Potassium Permanganate use affects fish deaths from Pathogenic bacterial infection

[brewmaster15]

Interesting Study shows that fish that are treated with Potassium Permanganate aka PP have a higher chance of dying from a pathogenic bacteria. Because PP is a caustic oxidizer of all organic matter, it destroys the healthy balance of beneficial bacteria on a fishes body. This healthy community of bacteria helps keep pathogenic bacteria in check. Fish that were treated with PP and then subjected to exposure with the pathogenic bacteria, Flavobacterium columnare, had a 40 % worse death rate than fish that had not previously been treated with PP. This study is relevant to Discus as Flavobacterium columnare is a common cause of fin rot, gill rot and bacterial ulcers in Discus.


The irony is not lost on me. Its become very common in the Discus hobby to treat discus with Pp regularly to deal with potential bacterial issues and parasite issues , yet the very act of doing so, actually increases the likely hood of fish death when that fish encounters a pathogenic Bacteria. Though the article did not draw the conclusion that fish become more susceptible to pathogen bacterias in the first place.. it seems likely that happens as well based on the increases mortality data. I have to wonder if this plays into why we are seeing more cases of fish dying rapidly from some bacterias like Aeromonas.

Full articles are here...

Summary here..
https://thefishvet.com/2016/12/29/%E...-to-your-fish/

A recent publication by Mohammed & Arias in the journal of Veterinary Research (2015) show that PP treatment dramatically altered the community variety of normal resident bacterial flora on the skin of fish that have been exposed to PP – they had the least diverse microbiome in terms of species richness.
Why is this bad? They also ran an experiment where they challenged fish with a common bacterial skin disease agent – Flavobacterium columnare (previously Flexibacter, causes fin rot, gill rot and bacterial ulcers in fish). The deaths in fish previously exposed to PP was about forty-percent (40%) worse (85% cumulative mortality compared to unexposed groups that had a mortality of just over 60%).

Research here...
https://veterinaryresearch.biomedcen...567-015-0215-y

The external microbiome of fish is thought to benefit the host by hindering the invasion of opportunistic pathogens and/or stimulating the immune system. Disruption of those microbial communities could increase susceptibility to diseases. Traditional aquaculture practices include the use of potent surface-acting disinfectants such as potassium permanganate (PP, KMnO₄) to treat external infections

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In conclusion, our data proved that harsh chemical treatments commonly used in fish farms induce dysbiosis to the fish’s healthy microbiome, reducing the numbers of beneficial bacteria and potentially increase susceptibility to pathogens. Our study emphasizes the fundamental importance of maintaining the integrity of the external microbiome as front-line defender against opportunistic pathogens like F. columnare

[seanyuki]

Goon info Al, should add it to the sticky.

[jeep]

Very interesting. Thanks for posting this information!

There are so many hobbyists who regularly treat with PP, but in reality it's kind of like raising a kid in a bubble that has no chance to develop immunities. Discus should have exposure to certain bacteria.

[brewmaster15]

Very interesting. Thanks for posting this information!

There are so many hobbyists who regularly treat with PP, but in reality it's kind of like raising a kid in a bubble that has no chance to develop immunities. Discus should have exposure to certain bacteria.

Kind of explains why some hatcheries feel they need to treat with it regularly. If they are killing off beneficial bacteria all the time and that opens up the fish to infection and mortality by pathogenic bacteria that thrive in hatchery conditions..its a vicious circle.

al

[Tkuilderd]

This is an awesome paper. I have had suspicions of something like this occurring. I have bought fish from someone who used PP religiously. He had lovely fish so i purchased 2. They both were lost to BGD within 6 months, even with treatment.
Fish immune systems are not only internal but external as well. I also believe discus are more susceptible to external bacterial infections due to the fact that they have glands in their skin that most fish do not have. These glands produce high protein slime for fry. If their external "good bacteria" are gone, these glands are left exposed to potential pathogenic bacteria of all types, as well as viruses and parasites.
I have spoken out against the use of PP until i was blue in the face. I no longer bother. Too many names in the industry are promoting its use and will continue to do so because they dont want to be wrong.

Tammy

[Charlyc11]

I always wondered why the use of PP was so prevalent in the hobby. I work in the high frequency PC board industry and we use PP at high concentration to de-smear drilled holes in multilayer assembly's since it's highly caustic. It removes epoxy residue from inside the holes and exposed the copper layers inside (etch back).

[CliffsDiscus]

There are hobbyist and breeders that use PP because the slime disease keeps coming back, it's an on going struggle to even keep the fish healthy.

[brewmaster15]

There are hobbyist and breeders that use PP because the slime disease keeps coming back, it's an on going struggle to even keep the fish healthy.

I know Cliff.. problem is this article implies that the reason it keeps coming back maybe because of the use of Pp in the first place by openning the fish up to an infection that it may have never gotten in the first place if the fishes normal bacteria population were not wiped out by the pp. Obviously the article isn't addressing discus disease in hatcheries but Its basically implying the problem is being caused by the treatment used.

Al

[LizStreithorst]

I never knew that is was so bad. It was actually Kenny who suggested I use it the first time. And it worked just great. I've used it since to clean up pairs prior to breeding. My old old go to was formalin. I wonder if there are any studies saying all the bad things it does to us. But since I don't use either often, I have time to decide which to use. The thing about formalin is that the smell of it reminds of disecting a frog. Thank God I wasn't in the class with the smart people. They had to do a cat!!!

[XAnhLe]

Very interesting article, Al.

It's been a while since I've kept discus, but from memories, I think treating fish is a lot more complicated than treating human. When you are treating a human, you run a culture and tailor your antimicrobials base on their results or lack thereof. Treating fish is kind of like throwing dart blindfolded. Most of the time you don't know what bug you are targeting. An antiseptic agent like PP will target most if not all microorganisms (bacteria, virus, fungus, protozoa), essentially nuking the microbiome. Due to unable to determine the right pathogen to tailor treatment, I think rather than avoiding PP as a treatment option for an infection, we should deploy better treatment strategies such as: (1) local application of PP to the infected site and wash off after X minutes, (2) avoid introducing new fish to the aquarium within a quarantine period or isolate the sick fish for a period of X days to allow for the recovery of microbiome, (3) clean your hands thoroughly prior to handling sick fish, (4) introduce prebiotic after completion of treatment course, (5) tailor treatment to what is known and avoid excessive and unnecessary PP.

Strategy 1: Helps avoid nuking the entire microbiome by targeting only infected tissue/site
Strategy 2: Post-treatment quarantine to prevent secondary infection. In the above study, we see that group II (Treated with PP and not exposed to F. columnare) has zero mortality, same as control group. What this entails is as long as there is no new pathogen introduce, the mortality zero. X days = I don't have any study to back up recovery time for microbiome in fish but for human gut flora treated with antibiotics, it's 14 days.
Strategy 3: Your hands can introduce pathogen to the sick fish
Strategy 4: Introduce prebiotic to help recover microbiome. Like the article stated, this is a topic that needs additional research.
Strategy 5: Consider PP use only after rule out common causes. For example, if you know you are dealing with ich which is caused by a protozoan, then use an agent that target it or simply raise the temperature.

With all that said, should you prophylactically soak your fish in PP during quarantine? May be, it depends on past experiences. May be for X breeder, Y person found that Z treatment during quarantine reduces mortality. For someone else, it may not be necessary at all.
Should you use PP as the last ditch effort to save your expensive/beloved fish? Possibly.
Should you PP your fish the moment you notice some strange behavior? Probably not.

I like what Dean said in one of AquariumCoop videos: as hobbyists we try too hard pretending to be doctors when most of the time, we have no clue what we are dealing with.
Sometimes, our precious fish just dies and it may not be due to an infection at all. Fish can have cancer, can develop kidney/liver failure/bowel obstruction/heart disease/etc. None of which we can do a thing about.
If a fish dies in the tank, don't panic and nuke the whole tank with PP. May be he was rejected by a lady fish and died from broken heart syndrome.
If a fish displays abnormal behavior, then isolate, observe, and start throwing darts (metronidazole, PP, praziquantel, aquarium salt, etc.) if it deteriorates, may be you'll hit and may be you'll miss.

[brewmaster15]

XAnhLe,
Good to hear from you! You raised some very good points. . I have always been a big proponent of lengthy quarantine and proper husbandry techniques. I think these allow hobbyist the best chances for not needing to use something like PP at all. I consider PP a treatment of last resort. I think salt dips and baths accomplish alot of what pp does in a much safer way... so that is my go to treatment before anything else external. I honestly do not remember the last time I used potassium permanganate.. has to be over 10 years ago.

The one thing Id like to clarify here is that there is a world of a difference
in a situation where hobbyists are trying to save a sick fish or sick tank of fish and trying whatever they can, including PP vs hobbyists that use PP on healthy fish to keep them healthy. One is born from desperation, the other misinformation.

No one needs to treat their fish regularly with Potassium Permanganate to keep them healthy. If you really do need PP regularly in your tanks you have something to address in your husbandry . The use of PP is just masking a core problem in your tank or way of keeping discus. In a crowded hatchery PP may have a role in their maintaining healthier fish... but in a hobbyist tank its regular prophylactic use doesn't in my opinion. Obviously everyone can do what they want to their fish.

[Iminit]

XAnhLe your approach on pp use is what I would believe was the approach given 10+yrs ago. Yes as a last ditch medication go for it. As an application to an infection in a qt tank ok since nothing else worked and it’s your last dart ok. If it does work next time it can be your first dart. Hopefully there isn’t a next time. So yes this is the way to approach using pp. But that isn’t the issue. The issue is pretty much the rampant use of pp. But other than the koi and pond people no other group of fish hobbiest’s use pp as much as discus keepers. I’ve been keeping fish for 50yrs. The only fish I’ve ever treated with any meds is discus. That alone says something. Discus are just not healthy fish. Could this be from pp use as fry? I’ve raised many other fish from fry without anything special. Some even in community tanks. Why are discus fry and discus themselves so susceptible to disease? In the end they’re just fishl!

Seems like breeders use pp for fry on a regular basis. They use it many times during the development. Why? Is it to just mass produce these fish and get as many as possible to market? Nobody in this discus hobby is trying to breed healthy fish?10-20yrs ago I “believe” many were. Probably still some left (the hobbiest breeders) but mass producing of these fish has put most of them out of business. Now it seems the common keeper doesn’t want to clean tank,filters or do general maintenance. Pp is commonly spoken about as almost a cure all for discus. But it rarely to never mentioned on the regular aquarium hobbiest sites. I do believe it’s being used a lot on the warehouse end of fish keeping and would bet it’s got something to do with why so many different tropical fish have had problems with mass die offs over the years. But still the common hobbiest doesn’t use it. Even though it’s now commonly sold at pet stores.

The pro pp people are all over the internet! Yesterday on a popular discus Facebook site I’ve been on since it started (around the time Simply’s site was temporarily taken down) I posted my displeasure of pp treatment on a thread about bringing up fry. First time ever my comments were removed. It’s like they don’t want to hear both sides! So many new keepers just buying into pp.

[Zeus Discus]

I dont use pp much but I learned how from Kennys Discus. He did tell me to be very careful with how purple the water was..too much would kill your fish. He said he did use it sometimes on the fish but that he used it mostly between his shipments to clean his tanks.

I dont know if its good or bad to use pp regularly but it doesnt really make sense to me. I will probably keep using it if I really need to but this article and discussion has given me alot to think about. Great read.

[Discus Fever]

I dont use pp much but I learned how from Kennys Discus. He did tell me to be very careful with how purple the water was..too much would kill your fish. He said he did use it sometimes on the fish but that he used it mostly between his shipments to clean his tanks.

I dont know if its good or bad to use pp regularly but it doesnt really make sense to me. I will probably keep using it if I really need to but this article and discussion has given me alot to think about. Great read.

People have to remember that PP is very harmful if you do not use the Correct amount. Never go by the color of it because you can still be over dosing the tank. If you are treating a single tank and do not want to make a stock solution this is the correct dosage to use, this was from a man who had a PHD in Chemistry and was heavily into breeding fish for 40 years. I have used this exact formula I got from him back in the early 90's and he said if you go by this you will not kill your fish with it and he was correct I have never lost fish. Here is the formula that he gave me that I have been using since the early 90's.

(Gallon tank) X (0.0038) X 2mg = grams of PP

Example:

(90 gallon fish tank) X (0.0038) X 2mg = 0.684 grams of PP diluted in water
(55 gallon fish tank) X (0.0038) X 2mg = 0.418 grams of pp diluted in water

You get the idea here, but I do agree that constant use of this over a period of time will probably weaken the immune system of a discus. I was told by this guy that you can do this once a month to your fish without any long term damage.

[brewmaster15]

Scott, though you are right about not dosing by the color and the need to dose precisely and the use of stock solutions...

You get the idea here, but I do agree that constant use of this over a period of time will probably weaken the immune system of a discus. I was told by this guy that you can do this once a month to your fish without any long term damage.

This maybe that chemists opinion...but its definitely not fact. This article clearly shows that treating your fish with PP has a measurable negative effect.

The problem is no one has studied the effects of of long term pp use. Almost all research on it has been done in commercial hatcheries where the goal is not the longevity or long term health of the fish ..its the best methods to turn over a population of fish quickly and profitably.


Its much like how it used to be ok for decades for the poultry industry to use antibiotics prophylactically on chickens.. It did no harm... right? Wrong. It just was more profitable to use it.

We see similar with antibiotics in fish .. there are still discus keepers that routinely use antibiotics as a prophylactic even if the fish are not sick... foolishness at its worst.



I have said it before.. there is no point to using pp regularly and its not needed if you deal with the issues that made you rely on it in the first place. Proper husbandry is the solution.. not throwing caustic chemicals at discus.