what are some good medications so have on hand?

[bigamefish]

hey everyone! I`m getting my uncle to pick up some fish supplies in the city and i thought i may as well get some bang for my buck! so i was wondering what some good medications/suppiles to have on hand for the genral situations that commonly arise in the hobby? let me know. Thanks!

[sojapat]

Aquarium salt .

[MatsP]

Aquarium salt .

Or basic kitchen salt. Aquarium shops have a vested interest in telling us it's no good, but there's no real foundation to it. Unless you overdose it by a factor of 30 or so, in which case the salt itself has killed the fish a long time ago.

--
Mats

[sojapat]

Mats ..the man asked a question..Salt is a tried and tested medication that increases x 2 the potency of other medications .
Yes it is marketed ..the man says he can get it free or at little cost ..
I dont understand your comments ?
He asks what is a good thing to have in the cupboard ..not what happens if you overdose ..the same could be for any other medication.
What do you recommend ?

[MatsP]

I agree that salt is good to have, and has saved the life on several of my fish over time. But most people (who do the most basic kind of cooking) already has the stuff in their kitchen cabinet. Of course, if someone wants to buy aquarium salt, fine. But it's not necessary to run down to the aquarium shop to buy it there. The overdosing was to explain that the additives in standard cooking salt is far less dangerous than the salt itself. So as long as the salt is used correctly, the additives are harmless.

--
Mats

[sojapat]

Yes cooking salt is ok ,Table salt is not ..the product to stop it clumping is harmful to fish.
Aqualibrium salt (marketed) is fantastic ..it contains a little more than the kitchen based products .
If I had the choice the aqualibrium salt is the better option .. our friend Bigamefish has the choice.
Salt cooking ,aquarium. (table salt not included)..will give you breathing space to get medications ..and boost their how efficiently they work.

[bigbird]

i have melafix and pimifix in my cabinet. Also always additional supply of seachem water conditioner. cheers jk

[MatsP]

Yes cooking salt is ok ,Table salt is not ..the product to stop it clumping is harmful to fish.

Table salt is absolutely fine. Yes, the anti-clumping agent is harmful to fish. However, not at the levels that it is used in table salt when used to medicate fish (0.5g / liter or so). Exactly my point about overdosing by 30x or more (15g / liter - which kills even marine fish quite quickly, I'd expect, as it's nearly 5x the level usually used in marine tanks, although I haven't actually tried).

As long as it hasn't got herb, bits of garlic, or similar it should be fine. [Actually, herbs and garlic may well be good for the fish, but may make the water a bit "funny smelling"]

--
Mats

[sidguppy]

I bought myself a huge bucket of "marine salt", don't know if this is what you mean by aquarium salt; but it's the stuff used for marine tanks, so it's likely the same thing

and yes, to avoid messing up, i did buy it at a store specialized in marine fish keeping

it'll probably lasts a long time (it's a huge bucket) and it contains all the spore elements one can need.

also great to use in the kitchen as we need those spore elements too, you know
best cooking salt there is


apart from that, it varies on what you keep

if you keep aufwuchs eaters or wildcaught earth eaters, I'd say anything containg metronidazole or a similar substance is a must to have.
it's always the same; fish bloat up on saturday evening and you have run out on meds...by monday most of em are dead

but if you don't keep fish like that, its not needed at all

another medication I find very useful if you keep a lot of wildcaught fish and often have new arrivals is a de-worming cure.
especially pleco's can carry astronomical numbers of gill flukes and skin flukes with em and the difference between succesful breeding wildcaught species or struggling with em for years is to de-worm em on arrival.

apart from that, it's nice if you keep a bottle of "aquarium hobby nukular missile stuff" around somewhere: the dreaded FMC
this is NOT something you want to use on a regular base!

it's more like the very last thing you can use when all else has proven useless. it's NOT a catfish friendly med at all.

it can and does occasionally kill fragile sick fish on occasion, but it has saved a few hobbies as well.


but I agree with above; the first thing you should have is salt.
marine/aquarium salt.

and a quarantaine tank
;)

[MatsP]

I completely agree with Sidguppy on the antiworming medication. I have two different types in my cupboard.

I'm pretty sure "spore elements" means "trace elements" - but for the purpose of using as a medication, the main content is sodium chloride. Trace elements are much more important over the longer timeframe, not when using the salt as a medication over a period of a week or two.

--
Mats

[sidguppy]

yeah, i meant trace elements, couldnt remember how it's called in english (we say sporen elementen)

I always add a wee bit of salt when doing large waterchanges.
not much, mind, we're not talking grams per liter or so; but say, about 30-50 grams when doing a 600+ liter waterchange.
for the trace elements

[dw1305]

Hi all,
I don't understand salt as a medication, aquarium or otherwise, if some-one can explain to me what it does for soft water fish in medical/scientific terms, I'd be very interested. I'll take the chloride ion's effect on nitrite uptake as read.

My first choice would be a book - "Tropical Fishlopedia", by Peter Burgess, Bailey Mary, H.B. Fenn & Co. 2000

After that I'd keep Levamisole as a nematode wormer, Praziquantel for cestodes and Melafix as a general anti-bacterial. As we can't anything better I'd use a malachite green based medication against Ichthyophthirius and Oodinium, usually "Esha Exit".

Finally I used to really like "Adcortyl/Kenalog in Orabase" for wounds, but you can't get it in the UK any-more.

cheers Darrel

[MatsP]

As I'm absolutely sure you know, salt is very good for killing many types of external parasites.

It also, from what I understand, helps the fish breathe (even when no nitrite present), and there are some that say that the "osmotic pressure" is reduced, which can help as well.

--
Mats

[sidguppy]

to cure white spot/ich (ichthyoptirius) with exit or esha is really old fashioned

over here it's impossible as well; since the strains we got in the hobby are completely resistent against it

unfortunately many fish, especially catfish, are not.
esha and exit contain a lot of copper ions and many catfish can't handle that at all.

the best way to battle white spot is to combine 3 things:
-adding oxygen by diffusor or airpunmp
-raise the temperature to at least 28'C
-use 1-2 grams of salt per liter tankwater.

in severe cases with Rift fishes and Madagascar cichlids i even went to 5-6 grams of salt a liter and then you can taste it....the water turns brackish.
but you can never do this to south american fish (save arius of course) or West African ones or Asian rainforst/mountain fish.
it's too much

Riftlake fish can cope with a very high mineral content/conductivity and the same goes for the Madagascar cichlid species.
they're very prone to ich and it's very hard to get them cleared of it, unless you turn em into marine fish, sort of

we have ich strains here that are resistant to exit, esha, ichtocell, aquaboline and even FMC......
it's caused by the whole salers and importers going the way of industrial agriculture.
as in; just dosing their fish every single day even if they're healthy.

by doing this they created immune strains of oodinium, white spot and a list of other diseases, just like the industrial agrarians created immune strains of foot and mouth, pig plague, Q fever and a lot of other resistant diseases.

Marc and i have found out the hard way that most medications against white spot do not work anymore in the Netherland

unless you use the 'heat & salt method', it can and will wipe out entire tanks.

[MatsP]

Alex, are you sure you got the numbers right there. 1-2g salt per liter is quite a lot, and 5-6g per liter is more than seawater ("you can taste it" is very much an understatement).

--
Mats

[sidguppy]

Yes, I'm quite sure I got the numbers right, because i measure it precise when I'm dosing
.

I think you're mixing percentage with promillage, Mats

a liter is 1000 grams, not 100.

you're missing a zero!


seawater, depending on the sea, has a salinity of 2.9-3.8% salt per liter.... that's 29 to 38 grams per liter.....not a 'mere' 6!
6 grams a liter is less than 1%, it's just over 0.5%

brackish is from 0.5 to 2.7% or so, so I was just getting into wee brackish water, not even near seawater.

one of the reasons marine tanks are expensive is that you need to buy a LOT of salt, just doing the regular waterchanges
;)

[MatsP]

Sorry, yes, you are right, I confused myself.

--
Mats

[Mike_Noren]

I have peroxide and formalin for external parasites and bacterial infections. I have never had use for a dewormer, and I have never found any aquarium medication which had any effect on internal bacteria infections or intestinal protozoa.

EDIT: Also the additives in table salt are completly harmless in the concentrations one'd be likely to use. That includes both the iodide and the anti-clumping. Here's an old post of mine about it:

I have "Jozo table salt with iodine". It containes 2.008 grams anti-caking agents per kilo salt, and 0.05 grams potassium iodide per kilo.

If we assume 5 grams of salt per liter of water, that means:
(2.008/1000)*5 = 0.01 grams of anti-caking agents and

0.05/1000 *5 = 0.0025 grams potassium iodide, per liter water. Tiny amounts.

The anti-clumping additives are sodiumaluminiumsilicate and sodiumferrocyanide and potassiumferrocyanide.
The ferrocyanides can cause nausea if "large amounts" are ingested. If ingested pure the LD50 is about 6 grams per kilo bodyweight, meaning the fish might have to drink 600 liters to get an LD50 dose. And ferrocyanides are biodegradable.
The sodium iodide is slightly more toxic, the LD50 in rats if ingested pure is 1 gram per kilo body weight, but the concentration is lower and our suicidal fish will need to drink 400 liters of water to reach LD50. In short, none of the additives are particularly toxic.

For comparison the LD50 of sodium chloride, the salt itself, is 4 grams per kilo bodyweight, so our fish would need to drink 0.8 liters to kill himself. And long-term exposure to a salinity of 5 grams of salt per liter water might well harm sensitive species.

[sidguppy]

formalin IS a dewormer, Mike
and quite an effective one at that

I wouldn't touch the stuff with a ten foot pole, though, not anymore.
I probably lessened my life expectancy with a decade when studying biology back in the 80's;

we dissected so many dead things marinated in the stuff that I probably sniffed myself straight into the "risky getting cancer when old group"
I remember too often having to take a break because when you're standing over a vaporizing bucket with formalin and dead animals you get a splitting headache after 1 hour or so
practicums often lasted a whole afternoon....man I still hate that smell.

these days, OK, fish might get sick and die, but I skip on the carcinogenics when doing fish meds.
formalin is baaaaad.

today it's not used like that anymore in biology school; not at that scale.
things are dissected when thawing or in alcohol; getting drunk sure beats planning a future call for the Grim Reaper.

peroxide is also something I'd rather avoid.
I need it at work for certain experiments still and it eats itself through surgical gloves faster than the strongest hydrochloric acid.

it might be really effective, but everytime I even as much as point at the bottle I end up with scorched skin and blisters.

YMMV, but I'll stay with the sissy fish medications and skip the hardcore toxic waste
;)


btw little disclaimer here
before anyone dumps the 6 grams a liter cure in his or her tank in 1 go:
this is NOT something I recommend and it's also NOT to be used in 1 go: it'll kill all the fish, even Rift or Mada's when used so
I never go more than 1-1.5 gram per liter in 1 day
so to end up with 6 i used to gradually build it up over 4-5 days.

I had a particular nasty strain of ich in my tank and it was eradicating my Paretroplus damii one by one.
the regular dose (1-2g/L) didn't do anything, so i went Salty Sailor on the tank.
but I did take the time to do so
I also used massive oxygenation as well; lots of diffusors, dripfiltration and the temperature up to 30'C.

[Mike_Noren]

formalin IS a dewormer, Mike

Not really. It has almost no ability to penetrate the body wall of an animal; it is effective only against external parasites (and only external parasites with thin skin, e.g. flukes and ciliates, but not external parasites with a hard shell, like anchor worms or fish lice). It is, however, weakly carcinogenic.

peroxide is also something I'd rather avoid.

I even give it prophylactically, through continuous dosing.

[Coriequest]

I keep Maracide, Maracin, Maracin 2, Maroxy and Kanamide. This after running to the LFS which was almost always out of the one needed...whenever a fish was ill and often on a holiday or after hours etc, etc...
I also keep Praziquantel Pro and Fenbenzadole which are wormers. I am looking for Levamasol. I use some aquarium salt. And now i keep a quarantine tank! I dose Excel in my fish tanks which purportedly helps prevent fungus in corys while it helps your plants. Thinking I might get some metronazole too! I hate when my fish get sick so I would much rather be prepared. Pimafix did nothing when I had a sick fish...I think it's like taking vitamins, it might help but I can't prove it

[sidguppy]

formalin IS a dewormer, Mike

Not really. It has almost no ability to penetrate the body wall of an animal; it is effective only against external parasites (and only external parasites with thin skin, e.g. flukes and ciliates, but not external parasites with a hard shell, like anchor worms or fish lice

that's good to know; I know that it's quite effective against both skin- and gillflukes, hence my remark

I didn't know it would not work against anchor worms.

i have rarely seen fish lice (maybe i just got lucky) and thought I'd best remove these with tweezers when encountering them....

peroxide is also something I'd rather avoid.

I even give it prophylactically, through continuous dosing.

interesting!
looks like I got some reading to do

the problems I got with both formalin and peroxide are the strong concentrations

the diluted solutions we use for fish treatment are quite harmless indeed, but also instable over time, especially peroxide.
leave it by itself long enough and it'll just turn to water

so to make 'fresh' solutions that are precise, one must use the strong stuff which is stable enough
but those are the liquids I'd rather not touch, smell or have in the house.

[dw1305]

Hi all,

I don't understand salt as a medication, aquarium or otherwise

reply

It also, from what I understand, helps the fish breathe (even when no nitrite present), and there are some that say that the "osmotic pressure" is reduced, which can help as well.

I'd interested in peoples thoughts on this article (by Joe Gargas) -
"Water Chemistry: Osmoregulation ionic imbalance and pH",
<http://www.tbas1.com/Exchange/The%20New ... d%2011.pdf> pages 3 -10. I know nothing of Mr Gargas, but his comments on NaCl make sense to me.

cheers Darrel

[bunnyrabbit]

I just read the article briefly and the test of the water and it said that the "store" added 1/2 to 3/4 cups per 5 gallons of water. Seems a little high. I think it is recommended that the dose is 1 rounded tablespoon for every 5 gallon as a "stress reducer".

[MatsP]

I just read the article briefly and the test of the water and it said that the "store" added 1/2 to 3/4 cups per 5 gallons of water. Seems a little high. I think it is recommended that the dose is 1 rounded tablespoon for every 5 gallon as a "stress reducer".

If you actually read the whole area where that was mentioned you'll realize it was considered BAD!

I think the author of that articely would recommend (for true freshwater fish) zero sodium & chloride additives. Which I agree with as a general "normal situation" setup.

--
Mats

[apistomaster]

Be sure to use plain NaCl as in Rock Salt or table salt if it's an emergency and not reef/marine mix salts. These latter artificial sea water salts are loaded with other minerals and are buffered to reach a stable pH of 8.2 to 8.3. The rock salt is often sold in grocery stores for regenerating water softener's de-ionizing resin or as a de-icer. Be careful not to buy calcium chloride de-icers.

My fish medicine chest always contains the following:
Malachite green for Ich and Velvet. Praziquantel has also been found to be effective on these skin protozoan parasites as well as being an effective de-wormer.
Methylene Blue is useful to keep on hand for reducing fungus spreading among eggs
Other med I use for parasitic worms is Praziquantel ie: Hikari PraziPro.
I stock levimazole but haven't used it much.
I don't know what antibiotics I would recommend since I have chloramphenicol HCL and no OTC antibiotic can begin to compare with it's efficacy but chloramphenicol HCL is very tightly controlled.
You can get 10% flubendazole powder and levimazole from Charles Harrison http://www.inkmkr.com/fish

It is my personal opinion that herbal fish medicens like Pimafix and Melafix are useless. I do not believe in using any homeopathic or naturopathic medications for any ailment be it for animals or fish.
I belong to the Grace Slick school of thought as she expressed when she said, "I don't care if there are chemicals in it as long as my lettuce is crisp."
Metroniadazole is good to have.

[MatsP]

Be sure to use plain NaCl as in Rock Salt or table salt if it's an emergency and not reef/marine mix salts. These latter artificial sea water salts are loaded with other minerals and are buffered to reach a stable pH of 8.2 to 8.3.

That would be fine at the approximately 1/10th of the concentration of marine conditions that we want for freshwater medication. pH isn't particularly important.

Be careful not to buy calcium chloride de-icers.

Not entirely sure about this, but just to be safe, yes, do avoid this.

--
Mats

[apistomaster]

Hi MatsP,
I primarily keep soft water fishes and would never use a reef salt for medicinal purposes but to each there own.
How about the fact that plain rock salt is dirt cheap and doesn't alter the pH?
Most would prefer to choose that route.
It can cost 10X as much for plain rock salt packaged as "Aquarium Salt". Why pay so much when the chemically identical alternatives are so much cheaper?

[MatsP]

Hi MatsP,
I primarily keep soft water fishes and would never use a reef salt for medicinal purposes but to each there own.

As I suggested before, regular table salt is absolutely fine, and that's also not very expensive - no more than a dollar per pound (at least here in England), and easily available in any shop that sells food of any kind. Unless you have a large number of tanks, a pound will last quite some time.
In fact, here's a batch of salt for about $0.50 per lbs:
http://www.walmart.com/ip/Morton-62247/17340155
(But it's probably easy to find a better choice in store, and other supermarkets are available ;) )

How about the fact that plain rock salt is dirt cheap and doesn't alter the pH?

I thought we agreed that pH isn't particularly important, in previous discussions. The whole point of using salt is to raise the conductivity. I'm pretty sure that salt in itself has a much bigger effect

Most would prefer to choose that route.
It can cost 10X as much for plain rock salt packaged as "Aquarium Salt". Why pay so much when the chemically identical alternatives are so much cheaper?

Which is why I said "it's fine to use table salt" - admittedly, that's in the fourth post in this thread, so a few pages back. I still maintain that this is the easiest to get, and a very economical, salt to use.

However, if someone has marine salt sitting in a bucket, there is no need to go out and buy another type of salt, which is my point in the previous post. With many tanks, some salt that is cheap in bulk will be good too.

--
Mats

[racoll]

However, if someone has marine salt sitting in a bucket, there is no need to go out and buy another type of salt,

I think Larry's point is that using reef salt is a bad idea, as the fishes you are treating will be sick (obviously) and stressed. Therefore adding chemicals that will raise the pH, may stress them further.

Reef salts when made up to seawater, will have an alkalinity of 4.0–5.0 meq/L due to the additional bases such as carbonates (e.g. see here).