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Drontal, Droncit, Praziquantel, Adtape & Gill flukes


purplecatfish

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I've recently had a great talk with a vet who knows about fish...

Drontal: don't use it because it has other ingredients besides prazi.

Droncit: the better tablet because its prazi only

Adtape: the brand name for liquid prazi. It's concentration is 37.5g/L. Use 26ml per 100L this gives 9.75mg/L.

Praziquantel: The textbook dose range is 2 to 10mg/L.

The treatment cycle depends on the species of parasite. Some will need a dose every three days, others will need a dose up to 3 weeks apart.

2 or 3 doses are usually all that is needed.

Dose for 4 hours (watch the fish to make sure they're ok) then do a 25% water change and use carbon to remove the remainder of the medication.

I bought some Adtape which is nearly $500 for 5L (it doesn't expire until 2010) which is the smallest amount you can buy over the counter.

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Good info on the prazi drugs. Even here with some of the prazi drugs aimed at fish. Some are not pure prazi.

For gill flukes I treat every day for 3 days. Repeat weekly for 3 weeks. Dose rate 250mg/100lt. Thats comes from Gerald Bassleer. Works for me.

As above, any chance of posting what he recommends for different flukes/parasites? As stated they all have different cycles etc. I would be very interested.

Frenchy :D

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For gill flukes I treat every day for 3 days. Repeat weekly for 3 weeks. Dose rate 250mg/100lt. Thats comes from Gerald Bassleer. Works for me.

Do you any water changes with this treatment. Or use any carbon.

A full detail of treatment would be helpfull.

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The dose rate for tablets would have to be calculated from the concentration of prazi in the tablets which should be on the packet and the volume of your tank. You need to add enough to get 2 to 10mg/L. If someone can post the concentration of droncit tablets we can add a number of tablets per litre figure to this thread.

I suspect that

Dose rate 250mg/100lt
is using the weight of the whole tablet not the weight of the active ingredient (prazi)
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Have you got treatment cycle descriptions for the different parasites?

I don't have different cycles because its not really practical for most people. You'd have to take a dead fish to a biologist who could identify it. Most people would be better to adopt a program like:

For gill flukes I treat every day for 3 days. Repeat weekly for 3 weeks. Dose rate 250mg/100lt. Thats comes from Gerald Bassleer. Works for me.
It means that you are treating for both those with short and long lifecycles.
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The Droncit I recenly bought was 50mg of prazi per tablet. I'm pretty sure you'd want to calculate the amount of actual praziquantel and not rely on the weight of the tablet weight

Persdonally, for dosing I rounded stuff to pill segments.. full, half, or quarter tablet. They snap pretty easily :) Since the recommended dose ranges from 2-10mg/l I was rounding up if required to make sure I had no less than 2mg/l (usualy aimed for 2.5)

I didn't bother weighing the tablets. Apparently its VERY hard to overdose on prazi.

I more or less followed the recommendation made by frenchy...I did water changes at the 1 week mark and never bothered with carbon.

I was initially worried that 3 days dosing in a row would be a bit much but it was tolerated with no touble at all.

Found some info on the web that indicated the prazi stays active in the water from 2-5 days and is very gentle so doesn't really need to be w/c'd out. Of course with any disease I guess the gravel vacs in between are important to clean out as many bugs as poss.

I had a great link that had info about the lifecycles at different temperatures for the different types of flukes (gyrodactylus and dactylogyrus) but I can't find it anymore (or its moved!).

I added a heater to my cold tank to take the water up to about 23 (on a tropical tank it's probably not worht changing the temp). At very cold temps some of the eggs of gill flukes apparently lie dormant and the lifecycle is very slow so treatment is impractical or would have to last a very long time! The egg stages are not affected by the prazi.

Good to know about Adtape! Thanks purplecatfish!

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Can't go by weight of tablet as amount of prazi would vary brand to brand. Most have which value of prazi there is per tablet. The dose rate I gave above, is less than what the dose rate is on the prazi bottle. Then again, what they say day wise is out too.

I do a water change the day before I do the next weeks dose. No need for carbon, if fussy, then maybe at the end of the 3rd week.

The thing with gill flukes the eggs hatch from 1-21 days. Depending on temp. They need to find a host in 8 hours or they will die.

The comments above are right, there are varying species of each type of flukes. Gill flukes tend to be egg laying worms.

Then you have skin flukes which are different, the book I have recommends using a different drug.The most common form of Skin fluke, Gyrodactylus is a live bearer.

Frenchy :D

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What a guy! and what an AMAZING SETUP!! Could stay at your place forever!!!!

Thank you very much for all your help and advise today and showing me your fish tankSSSS, WOW!

Love them!! and you have convinced me to try the little sucker fish out! will have to do a fish hunt tomorrow!!! Road Trip!!!

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  • 2 months later...

What is written on the label with drugs is what you get. If it is a 50 mg tablet it has 50mg of active ingredient (50mg/litre is 50ppm). Getting the concentrate is good but you do need to have a very accurate way to measure the amount you need. 1mg is 1/1000gram and there are about 28.4grams in an ounce so you are talking very small amounts. Capsules and pills are therefore convenient for most people.

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  • 1 month later...

I've just had the unforunate experience of losing all but one of my first batch of discus fry. (s/hes in another tank and is showing no signs of illness)

What i found frustrating as hell was all the advice i needed was right infront of me, (thanks to all those who provided the answers :hail::hail: )yet the local supposed friendly service providers down here were pretty disapointing to say the least.

I know the fish had a parasite infection so i shot out to the local pet store who advised me to use Salt and that will help sort things out. I tried that and lost about 5 fish over night. I then returned with the first post from this thread and asked if they could supply anything of it. I received a blank stare and a look like i was off my rocker.

I then went to the closest vet, they could supply drontal but nothing else as it was either not available or prescription drugs only i offered to go get a fish so they could prescribe me something another odd look. They told me to try a farm whole saler or the local petstore. I must add here that they did have drontal but i wanted droncit.

Off i go again to the pet store and get, OH yes we have used drontal and it works a treat.../GRRRRRR $25 and two tablets later i arrive home, set up medication plans to cure these poor fish. Another couple of packets of drugs and still fish are dying left right and center.

This would have to be the worst fish "thing" i have ever had to got through but i'm chalking it up to experience.

My question i have is. .... .....

Does anyone have any, products, treatments, links to sites that will ship so i can treat the next batch of discus i have before they get to the same issues...

i've looked on trademe, nothing there

so i'm moving into prventive mode more so that this months reactive mode.

cheers

Tony

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Hi Tony

sorry to hear your bad news :(, its really frustrating when you lose fish, especially your first discus fry batch!! What were the symptoms your fry were displaying? (trying to deduce if it was external parasites (eg gill flukes) or internal parasites)

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Yeah it does suck and it seems like everyone is against you when noone will help you out, the petshops don't know or don't care what they're doing cant/dont get the drugs and will only sell you stuff they can make money off..

I wish we could get some of the medicines the states can get, alot of them have off the shelf anti-parasitic med's, anti-fluke med's, and even a general cure all that has stuff in it for everything.. Obviously the cure all wouldn't be ideal as your treating for alot of stuff that your fish don't have but it would be better than nothing.. I guess the only problem is that all the active ingredients in these are prescription only med's here so it wont happen :(

Best advice I can offer you is to have a chat to your vet, I did it when I was already getting our cat seen, if one vet isn't happy to give you stuff then try another and another, I think we have 4-5 vet's working at our local one but the 2 I tried were sweet to give me stuff for fish provided I was asking for harmless stuff..

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If you go to a rual vet that deals with horses etc they are usually more up with the play, if you ask for adtape that is the commercial name for liquid prazi and you can usually but it in smaller quantities that the 5L bins it comes in....otherwise you can buy droncit for around $1.40 per tab from most vet places

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Thanks for the advice/replies

I'll head out to a rural vet to see what i can get my hands on.

As for symtoms.

Fish stoped eating, then went dark, then get a skeletal look to them. Some but not all had white poo, and the last few that are alive at the moment have wee white lumps on them, mainly on their sides.

I've been doing 30% water changes daily in a tank that has a couple of lotus plants and sand as a subtract. Temp was lifted to 30 degs Cel, and water conditions are the same as the other two discus tanks i have.

I did buy some young discus but they weren't here at the time these guys started showing signs of infection so i can't blame the newer fish.

Tony

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Those symptoms sound more hex which droncit/drontal/adtape is not usually used for this. Droncit/prazi ie is used primarily for external gill flukes and sometimes tapeworm. The primary symptoms of this would be discus scratching, coughing, spitting food and general malaise.

Hex on the other hand is an internal protozoan parasite, the symptoms being weight loss, dark appearance stringy white faeces, disinterest in food, turning on their sides. Hex can be treated with metronidazole and can particularly affect discus and angel fish, fry are particularly susceptible, do you keep angels in your tank with your discus?

I suggest getting both meds if possible, metronidazole (also known as flagyl) is hard to get hold of unfortunately but if you take a printout to your vet of the symptoms sometimes it can be prescribed. Good luck!

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  • 2 weeks later...

My loaches now seem free of whitespot, but they are still scratching on things, and my big dat has been doing it for a little while too (as well as being dark coloured). Could it be gill flukes? Any other symptoms I should look out for? They are in a crowded tank and possibly a bit stressed, but amonia/nitrate/nitrite are all within acceptable levels and they get regular water changes.

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My loaches now seem free of whitespot, but they are still scratching on things, and my big dat has been doing it for a little while too (as well as being dark coloured). Could it be gill flukes? Any other symptoms I should look out for? They are in a crowded tank and possibly a bit stressed, but amonia/nitrate/nitrite are all within acceptable levels and they get regular water changes.

If you have added chemicals to the tank, maybe the orgamisism living in th gravel have died off and are now fungusing causing irratation to your fish. Try strip cleaning the tank and see if there is any improvement.

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I have been treating with whitespot cure for the past week, but I noticed them scratching before then (thats what triggered the close inspection when I noticed a few white spots on a couple of the loaches).

The gravel is only about 1cm thick on average, and is regularly syphoned. What do you mean by 'strip cleaning'?

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