rdeis
03-09-2004, 01:48 PM
Howdy, all. I have some sick fish in quarantine that I just got from the LFS.
(Buying them may have been a mistake, but I look at it as an opportunity to learn quarantine and disease treatment procedures with $17 locally guarinteed fish before I spend $55 on shipping good ones that cost double or triple that... Anyhow:)
I'm told that live Brine Shrimp don't have enough nutrition to feed exclusively, but I don't want to force them to eat a new food until they're off the medications. So, I need to enrich the brine with some vitamins or something. How do I do that? What vitamin solution do I use? Etc?
Full story, if it's helpful:
The fish are in treatment with heat and melafix for what initially looked like fungus on the 3 turquoise ones. The other 2 are Pigeon Bloods that have no outward evidence of infection, but behaved very sickly.
They are all eating, but very little. Stools appear normal. 2 days into the melafix, the Turquoise have much better color and are starting to act more outgoing. One of the PBs now has outward signs of fingus or ick- some sort of fuzzy thing, but is behaving a bit better as well. The other PB still doesn't *look* sick, but *acts* sick. (Except in the early evening, when all 5 fish have always been out and about, regardless of their behavior through the rest of the day- wierd?)
The scary thing is that there were zillions of little white specks crawling around on the glass yesterday!
Took a water sample, and the LFS diagnosed it as "thread worms", which appear to be some sort of skin fluke. LFS said he's seen this pattern before, and its actually a sign that the fish have expelled the parasites and are healing, but suggested a salt treatment to help things along.
Salt treatment is now in progress.
All fish will eat live brine, but haven't shown much interest in flake or the frozen mix that their previous owner fed them. I've seen one or two of them picking food off the bottom on occaision. (Some of the Turqs also might have very early stages of HITH- another reason I want to up the vitamin intake.)
Right now I'm feeding small amounts of live BS once a day, and equally small amounts of flake a couple of different times a day. I'll add a small serving of the frozen to the regimen pretty soon, and I'm siphoning uneaten food and debris off the bottom every morning. Sound about right?
All in all they seem to be improving, and have scared me into using a very disciplined quarintine regimen in the future. (Cheap lesson! (-:)
(Buying them may have been a mistake, but I look at it as an opportunity to learn quarantine and disease treatment procedures with $17 locally guarinteed fish before I spend $55 on shipping good ones that cost double or triple that... Anyhow:)
I'm told that live Brine Shrimp don't have enough nutrition to feed exclusively, but I don't want to force them to eat a new food until they're off the medications. So, I need to enrich the brine with some vitamins or something. How do I do that? What vitamin solution do I use? Etc?
Full story, if it's helpful:
The fish are in treatment with heat and melafix for what initially looked like fungus on the 3 turquoise ones. The other 2 are Pigeon Bloods that have no outward evidence of infection, but behaved very sickly.
They are all eating, but very little. Stools appear normal. 2 days into the melafix, the Turquoise have much better color and are starting to act more outgoing. One of the PBs now has outward signs of fingus or ick- some sort of fuzzy thing, but is behaving a bit better as well. The other PB still doesn't *look* sick, but *acts* sick. (Except in the early evening, when all 5 fish have always been out and about, regardless of their behavior through the rest of the day- wierd?)
The scary thing is that there were zillions of little white specks crawling around on the glass yesterday!
Took a water sample, and the LFS diagnosed it as "thread worms", which appear to be some sort of skin fluke. LFS said he's seen this pattern before, and its actually a sign that the fish have expelled the parasites and are healing, but suggested a salt treatment to help things along.
Salt treatment is now in progress.
All fish will eat live brine, but haven't shown much interest in flake or the frozen mix that their previous owner fed them. I've seen one or two of them picking food off the bottom on occaision. (Some of the Turqs also might have very early stages of HITH- another reason I want to up the vitamin intake.)
Right now I'm feeding small amounts of live BS once a day, and equally small amounts of flake a couple of different times a day. I'll add a small serving of the frozen to the regimen pretty soon, and I'm siphoning uneaten food and debris off the bottom every morning. Sound about right?
All in all they seem to be improving, and have scared me into using a very disciplined quarintine regimen in the future. (Cheap lesson! (-:)