Treatment warning!

[Guy]

Hi All. I had a visit by the piscine Grim Reaper over the weekend. I noticed a zebra danio had white spot over a week ago so commenced treatment. A few days after the last treatment I gave the tank a 50% water change. I added Stress Coat to the new water. Next morning, the water was slightly cloudy and all the fish that were still alive were gasping at the surface. Total annihilation of all my little delicates A rapid 90% water change and all seems well again for the remainders. My sailfin didn't seem perturbed, he just gulped air as required.

I think the traces of the remaining white spot treatment (protozin - a malachine green based product) reacted with the stress coat (no listed ingredients except for aloe vera). Anyone have any experience with this happening to them?

Oh! Woe is me!

Guy

[DeLBoD]

Hi .I have had the same cloudy water ,but this was just a bacteria bloom from adding treatments to the tank that kill the natural bacteria in the tank(no stress to fish at all) .think in you're case there is a toxic element involved ,got another tank to move them to ?.
Sorry cant help more.

[Guy]

the treatment I used was "bacteria friendly" and shouldn't have effected my under gravel filter. I've used similar treatments many times before in the past without a single fatality. The 90% water change seemed to work. Within half an hour, fish that were upside down on the top were darting around (almost) like normal.
Ammonia, Nitrites, Nitrates, PH and temperature were all fine.

[DeLBoD]

Good to hear .

[jscoggs27]

If it was Protozin you used previously, be very carefull it says that it doesnt effect the filtration but it does hammer them a little bit. I noted changes in water quality after I used it. And beware Protozin may not be too compatible with catfish. I have used Both Protozin and Myxazin and found both to be relatively ineffective. (except to make my cats a bit ill looking and go off there food) Someone recomended Melafix for general bacterial infections and that works a treat, and its natural. I hope waterlife dont sue me!

[STINGRAY]

Nearly all medications will kill filter bacteria off very quickly, due to there rapid multiplication most filters recover quickly and get immune to certain medications, so on second dosage they are not effected so badly. Protozin is very mild nowadays and we combine with myxazin with no ill effects to fish. It sounds very likely that doing a 50% water change all of a sudden could have over stressed your fish and having them die on masse could have tipped your filter over the edge thus causing the cloudy water. White spot is 1 of the biggest killers of all fish and although easy to treat if noticed quickly it should not be left to fester. I run a lot of my aquariums over 80f and this helps to stop white spot occuring. Good luck in the future and try not to let this mishap deter you from keeping fish in the future.

[Sid Guppy]

Don't know if it helps, but I know that it's best to either change 25-30% of the water OR go to at least 60-75%; because changing half in a tank with a fairly high concentration of fish and a poorly faring bacterial fauna (like yours, due to the medication) can result in an ammonia-spike; the water gets cloudy very quick(!!) and the fish die....
It's mentioned in pt1 of the Mergus-atlas win the part about tankcare and waterchanges too (p 891 in the German version)

[Guy]

Thanks for the replies everyone! I'm still quite baffled as to what happened. I appreciate that the bacterial action of the undergravel filter would be compromised by the whitespot treatment, but I tested the cloudy water and everything (Ammonia, Nitrites, Nitrates, PH and temp) were all perfectly stable, in fact they were lower than normal because I was doing 20% changes every day for 3 days when I commenced the whitespot treatment. I've posed the question to the pathology lab technicians here where I work, maybe they'll come up with something! I'll keep your posted!
Anyone know where I can get a nice shoal of mature cardinals for cheap?!

[Mirra]

hi
i know this topic is old but i just had this happen to me last week.

I was doing a gravel clean in the middle of ick treatment took out 25g in a 92g tank (20%)But i was using a methol blue treatment. (but i could have run out and switched to the malicite green at that time)But i know that i did put too much stress coat back in. The way that i treated the tank was with the first barrell and i didn't do the whole math for the next 5-5g's additions, and i exceeded that i should have only have put in 18 teaspoons of Stress Coat and might have put in somewhere between 22-26 teaspoons.

Within 4hr my fish were looking strange and the tank was cloudy, then at 2 in the morning when i was going to bed i saw my L264 look like he was dieing from lack of o2. I quicky removed him into a 5g quarenteen which unfortunatly has a good nuggent just placed there. He did revive. But now 7 days later it looks like he has a secondary infection. Slightly cloudy eyes, not usual behaviour, and some semi-transperent spots on him which are not ick. He looks dead at first glance.

In the 92 which was wacked out i put in extra filtration and within 24 hr of the water change everything was back to normal. But i did loose 3 barbs.

Did you ever figure out what happened in your case. Cause it was strange and i donot was to repeat this. And it makes me wonder how many fish die durring the night after a water change.

[S-Cat7]

I found this subject interesting. I am a qualified aquarium technician and have kept and treated numerous species. Firstly, all treatments on the market (with a couple of exceptions) are harmless to fish when used in the correct doses. Very few affect the filter bacteria unless the label specifies to the contrary. Protozin does not kill nitrifying bacteria, methylene blue does; I recently treated 3 species of corys along with some new additions of dwarfs for white spot using Protozin in very soft water ( 2-3 dH) with no losses.

I carried out a 25% water change using Stress Coat. My filter remained on for the entire period, this is a Fluval 1 in a 50 litre tank. There were no ill-effects from either chemical. I tend to under-dose the SC because I found that it formed foam in the tank. I now use a couple of drops to 5l. SC does not only contain aloe vera: it must contain a dechlorinator and something which de-toxifies chloramines. Thius usually means either sodium thiosulphate or sodium EDTA, both of which will deoxygenate the water if overdosed. The aloe vera will exacerbate this by coating the mucus membranes of the gills and slow down O2 absorption. Your fish recovered after massive water changes and filtration, and the air-breathers survived - a clue to the cause.

The SC dose must be altered to suit the chlorine level in your tapwater. Use less rather than too much (which may equate to the correct dose) if you have to change the water after a treatment. Better to use charcoal filtration and not stress the fish. SC will also tend to coat the bacterial film in UG filters because it 'thinks' this is a fish! Thus asphyxiating the bacteria. Since learning to use less SC I have had no trouble with it in any of the tanks I service.

I am sorry you folks have had to find out the hard way. I did this also a long time ago.

[spiny]

Hi!
I justv read about this stress coat... I grow succulents (lots of Aloe species) in my greenhouse, and has done so for lots of years.

The Aloe vera (now renamed A. barbadensis) works very well on wounds etc, and will cover the wound with a coat, and make it heal better. I use it myself! Works well. Similar effects are reached with honey, as it too forms a durable coat when applied, (honey also kills bacteria).

BUT; when dissolved in water, this coat will not just coat the wounds etc, it will cover everything; gills and all, like having hairbalsam in the lungs?

An interesting fact is that Aloe vera, when eaten, has a laxating effect!

Above water, such stuff can be controlled, and restricted to a certain spot. Dissolved in water, it will be swallowed, hit the gills, eyes, every imaginable spot.

Actually there are sources as well that tell of allergic reaction caused by Aloe, but I do not remember where I read that. If you want to do further research on this, the big succulent and cacti websites is found at the following marvellous website: http://www.cactus-mall.com
Search for Aloe vera there, and you might find interesting info. Botany and medicinal plants are really something that gets lots of my time, and I have been working in a botanical garden a while ago, and you wouldn't believe how many of the most popular nature-medicines that might have well documented bad side-effects. But the market doesn't absorb this information, as there is so much anouncenments and advertising all the time, from sourches that has economical interests in selling their goods. I searched Google on A. vera, and got 742.000 hits! Mostly commercial ones.

Another point is that this Aloe grow in arid areas, has no spines or protection, and somehow still avoids beeing eaten by grazers. This often meens the presence of certain chemicals, as is the case by many medicinal plants. The book "Caribbean wild plants and their uses" says; "used in Barbados and Jamaica as tea for colds. ..fluid used as purgative". "..used in Jamaica to promote appetite,digestion and menstrual flow." "In Marie Galante (Guadeloupe-french) used in rum for diabetes and gas.."

A certain medicine that works well on wounds doesn't necessarily work well when swallowed. And the fish not only swallows, it is soaked.

I don't meen to say that the stresscoat is bad, but I my self would feel a bit sceptic about putting Aloe into water, and at least I think it would be interesting to find out more about this topic.

I wish you good luck with your fish! Tell me if you discover something about this!

[Mirra]

Hey Thanks for that info.

I did not know all that stuff about aloe vera. or meds combined. And if i hadn't stayed up late i would have never known why some of my fished died. As it was the L264 died due to some secondary infection from the stress anyway. So all for not.
And due to this i think i might switch the type of declorinator/cholimine that i use, and just keep the aloe for wounds.

thanks