sores, body slime and eye cloud, bacterial gill disease and hemorrhagic septicemia. For use in freshwater aquariums. Contains 10 powder packets. Use 1 packet per 10 gallons of water. Shipping weight: 1/6 lb."

It's cured fin rot for me twice now plus popeye.

Fishychick, you can get it at most local fish stores. If not you can order it online. I'm not sure what you're waiting for.

Welcome to API Fishcare: T.C. TETRACYCLINE™ POWDER

So I was hoping to copy in a new thread but finding it extremely difficult to find much on tetracycline hydrochloride. The papers I read did mention that hard water (which tends to be high ph) will make it less effective (as mentioned in the aquarium products link). Rather annoying as I managed to confirm other parts for other meds but it is sniffs of information - no nice little table lol.

Erythromycin mainly for gram positive bacterial infections. Kanamycin / neomycin for gram negative infections. Bacterial infections tend to be gram negative. All as quoted and nothing too contradictory.

My conclusion remains unchanged that tetracycline hydrochloride / erythromycin would be my first choice for cloudy eye (plus associated fin rot).

For everything else I would favour kanaplax (plus furan 2) with triple sulpha OR minocycline (as in maracyn 2) as backup.

Skipped a few others as they seem a little uncommon.

So I think we will have to agree to disagree, however I'm quite happy for the fish to be cured, don't really mind how it gets there. Pimafix being a case in point, where I'm always impressed if it achieves anything whereas others are quite happy with it.

 

[fishychick]

Hey Dela,
Wow, so much information! I'm gonna have to go back and review this thread and take notes! Lol. Well, I picked tetracycline, mostly because I had to pick something and woman at lfs recommend it. It's even more confusing looking at the packages because they all claim to do pretty much the same thing. Two days of treatment so far. Hard to say if it's helping. The Epsom salt seems to make him feel the best, don't see any signs of fin regrowth, but he's eating and his energy is ok. If this guy makes it and recovers, when he finally does die, in like 10 years, I'm gonna retire his name with a little plaque on the wall, lol.


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[cebalrai]

Definitely stop the Epsom salts, return him to normal water. The reason being that the antibiotics and the epsom salts may interact. Clearly the salts aren't helping anyway.