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Moving fish without moving disease

1K views 4 replies 2 participants last post by  RuaDragon 
#1 ·
Hi everyone

A nasty intestinal parasite got into one of my guppy tanks (the only symptoms were white/stringy poop, loss of apetite and death, so I couldn't narrow it down further than 'intestinal parasite'), and wiped out all my guppies but four males and a handful of fry.

It's been a few weeks since my last guppy died, and I want to try moving the survivers into another tank with my other guppies (the survivers are by far my prettiest males, and I don't want them or their fry to go to waste). I also have a chinese algea eater and some cherry shrimp in there that I want to move as well.

So, how can I do this without moving the parasite into my new tank? I have a hospital tank I could use to quarantine and treat each species at a time, but I don't know how long they should stay in there or what to treat them with.
 
#2 · (Edited)
Welcome to the forum!
The short answer is, unfortunately, you can't. I had a similar issue. Mine turned out to be a parasitic nematode and I only figured it out when my Angelfish started showing signs after sharing their tank with my guppies for a while. The guppies never did anything but waste away while the Angels had worms hanging out their, um, vent openings. I would recommend going through a cycle of anti-parasite treatment either before or after the tank move. Hopefully that will take care of the issue for good. Some fish can be asymptomatic for a long time. Good luck with it.

For a general prophylactic anti-internal parasite treatment, I'd recommend Fenbendazole, Levamisole HCL, or Flubendazole. All may work well, but they are administered very differently - don't mix the dosing methods up!
Some relevant links:
http://www.tropicalfishkeeping.com/...eating-internal-parasites-fenbendazole-19108/
http://www.tropicalfishkeeping.com/tropical-fish-diseases/camallanus-infection-need-advice-69258/
http://www.tropicalfishkeeping.com/tropical-fish-diseases/guppy-deaths-nightmare-80939/

If you end up wanting to use Flubendazole, let me know and I can give you a source to purchase and dosing info. There is some incorrect dosing info on Flubendazole posted on the internet.

NOTE: all these may kill your inverts! Flu absolutely will kill snails.
 
#3 ·
Thank you very much! :-D

I'll see what my lfs has in stock, and I'll move my cherry shrimp into the quarantine tank so I don't need to worry about whether the medication is harmful to inverts. Should I worry about my shrimp carrying the parasites? And if so, is there anything I can do about it?
 
#4 ·
I don't know of any common aquarium parasite of inverts that stays dormant and then infects fish. If you keep your inverts separated for a month or two, that should break most fish parasite life cycles. You want to make absolutely certain ALL the meds are cleared out of any treated tanks anyway before trying a few inverts to see if the tank is back to "invert safe"!
 
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