please advice

[waterchanger]

Long story told short: I acquired flagellates 4 months ago by purchasing fish from a breeder/dealer. All fish were treated with metronidazole 3x every other day for 2 times and every discus appeared to be okay. 6 weeks ago one of the problem fish died of wasting disease and shortly after one of the other females showed signs of intestinal problems again (white stringy feces, spitting out food, sluggish behaviour).

I quarantined the fish in question and subjected it to 10 days of Metro (250 mg/10 L). On day 6 the fish turned around and started eating again, but still white, stringy feces. It is now 4 weeks and the fish is still quarantined and showing again signs of stringy white feces and reduced interest in food. Any suggestions what to do? i don't want to loose the fish, she is a very pretty young breeder.

[scott bowler]

sounds like you will have to worm them WC . if you havent and what are you feeding them or are they eating
,

[ILLUSN]

try levimenisole first, then prazi.

if you can mix the prazi tablets with food (400mg/100g) it works much better.

**edited by ILLUSN to fix typo on dosage 31/01/2008**

[waterchanger]

Thanks for the replies,

Currently, she is picking at food, I would not call it eating. Some stays in, though. I tried to get Levimasole here before starting the long metro treatment but to no avail. Is there a medication I can substitute it with?

[waterchanger]

I got some Prazi but only as 'PraziPro' made by Hikari. Does anyone know the dosage recommended for discus when using this liquid? I noticed that Hikari also sells Metro but with lots of inactive 'filler' , according to the bottle there is less than <5 % Prazi/weight in the entire bottle (118 mL)

[ILLUSN]

The dosage you want is 100mg/20L.
if we go w/v then your bottle has about 5.9g total so 1 ml~50mg.

dont worry too much about the filler, all tablet preperations have that, the tablets i use have 400mg metro and about 0.6g-1g of filler.

[waterchanger]

Thanks for the reply,
ILLSN

I am not concerned about the additional ingredients but the fact that the actual dosage of Prazi is not provided.
I don't trust that the concentration is actually 5% - the bottle states <5% and could be anything ranging from homeopathic range (close to zero :!: ) to 4.9%. I don't know the concentration Prazi is administered to deworm other fish than discus. The company recommends a dosage 4 times lower than 100 mg/20L for the complete cure (for all patients, of course).
How quickly should I expect a noticeable change?

[ILLUSN]

within 4-6 hours any tapeworms in your fish will be dad and you'll see them passing segments.

after 48hrs, give a water change, and rinse the filter media in some tank water and change the white filter floss.

you'll have to repeat in a week to get the last of the cysts out

[waterchanger]

Thanks again!

So I was not hallucinating when I saw the fish passing long strings, she also looks more alert and swims around again instead of hanging depressed in one corner. I will change water and repeat the treatment next week. Also, I finally managed to get hold of Levamisole. I will check the stickies posted here for treatment guidelines.