After adding the Prazi dosage, I wait 72 hours.

Toothy then recommends repeating at 72 hour intervals for 2 weeks. Is this a 30% water change every 72 hours with each treatment?

Or is this so the Prazi builds up in the tank? Or does it get "used up"?

I figured that if one tank has 'em, they all do, for they spread in water droplets and I am sure that I have cross contaminated my tanks. Changing the tanks is easy to do. - but I need to space out all the tanks one day apart, so I am only changing 3 tanks per day - too many tanks to do every day.

Thanks. My fiddies will be happier too, soon. Nasty little creepy fluky things. Yuck.

I surely do love this site!!!!

Rick at Goldfish connections recommends two days on, 3 days off and then 2 days on. no water changes in between.

The most important thing is the initial dose and then having it in the tank around 5 days later to catch the gill fluke eggs hatching. How long the eggs take to hatch depends on the water temp. Warmer water and they hatch out quicker.

Prazi is very safe, so I'm not even sure you'd need to do water changes in between each dose.

Carol---


Darnit all!! You have flukes now too??? (er, your fish have them???) Oh nooo!!! I personally use Toothy's method, and I know he's done a lot of looking into with the treatment regimine he has. Hopefully he'll be along shortly to explain better. I wish you and your pups good luck with the flukes, nasty buggers.

erikas right. ive looked looooong and hard into the eradication of flukes. it seems that there is no other more persistant parasite than gill fukes (skin flukes are slightly easier to kill off). after looking into everything under the sun, prazi is definitely my treatment of choice (pp being #2).

since the life cycle of flukes dictates the treatment frequency, whatever medications you are using should be replenished every 3 days at best. since prazi cant be (or hasnt been) found to have any efficacy after 3 days (once added to the water), this coorelates perfectly with flukes life cycle. wich is exactly why i came up with a regemine of ....add it, wait 72 hours, very thorough gravel vac (if you have gravel) and then adding another dose..... in short, the prazi gets used up within a few days and needs replenishing and the gravel vacs are to remove any eggs or young that surely wind up there.

ive talked with rick personally about this treatment i concocted and he said that if you keep the nitrates very low throughout this regemine, none should live. the best part about prazi is that it would be very, very hard to overdose. the worst part is the cost. i believe that his recomendation of 2 on 3 off 2 on is because of the costs. being that its prazi is so safe theres really no reason to not run the level continually otherwise. unless of course, the eggs or livebearing parents can somehow sense the agitant in the water and prolong birth until its gone. and that, i do not know.

in the long run, you might find that you can only control the flukes at best. it might actually become a common thing to treat infected fish once a month as a preventative measure. kind of like the flea drops that dogowners have been using lately.

if you can positively identify the tanks that you have flukes in, it would be best to keep them in a quarentined state. keep a syphon for each flukes infested tank. have a bucket (or more) that is for only new water and a bucket or more for only old water. rinse hands very thoroughly in between when working on more than one tank at a time. anything that has been in a flukes infested tank should either be used soley for that tank, disinfected thoroughly before using on another tank (pp works great) or completely dried out.

hoefully some of this info helps you a bit more. good luck in treating them!

BTW, is it those commons that you rescued that have flukes?

Nope. As far as I can tell, my fluke infestation started with fish purchased at the last goldfish show - something that has never happened before. But a scraping has definatively shown gill flukes - poor Clack (pearlscale) has them big time, as well as his tank mates to a lesser degree.

I do have a set of syphons and buckets, etc, for each tank, but, with everything I do, I have not maintained super strict quarantine procedures at all times. I know that I should, but it is really hard to be that careful alllll the time. I feed, and I am sure that my hand touches the water from tank to tank and perhaps does not get cleaned well enough, as well as many other things I do that are less than perfect isolation between tanks.

I have noticed that Pudge, in the main tank, is acting a little "off" and my new oranda, Omar, (also from that show), is perhaps flashing a bit. Scrapings reveal nothing, but, since I have the Prazi and it is relatively harmless (except to flukes, I hope!), I figured I would dose all 8 tanks and be done. I have visions of running round robin on tanks, dosing one and clearing it of the nasties, only to reinfect it from another and round and round and round forever! Not what I want to be doing!

I almost wish I had bought the BIG container of Prazi, now! I expect, come the spring fish show, I will buy the large container in the pond section.....!

I have no gravel, so I am not concerned with that. I am running my extra filters on several tanks to start up two new tanks, so I need to dose them just to make sure they do not start a tank with flukes.

So......I will give a water change to keep nitrates down 20-30% in three days (two now), and dose again, correct? I can do that. I will dose the next two tanks today.

Thank goodness for you, Toothy, and for Koko's!

Whew - I did not truly appreciate what I had until it was almost not here!

Hi Daryl,sorry I didn't pm you back on the prazi-while I was looking around the computer,I realized that you had allready found what you needed. Those flukes are something else!!! Even though I treated for them a while back,every time I see the any odd behavior from any of the fish, I always still have in the back of my mind that maybe I didn't quite get them all.... They are one ugly pain!!!!!! You poor thing,with all those tanks,I hate to see what your prazi bill will be-but you are doing the right thing. There is no sense in taking any chances,that's for sure!!!!

It is almost funny. My hubby laughs his head off at me and my fish. He says that they are "never healthy" and that I am always doing something to "fix" them.

But, yeah, I am. If it is not meds, it is water changes (which qualify as a "fix" to him!) and filter changes and deco rearrangeing and scrapings and food changes, and cooking gel food etc etc etc............

No more than all the engine tweeks and gas mixes and wing adjustments he does on the airplane - and that is not even alive. (Though he would never admit it!)

Gotta love the fish. They are one of the things that keep us alive and alert - be it beauty or illness or parasitical infestation - without them, life could become too beige.

I thank everyone who I contacted yesterday for help, as well as everyone who contacted me to help! It is truly a wonderful thing to have such a solid base of friends sharing an obsession.

when youve got sooo many tanks and fish, its, indeed, quite hard to follow quarentine procedures all the time. i suppose

heres a tip on pre-colonizing filters:

why not take a 10-20 gallon tank and always have it running with filters on it. every couple of days, just hit it up with some ammonia to keep the bio-bugs happy. i keep a ten gallon running with two extra filters all the time. every 3 days, i add some ammonia and the filters are always ready for whatever. if i take a filter from the ten, i add one back so that theres always at least two filters awaiting their destinations.

just a suggestion.

Thanks. That is a good one. I generally keep an extra bag or two of biomedia stuck in the bottom of every tank, to be pulled and dropped into a filter when needed. But when a tank is "sick" that media is basically worthless. Your way would give a healthy filter, would it not!

There is no way I could get my fish sitter to feed an empty tank, though. She thinks fish are "icky and slimy".

When I shut down a couple of tanks a few weeks ago, I just dropped the filters over the edge of existing tanks to run and stay cycling. Unfortunately, those filters have to be considered contaminated.

A filter on an empty tank would starve out flukes.............hmmmmmm......

Hey - since it has been suggested that you can never quite erradicate them completely, what if I starved filter after filter, then moved fish from the tank they are being treated in, into a "clean tank" and starved the one they came from? Would the combo of the Prazi on the fish, and the new tank, and then starving anything left in the "old" tank have a greater chance of erradication?

Less than 48 hours after the first dose, my most affected fish, Clack, is now alert, eating without spitting and starting to swim again!!!!!



Die Flukes Die!!!!

so, lemme get this straight, youve hired a fish sitter that thinks fish are gross? thats like hiring a baby sitter that cant stand children.........

as far as clack goes, thats great! prazi is something else, isnt it! its a godsend i tell ya!

yes, the tank starving method you speak of is an excellent way to up the ante on those little nasties. i would go a full 2 weeks without fish before i considered that tank to be fluke free.

in the end, nothing beats bucket to bucket though.

if your treatment of prazi doesnt seem to eradicate them all, you might try the treatment for up to a month straight. heck, i would even run a .3% salt solution along with it just to b on the safe side. thats up to you though.

good luck carol, with you hitting them up with prazi, there chances are greatly increased! and may the flukes on your fish die an especially horrible death!

paul

Prazi is very safe, so you could use it for a month. Don't think it's necessary tho. As i understand it, the first dose of prazi kills any living flukes. The later doses are to kill any gill flukes that hatch out. The speed at which gill fluke eggs hatch is related to water temp. higher temps and they hatch out faster.

The guy who used to run the Dallas Aquarium, used to dip new goldies in prazi for several hours and then transfer them into a clean QT tank. No worry about any fluke eggs doing it that way and no need to treat with more prazi since no fluke eggs are present to worry about killing when they hatch out.

I don't maintain separate equipment for each tank and I never will. I have prazied all my tanks and always QT/prazi new fish. I do use separate nets, etc for QT tanks.

Here's a .decent article on flukes from Doc Johnson that includes info about reproductive rates for eggs:

Looks like that article was written before prazi started being used. and it sounds to me like if your tank temps are up in the upper 70s, you shouldn't need to treat for a month... just long enough to kill any newly hatched larvae from the gill fluke eggs. Either dosing schedule--the one used here or Rick's should work fine as both call for doses in the water when the eggs hatch out.

data guru,

in all due respect, there are some findings that dont jibe with the dallas aquariums fishdoc method. recently, theyve found that dactylogyrus species of flukes not only lay eggs, they will often lay them in the surrounding slime coat. because the presence of flukes almost always causes a thickening of the slime coat, this means that if even one fluke makes it past the "single dose" of prazi, itll be "in like flynn" and be ready to start reproducing to astronimical numbers in no time flat.

i have found that most of the information about prazi and its effectiveness isnt all its cracked up to be. there are just waaaay to many factors there for a single/double treatment to be as effective in one aquarium as it would be in the next. the # of infected fish, prazi efficacy, prazi mixing, temperature, nitrates, ph stability, aquarium decor, filtration and more are all variables that affect one treatment to the next. theres no way that one single suggestion would be good enough for each and every environment under the sun.

these manufacturers suggestions, i believe, are originally geared towards a very sterile envionment like the bucket to bucket method. but that is only speculation.

being that most aquariums are at full capacity (or overcrowded), have gravel, dont get large or complete waterchanges every few days and more, it seems that a more aggressive (yet safe) treatment regemine should be applied to be well and sure that they are indeed being eradicated.

make no mistake, flukes are the hardest parasite to get rid of and they should be treated as such. besides i can tell you how many times i tried the suggested treatment on the bottles before realizing that it just wasnt doing what it was suppose to do. thats why i started researching so heavily about flukes and finally prazi.

please dont think im bashing you. i just felt that i neded to elaborate on my suggestions.

peace.

I don't perceive it as bashing at all.

I just think a month of prazi is overkill.

Speaking of slime coat... We do a 5 minute .6% salt dip prior to prazi. Some people say that strips the slime coat to some degree. I kinda think it stimulates production of mucus and sloughing of the slime coat. It should also cause a lot of single celled organisms to explode from the change in osmostic pressure. Do you guys recommend a salt dip prior to prazi?

The "house/cat" sitter was hired because she was one of the few people who could corral Dauntless ( he was very tough for anyone other than me to catch) and give him his insulin shots and medications and clean his dental implants (when they were first dne they needed a lot of care for a long time). She is a really extraordinary cat person.

She, however, is NOT a fish person. She will dump a pillbox full of food into a tank on a daily basis, but will do nothing more, for they are "icky and slimey".

I have considered finding a new sitter, now that I have no "special care" cats left.



Edit: I posted in tropicals, but I will ask here, also. Do I need to be concerned with the flukes in the guppy tank? Since they are in my "system" I do not want to leave any source of flukes left to reinfect any other tank in the future. Would the guppies support gill flukes? They seem healthy.

yes, i would be very wary of the guppies. flukes can and will kill off many guppies, one after another. in fact they are what infected my 55 gallon with gill flukes in the first place. i think one (guppy) made it into my tank when i brought some plants home or something. one day i looked in and saw a little fish swimming around, he was bashing himself on the glass and i thought "crazy fish!". within a month, lurch (my comet) was on his deathbed and i was so frought with anxiety that i went looking on the internet for help and explanaitions. thats when i found kokos.

betty,

as far as the salt dips before prazi (and many other) treatments goes, im one of the biggest advocators around here! in fact, i came really close to getting rid of them on lurch with a bucket to bucket treatment with a 1.5% - 3% regemine of 1 a day for three days break for 2-3 days , etc. etc. for 2-3 weeks. no symptoms afterwards for a month. then they came back. much the same way that the suggested prazi treatments on the bottles did.

i eventually read on ricks site that prazi didnt seem to have an efficacy past 3-4 days. thats when i decided that a more aggresive aproach needed to be taken to kill them off, not control them like fleas. im (somewhat) beginning to think that because of the costs of prazi, the manufacturers want your flukes to be controlled, not eradicated. then, the customer will come back for more. but thats probably just my overactive imagination.......

in the long run, it all comes down to the fact if they were all destroyed or not. like i was saying, all of the variables in the equation gives the flukes the upper hand. it only takes one single fluke or egg to survive treatment. the fact that dactyls lay eggs is what makes them so darn hard to get rid of. the astronomical numbers that they have the ability to climb to pretty much makes it their chances of one getting through, of course, very high.

another point is that maybe a lot of the success stories that were found from the suggested dosings of prazi are because they were gyros (livebirth). the fact that dactyls lay eggs is what makes them so dang hard to get rid of them completely.

just some thoughts.........

So...... I am off to dose my guppy tank. I wonder if that is a complication that finally offed my Moscow Reds.

Flukes............ here I come.......

Die die die die die die die die die die die die die die die die

good luck with them carol! its definitely a battle! <_<

Interesting post read I had (not sure if it's still occuring but you'll find out later when I start posting I'm sure) a nasty nasty nasty problem with flukes, and as Paul said, it only takes one of them surviving to make your life hectic....(and nullify the previous efforts+Prazi expenses). I even made the mistake of thinking it's over, and lost a fish from my ignorance (please keep checking on Clack, daryl).

I've finally stripped my tank down and used the bucket to bucket method - no filters, just bubblers as the flukes somehow seem to thrive hiding in them (so daryl, maybe having a filter running during Prazi treatments is not recommended IMHO). And I don't see any clamped fins+flashing anymore (fingers crossed). I feel that salt bath also has helped, because when I prazi-fy previously, I could see the Prazi just sticking on the surface of my very slimy fishes during the peak of the problem (w/o salt baths) - what a waste

Making sure the water is heated and Prazi absolutely diluted to death from Paul's advice has also helped heaps.

I was wondering as well (as what Dataguru has said) that with the bucket2bucket method, doing too much Prazi doses sounds like an overkill now. But I'll let you know if it's not the case when I start putting my goldies back in their main tanks....(hopefully not). They're still in there @ the moment waiting for the main tanks to cycle. Wish us luck!

Yea, I did a .6% salt dip for 5 minutes, prior to the prazi. I put the prazi and water in a coke bottle and shook and shook and shook before pouring it in the tank.

I'll have to look back at my notes to see which I used. I think I did Rick's dosing schedule. Couple of months later I did notice some flashing, so I repeated the prazi and haven't seen any flashing since. Never did see any flukes via scrape and scope.

Good luck!

Hey Paul, I finally went and read your prazi/flukes treatment article.

Are you basing dosing on prazipro or prazipond?

The reason I ask is that all the dosing schedules I've seen for prazi pro recommend 1 rounded teaspoon per 20 gallons.

I understood him to mean PraziPond - 10 g treats 1000 gallons. That is what I have.

Does the Prazi treatment make the water slightly hazy? My tanks all seem to be slightly hazy - something that has not happened before for a very long time!

seems like it did in my tanks for a bit. Prazi doesn't dissolve well.

thanks sooo much for pointing that out, betty!

upon re-reading my treatment, i realized that i hadnt made it clear on what prazi i was using. AND, the fact that there are different concentrations of prazi is news to me.........

so, i went and added a few more words to clear that up a bit. again, thanks for letting me know.

as far as the clouding goes, i too see it doing that when i dose it. it always clears up by the next day though. the fact that it clears up makes me wonder if its still even there or stuck in the filter floss/gravel doing no good. thats why i always suggest smashing the blobs up against the mixing jugs sides after shaking it a bit. i do this until theres virtually none left floating on the surface of the jug before i pour it in.

paul

I use Aqua master's Fluke & Tapeworm tablets (pic: http://www.petsplus.com.au/pet-shop.asp?id=266) where I think it's about 100mg Prazi per tablet, and they recommend 1 tablet per 20litres.

Good point about the water haziness...I have 2 different observations so far...it does make the water hazy when I dissolve it very well in heated water before this (20C). The one I'm using currently does not seem to cloud the water as much, but that's in 16-17C water....it's past its expiry date, but I don't think it's the issue (I always shake until there's very little white sediments left). I don't know if cloudy water means its dissolved or otherwise.

Toothless, I have a question about your dosing of the Prazipond --

You said:

But, the paper that came with my bottle of prazipond says,

Which I took to mean 3 tablespoons for 900 gallons... so

3 T = 900 gallons,
1T = 300 gallons,
1t = 100 gallons,
1/2t = 50 gallons,
1/4 t = 25 gallons.

so, I got 1/2t for a 50 gallon, not 1/4... I am confused now.

well, to be quite honest with you, calculating the correct dosage for a 50 gallon tank by counting back from 1000 gallons isnt quite the way to do it. besides, as i understand it, prazi is in no way harmful to fish. in knowing that, the actual concentration isnt as important as the frequency. well, there certainly is a point at wich prazi would be ineffective but, i dont think thats an issue here.

instead, a more correct way to do the calculations would be to measure exactly .5 grams on a digital scale per 50 gallons. in doing this, i measured and scooped 10 different times and each time i came to the conclusion that a slightly rounded 1/4 teaspoon of prazipond was as close to .5 grams as you could get.

10 grams treats 1000 gallons
.5 grams treats 50 gallons

if youve used prazipond before, i think youll know what i mean by saying that it clumps together quite well via static electricity. i cant pretend to know why this is but, it makes getting a "perfect" dose next to impossible when your using measuring spoons.

have you notice that the water is clouded up a bit from the prazi? how about the next day when the tank water is right back to being crystal clear again? is the prazi still suspended there in the water or has the filter and gravel swallowed it all up only to keep it from coming into contact with the flukes that are on your fish? nobody can answer that for me. this is precisely why i tend to speak more about a good length of time for treatment rather than two, precisely calculated doses. i learned the hard way that it is quite an exorbitant claim that prazi wipes out all the flukes within a two week treatment of only two additions. especially in a standard pond or aquarium that has many ornaments, gravel and filters. it just doesnt hold much water with me or the fish ive treated.

if you can afford to add 1/2 teaspoon prazi to your tank for the duration of the treatment i outlined, by all means, do it. it can only raise your chances of total eradication rather than "fluke control".

hope this helps!

Thanks for your response. I think I will actually dose the larger dose, since I do not have a scale (actually, I do not so much as own a bathroom scale...) This is actually the first time I have used prazi, so I don't have much experience to draw upon as far as your questions about absorption, but here is what was written on the enclosed pamphlet I received:



At any rate, after treating with Fluke tabs, 4 scrapings have come back clean of any parasites, but I am treating with prazi as a general precautionary measure. I still see a few symptoms of flashing here and there, but they seem to have calmed down a great deal.