Yep. Just got the 75 gallon set up, cycled, everything's been good. Now my new panda has been sitting on the bottom of the tank, and the rest of my fish have been flicking their dorsals, yawning, and flashing OCCASIONALLY. I actually saw a cory cat flash. Soooo......... I haven't seen any CONCRETE fluke evidence, but I don't have a microscope to do a scraping and see. My tank temp HAS been warm (about 80) do you think this has something to do with it?? I'm just really trying to make myself think it's anything but those ###### water fleas again.

Tank-75 gallons
6 goldies, 5 cory cats, 2 dojos
It's been cycled for a few days
Filtration is 800 gal per hour
Last water hcange was last night, 30 %
Ammonia 0
Nitrite 0
Nitrate 20

So whatcha think???????????

yep. im sorry erika, but i agree with your suspicions.

not one, not two, but three different fish flicking their fins and scratching....... definitely a comback happening.

got any prazi?

it might be time to hit 'em with a good strong regemine of prazi for up to a month straight. adding the stuff every 3 days after a 50% gravel vac/waterchange is what id recommend. if you do this religiously, you might just be able to kill them off.

then theres always pottasium permanganate................

let us know what your plan of attack is going to be

paul

Yep, I have prazi......... my water bill is going to be horrible...........

Oh I hope mine don't come back - I put A&S in with the other fish......

A & S?? What's that?

Well, I gave them all salt dips last night, did a 25% water change, and added the prazi. They seem like they're feeling better today. My baby panda is still hanging out at the bottome though. He's done this since I got him though. Is it normal for some fish to do that?? Another thing I've wondered..... when you're salt dipping your goldies, what about the rest of the fish? Like my dojos? I know I can't salt dip them, but is the prazi in the tank going to kill off what's in their gills if they don't get dipped??
This is a real bummer....... finally get the tank all nice, and these stupid flukes. When I went to bed at 2:30 this morning, I layed down, closed my eyes, and all I could see were prazi flakes floating thru water, and all I heard was the sound of the milk jug half full getting shook. UGH. <_<

A& S are Angel and Sherbet - the ones who had flukes.

Shake, shake, shake - shake your milk jugs!

No comment

Keep us updated! I hope that your baby panda starts feeling better. Are any of the other fish bothering him or anything? Could he just be having problems adjusting?

Robyn

Ok. They seemed like they were feeling MUCH better, but now tonight, they're back to being sluggish, and my baby panda is hiding inside a decoration, sitting on the bottom. I'll do another salt dip tonight, and repeat the prazi on Saturday. Poor guys. Is there anything else I should do???

I would do a salt dip before adding the prazi again. You might pull out the buckets....

heres some tips:

you could raise the heat very slowly to about 80-82 degrees to speed up their life cycle. this would need close supervision of the infected goldfish (tropicals will be fine) for rapid breathing from having less dissolved oxygen available. increasing aeration should help counteract that.

very thorough gravel vacs for the enirety of each waterchange. or remove most of the gravel to the point of only 1/2inch deep. try not to have any stagnant spots in the tank as well. water should be flowing freely around every cubic inch of space.

keep the filter floss very clean and flowing freely so that the prazi bits are not being trapped in any filtergoo.

try upping the amount from what the bottle suggests. you can very safely go 25-50% more at each and every addition with no side effects whatsoever. ive double dosed the stuff and none of the fish in the tank even noticed. i also noticed that it worked much better.

an extra tip for breaking the prazi down:

ive figured out the best way to break the prazi down while pretty much eliminating all the shaking (give those jugs a break! ). find a 1 gallon jug that allows you to easily slip your forefinger into it. fill the jug halfway with some tankwater. add the prazi and shake for about 5 seconds (again, the jug, not you! ) one the bubbles clear a bit and the unsaturated prazi float to the surface, fill the jug up to about 2 inches from the rim. now, for this part you can use a rubber glove. but the prazi is nontoxic and your bare finger will be fine and actually work better. just put your finger into the jug and start pressing and rubbing the bits up against the inside of it. after a few minutes of this, the prazi should be very well dissolved and ready for dispersal into the tank.

i hope some of these suggestions will help you. i know every little bit helps when dealing with these persistant little bugs. <_<

good luck erika!

paul

Paul,



Ok. My game plan as of today then, is salt dip at 1.5% this afternoon, then tomorrow night, another salt dip, squeeze out my filter cartriges (they're gunky) do a water change of 30% along with a vac. (I don't have gravel, I have large-ish river rocks on the bottom, but I still vac), and add the prazi. I think I might do a full teaspoon...... it's a 75 gallon tank, so normal dosage is just over a half teaspoon........ hey, I wondered this... when you measure out the prazi on your neighbor's scales, then add it to a measuring spoon, you're not packing it into the spoon are you? You're just leaving it fluffy, right? K.
Yes, I tried the "smearing" of the prazi in the jug Wednesday night, works a22 of a lot faster that way!! Thanks Paul!
you'd think that I'd be a semipro treating for flukes now, but I just REALLY want to make sure they're gone this time.

hey you!

as far as the dosage goes, if you can afford it, up the dose a bit. when i measured the prazi and put it in the spoon, i left it as fluffy as it came out. basically, when i scoop the spoon into the jar, i left it as fluffy as it came and scraped the excess off the top (to a degree) with the inside lip of the prazi jar.

good luck erika!

paul

I totally feel for with fluke sufferers. I didn't manage to completely eradicate flukes while treating with prazi (as well as PP ) in the main tank. I think it was due to the tank being too big, and with the 6 fishes then, no matter how hard I tried to siphon the 0.5 inch gravel, the flukes keep coming back. I'm now doing a bucket to bucket method, and I don't see any clamped fins (so far), and I feel a bit more confident that none of the nasties have any place to hide this way. So Errika, if treating in the tank doesn't help, perhaps it is time to Prazi them in buckets (instead of wasting more Prazi like what I did...sigh).

How I dilute prazi (pleaseeee correct me if I've been doing it all wrong - I'm not sure if hot water is ok to use with Prazi) is to put warm tap water and give my arm a workout (might as well think of it as exercise eh ). The Prazi I use is in tablet form, so it eventually breaks into very tiny dots at most. Pressing with my fingers is something I have not taken up...I thought that if the fish start eating the Prazi bits (they always start nibbling away anyway those cuties ), they actually might help dilute it further?

Hey Erika??? How goes it??? Are your fish acting more normal again? This may be dumb,but when I mixed the Prazi,I thought of it like when you use flour to make gravy or something,and the flour always stays in pieces? Well, I get a little margarine container,add the flour with cold water(just a little),put the lid on it,shake like crazy!!! I did the Prazi the same way,and it only took a minute or two to get it mixed!

errrika1979


Hope your tank is doing better. My new tank started off the same way. Salt dips helped relieve the fish and the problem has seemed to fix itself. The fish had an increase in their slime coat and were flashing. It looked like tiny weeny (and I mean tiny tiny tiny) white things the shape of this "i" (as I tried to describe when I asked for help in the past )
Anyway, I kept the fish out of the tank for a couple weeks and starved those buggers.... the tank seems fine. I treated it with Maracyn2 as well. the package said it helps with flukes.... so I tried it.

Hopefully you get your problem under control.

I can't help but to feel for the fishies.... I hated it when I had poison ivy as a kid.. I can only imagine what it feels like to have bugs all over my body.

Take care.. keep us posted.

When it rains it pours........

The baby demekin, "Garson" (don't ask, I didn't name him!) is pooping clear white-ish thin stuff. <_< . I think the flukes have affected him more than the others since he's only like this long ......................
So here's my dilemma. My hospital tank is in use currently (still) with Herbie and his injury (or popeye). He's been on Maracyn and Maracyn 2, and Medigold for about a week and a half. I think I"m going to have to add the baby to the tank also. I don't neccessarily want to put Herbie back into the main tank, cuz what if he IS still sick? So here's where it gets messy......... the baby, like the rest of my 75 gallon is being treated for flukes. I'm thinking that I'm going to treat with Maracyns again (still), but prazi the 10 gallon too. What the22 do I do about this?? A 10 gallon hospital tank with 2 fish, being treated for bacterial stuff, and flukes..... I can't get away with water changes once every 3 days like I would for flukes..... I need water changes in there DAILY, cuz with 2 fish, it's not gonna stay nice and clean. So what??? What do I do???? If someone wants, I'll fly you here, you can stay in the spare bedroom, and HELP ME WITH THIS TOTAL DISASTER!!!!

If this post has given you a headache, well......... try living it..........


Signed,
Helpless in the Quad Cities

So sorry to hear all this Errika Indeed, when it rains it pours, as I've experienced in my goldfish world too, unfortunately I won't recommend putting Garson together with Herbie if you can help it though, just in case Garson only has a slight fluke problem - is it really pooping white consistently, and is this definitely not due to stress instead of internal bacteria? How is it, and the other fish in the tank with fluke problems behaving by the way?

I ended up buying several plastic storage containers to QT & treat my fishes (bucket2bucket) affodably & without as much water changes as a 75 gallon would. Oh, I probably don't know the whole story on your problem here yet, but if it's the matter of finding a place to QT the current fish with problems, are you having problems finding buckets/containers+airstones to QT/treat them in?

LOL Kat, I'm running out of ROOM!!!! You guys should see my house....... Well, the poop question I just found an answer for..... I put Garson in a clear breeder box just now with some crushed up Medigold. This is the only way he can eat since he's been kinda slow and doesn't see well. He pooped, and it was normal, although he had a clear-ish one about 2 hours ago. I don't think I'm going to do anything just yet....... I think I'll see how he's doing tomorrow.er, later today! I figured it was bacterial since he's been in this tank for a couple weeks now, so he should be settled, but who knows, right?? Let's see what time tells us.


Erika

Time to ave hubby clean the garage out and make it a big ole fish house!

it'll get better

there's an empty 29 sitting here with your name on it - hope in the Jeep and it's yours

I cannot believe your bad luck with flukes, Erika! It does not seem fair that they seem to keep coming for you. I am so sorry!

When you first reported flukes on your new fish I rushed to do a scraping on my little Ling Ling. But, try as I might, I cannot find anything living on her or her tank mates that should not be there.

If you ever want to have a look at a scraping, and can be in the neighborhood, or if I can meet you halfway, I have a microscope and slides for you to use.

Stupid flukes................. :angry:

Thank you Carol, I appreciate it!! The strange thing is, the only new thing I have in this tank are the fish I bought from Tommy......... no new plants, or anything else. And the tank I bought had been completely empty for months before I bought it................ how frustrating.
It's also funny you named your new fish Ling Ling, I was going to name my baby panda Ling Ling until my husband's friend named him "Garson". great minds think alike!!!

Garson seems a little better this morning, I'll be keeping a CLOSE eye on him all day today. Thanks for the input everyone!

Oh, and Laura, I won't drive that Jeep!! First off I can't even get in it!!! I'm way too short! Second off, I'm afraid of it!

I spent so many hours watching Ling Ling and her mate at the National Zoo so many years ago. She was such a clown and so beautiful. I had to name my little panda girl after her.....

Great minds, definately!!!!

Could it possibly be a pH drop or ammonia burning that may be irritating them?