sick piranha

[cichlidowner042]

does anyone know a good cure i can find at a local pet store like petland for hole in the head disease for piranha i'm almost positive they have it he lost one of them 3 weeks ago cause he wasn't doing regular water changes, they have pits in thier head and its spreading.
thanks.

 

[ChileRelleno]

Number one cure (IMO)

Get your water quality/chemistry perfect, add vitamin supplements to all food and vary their diet.

Soak or load everything you feed the fish with vitamins until cured and watch your water. Alot of folks blame Hexamita for HITH and thus treat for it with medications, studies have been done showing that Hex (and others) is/are a secondary infection/s.
Vitamins that you add to your tanks water are worthless (IMO).

We use "Vita Chem", our fish get vitamins regularly.
This particular brand is available at most on-line retailers and at better LFS's (We get ours at BigAls).
http://www.bigalsonline.com/catalog/product.xml?product_id=27489;category_id=3781;pcid1=2911;pcid2=

 

[cichlidowner042]

thanks

thanks for the info i tried jungle disolving internal and external paricite tablets last night i'm waiting to see if they have any affect i bought some quick dip 5 in 1 test strips everything seems fine except the nitrate. it tests for ph, hardness, alkalintivity, nitrite, and nitrate. whats the difference between nitrite and nitrate because both my 125 gallon cichlid tank and his 150 gal piranha tank the nitrate is above 200 very dangerous and what should i do? my 40 gal upstairs in fine for everything on the strip. my fish don't seem to be stressed at all except that the 2 littlest parrots don't have as much color as the 2 bigger ones but they're happy. the jungle disovling tablets for parricites says to do a 25% water change and i just did one of those a week ago on my tank and i did one yesturday on his and he did 2 of them the 2 weeks before and then it says to add bacteria/enzyme (such as start zyme ) or nitrate ion exchange resin. would stress zyme work? i use stress coat and stress zyme on both tanks but stress zyme only mentions nitrite not nitrate what should i get to take care of the nitrate and should i use aquarium salt when ever i treat it for nitrate. about the vitamins i have tetra cichlid vital water conditioner that you add to the water is it useless sence they're not eating it? i'm going to post this in the general forum to get some other advice too if you could help my i'd aperciate it very much. fish are supposed to be relaxing and i'll i've done sence i got the tank is worried about them cause now thier part of the family.

 

[cichlidowner042]

i meant to say

i meant to say, my fish don't seem to be stressed at all except that the 2 littlest parrots don't have as much color as the 2 bigger ones but they're happy. the 5 in 1 test strip package says to do a 25% water change and i just did one of those a week ago on my tank and i did one yesturday on his and he did 2 of them the 2 weeks before and then it says to add bacteria/enzyme (such as start zyme ) or nitrate ion exchange resin. would stress zyme work?

 

[BASSNMAN]

If your nitrates are that high, you need to do daily water changes,10 to 15 %. All the reference I could find about hole in the head relates it to poor water conditions. Even though the test strips are handy, they are not very accurate.

 

[ChileRelleno]

Water changes will work much faster than anything else to bring your nitrate readings down, anything else other than finding the source of the problem and correcting it is a bandaid.
High nitrates can be very harmful, anything above 50ppm should be dealt with by water changes and by more attention to uneaten food, poop and excessive waste buildup in your filters.

Dip strip test kits are regarded by many as poor, get indvidual liquid test kits and make sure that the Ammonia test is "Salicylate" not "Nessler", the Salicylate is a two bottle test (two reagents) and the Nessler one bottle. Make sure that the "best by date" is within reasonable time period.
All you really need is the big three right now, Ammonia, Nitrite and Nitrate.