" Cleaning wilds "

[dpt8]

Do people "clean" their wilds when they receive them for internal and external parasites ?? I know the sellers do but they still may need cleaning when customer receives them.. Prazzi and metro treatment ( Separate treatments of course ).Whirling disease caused by parasite ?

[Second Hand Pat]

I do not "clean" wilds unless something shows up with in the QT. I suggest a longer QT period for wilds for observation purposes maybe up to three months. On the whirling thing no one seems to know what causes it. Domestics are known to whirl also do it is not strictly limited to wild discus.

[winn0923]

I don't treat wilds either, they have been through pretty rough treatment/QT period between holding facilities so I don't like to treat them unless they show sign/symptoms. Pat, I try to shoot you a msg but it seem like your inbox is totally full

[Second Hand Pat]

Try again Winn.
Pat

[dpt8]

Glad people are cleaning their wilds with pp and Prazi regiment With stress of shipping probably all discus should be cleaned while in quaranteen Thanks for info folks.. I plan on cleaning my newly acquired heckles while they are in quaranteen tank.. David

[Ryan]

It really depends on who you get them from. Some people clean up their wild fish before selling them and some do not.

As a rule of thumb, I usually let all my wild-caught cichlids rest for a week or two once I get them before I start any kind of treatment. I like them to settle in a bit and start eating well before I start dumping meds in the tank. I don't even know that they need a treatment most of the time, but I feel better doing a prophylactic treatment, especially if I'm eventually introducing them into community tanks with other fish.

[dpt8]

Thanks Ryan. Sounds good..

[brewmaster15]

I've got a slightly different take on this..

Honestly I don't treat my wilds any different than I do my domestics. A wild discus is a discus just like a domestic discus. They may be potentially carrying a different disease organisms, but other than that they are no different than domestics.

I do agree wilds go thru alot between being collected and you buying them, But domestics change hands several times as well. And in a great many cases Wilds pass thru the same holding transhippers as Domestics imports do...I have seen this firsthand in New York and I will tell you this.. If you saw the way a trans shipper works.. You'd look at each fish you got, no matter where its from the same... potential devastation to your tanks. The same goes for wholesalers in the fish business...I've been to some facilities that would make you cringe.

Where you buy your fish does help, but its no guarantee...and sometimes even the seller of the fish you bought doesn't know how they were processed before he/she got them, what they have encountered as far as pathogens. I also am a natural skeptic when it comes to trusting someone else to have Qt'd fish I buy.

hope that helps,
al

[Ryan]

^ Yeah, after doing a tour of area pet stores last week, I can tell you that disease runs rampant among lots of domestic fish and there is little done to stop the spread of it at most LFS. So in that regard, I do treat all domestic/tank-raised fish the way I treat wild fish.

[Ed13]

I can't find it, but I'm I the only one that remembers a thread where Hudson showed pics of a wild discus with a huge parasitic isopod on it's gills? That was at the collection site, now add whatever they may pick up along the way to your tank. If something about the size of a thumbnail can hide inside the gill cover of an adult discus, imagine what you can't see!

Now ask yourself, knowing this and as Al mentioned the conditions of the wholesale chain of supply, how do you feel about your quarantine and prophylactic treatment (if any) procedures?

[dpt8]

Right you are Ed !

[jimg]

mine get 2 qc treatments a week or two after I get them then metro a couple times a few weeks later I start kursuri wormer plus and treat every 3 months or so for 4 treatments.