Hex-A-Mit meds killing fish?

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shadowfax29

Aquarium Advice Apprentice
Joined
May 16, 2004
Messages
10
Location
Upstate, NY
Hi. I was just hoping to get someone's opinion on this. I recently had an outbreak of internal parasites among my discus and rams. I had a few medications on hand to fight it. One being a food additive so the fish can ingest the medication and the other is Hex-A-Mit. One of my discus had gotten to the point where it had stopped eating so I treated it successfully with the Hex-A-Mit in a tank which runs full time that I also use as a quarantine tank which contained, the discus of course, two other small rams, a corydora, female betta, and an ottocinclus.

The rams in the infected tank did not fare so well. I lost two very quickly and for another I did the same Hex-A-Mit treatment in the same quarantine setup and found the infected ram dead the next morning. I didn't think too much of it at the time, just figured the medication came too late. Last night I pulled out the last ram showing signs of the infection and once again did the same treatment since it had stopped eating. This morning it also had died. Here's the weird thing, all the above mentioned fish that are always in the tank that I'm using as quarantine were all fine and this morning along with the fish I was medicating, one of the other rams was dead with it.

I'm just curious if anyone else has ever heard of this occuring. The active ingredient in Hex-A-Mit is Metronidazole which I've read from more than one source is an effective treatment of internal parasites. Right now I'm not sure if I trust this medication anymore. Does anyone know of a better treatment? And should I be taking any certain precautions as to prevent reinfection especially among future fish added to the tank? Thanks in advance!
 
Most parasite medications are actually poisonous but if used as directed you really shouldn't have any problems with them. I've used medications that contained metronidazole and haven't ever had any problems with fish dyng unexpectedly.
 
i've used hex several times and no problems, research the meds and the problem maybe a two fold problem ?! hex working for one and effectively, not treating the second.
 
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