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Parasite Questions


nicmack

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It appears I had a bad dose of whitespot in my tank, I lost 9 neons, 1 harlequin, 1 plattie, 1 siamese fighter. I have treated two times wih white spot cure done a 30% water change and treated once with formulin which should hopefully fix the problem. I am curious about how these parasites get into the water is thee something I should be treating with all the time as a preventative for this or should I boil the water and leave to stand for 24 hours before water changing? I am quite worried if this can randomly attack and it seems we had a severe case of it.... all other water chemsitry if fne however ... :cry:

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Usually it is brought on by stress- neons can get it pretty easy from what i have heard - others will be able to help more. be sure to do good gravel vac's to get the spores out of the gravel - when i got it i did about 5 really good vac about two days apart and haven't had a problem since.

hope you sort it out - sorry about your loss :(

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ich (whitespot) is always present in the aquarium, its only when fish get stressed from moving, water params, bullying etc that the ich will take hold as the immune system is down slightly.

keep in mind formalin will kill your bio-filters so you may go thru a mini cycle after that. if its the 3% (or 5, cant remember) store bought stuff im told that isnt too effective but am unsure if it would do anything to your bio-filters in such small amounts.

when treating (i would advise going back to the whitespot cure once the formalin has been w/c'd out of the tank and given a few days free of meds, mixing meds can really hurt your fish) up your temp a few degrees more than normal, perhaps 27C or so (neons dont like the high heat too much so be careful). this will speed up the life cycle. treat as reccomended on the pack but make sure to keep up the treatment for around a week after the last spot has gone off the fish as the un-hatched cysts in the gravel will open up and re-infect your tank if there are no meds present. do a good gravel vacumn each w/c too to try and get some of those cysts out.

helping to find the cause of the outbreak will help too. have you introduced any new fish without quarentine? any water problems? aggression problems? etc etc

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thanks Sharn, I have just lost my algae eater tonight as well it looked a little bit slimy on its belly side, the problems began after introducing 4 guppies last week I think some of the water from the bag got released into the tank with the fish and caused havoc, now I have done the formulin should I do a 30% water change tomorrow and then do a whitespot cure again, the others look perfectly happy but then again both algae eaters were out swimming with each other today and they seemed quite alright as well....

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sorry to hear that :(

i would do at least 3 40% w/c's and add some carbon (temporarily to help remove meds). mixing meds can be stressful or deadly to fish so i would try and get as much out as you can, dont be afraid to do larger 50-70% w/c's if you are able to but make sure to use dechlorinated water that is roughly the same temp :)

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