medicating fish here got a filter ??

[cougargirl50]

Ok I have just found out at least one of my platy's has an internal parasite so I went and bought some medicine today and it says to take the filter/carbon out. I don't want to dry out my filter so if I take my bucket and add some aquarium water in it and sit my 2 filters in my bucket will they still be ok as far as my bacteria is concerned??
Till my medicine that I put in is in and my fish are treated??

thanks for your help.

 

[patagonia]

im currently treating my platies for the same thing...but here they recommended me to get jungle's antiparasite food...i think i paid about 5 dollars (CAN) and i dont have to touch the filter....HTH...

 

[An t-iasg]

One time when I used medicine in the tank, I took my filter out (the sponge part) and put it in a big baggie with tank water. I sprinkled some fish food in every day, in the hopes that it would decay a little and feed the bacteria. Don't feed too much, just about the amount that you would feed the fish. I did ammonia tests on the water in the baggie and the ammonia level was 0 for 6 days. On day 7, the baggie water had an ammonia reading of .25. I put the sponge back in the filter on day 7, did a water change, and kept testing the ammonia for a few days. Luckily I didn't get an ammonia spike in the tank! The bacteria on the filter was ok for 6 days in my case. So hopefully if your treatment time isn't longer than that, try what I did -- "feeding" the filter -- and you may not have any problems either.

 

[firestar]

The problem is not the filter itself, but rather if the filter has carbon in it. Carbon removes the medication from the water, rendering it useless. If your filter does not have carbon in it, the you can leave it. In fact, carbon is generally useless after about 2 weeks, so if you have carbon in your filter and it's more than 2 weeks old, you really don't need to worry about that, either. Most of the meds that I've ever used all say specifically that they won't harm your biological filter.

 

[fishyrican]

I agree with firestar. I wouldn't remove the filtration unless the medication you are using affects the biological filter. Does your medicine specify? You may want to let us know what medication it is so we can help you verify.