Mystery illness affecting my Carinotetraodon puffers

Oh no! Sick fish?! Come here and see if someone can help!
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Read this before posting!!

Since this board has been up, we have found there are several questions that routinely get asked in order to help diagnose problems. If you can have that information to begin with in your post, we'll be able to help right away (if we can!) without having to wait for you to post the info we need.

1) Your water parameters - pH, Ammonia, Nitrite, Nitrates and salinity (if appropriate). This is by far the most important information you can provide! Do not answer this with "Fine" "Perfect" "ok", that tells us nothing. We need hard numbers.

2) Tank size and a list of ALL inhabitants. Include algae eaters, plecos, everything. We need to know what you have and how big the tank is.

3) Feeding, water change schedule and a list of all products you are using or have added to the tank (examples: Cycle, Amquel, salt, etc)

4) What changes you've made in the tank in the last week or so. Sometimes its the little things that make all the difference.

5) How long the aquarium has been set up, and how did you cycle it? If you don't know what cycling is read this: Fishless Cycling Article and familiarize yourself with all the information. Yes. All of it.

We want to help, and providing this information will go a LONG way to getting a diagnosis and hopeful cure that much faster.

While you wait for assistance:
One of the easiest and best ways to help your fish feel better is clean water! If you are already on a regular water change schedule (50% weekly is recommended) a good step to making your fish more comfortable while waiting for diagnosis/suggestions is to do a large water change immediately. Feel free to repeat daily or as often as you can, clean water is always a good thing! Use of Amquel or Prime as a dechlor may help with any ammonia or nitrite issues, and is highly recommended.

Note - if you do not normally do large water changes, doing a sudden, large water change could shock your fish by suddenly changing their established water chemistry. Clean water is still your first goal, so in this case, do several smaller (10%) water changes over the next day or two before starting any large ones.
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Paul Fox
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Post by Paul Fox »

No problem :)

Heres another comment I found off him
adding flubendazole to water doesn't involve any seperation so the flubendazole remains at the percentage added to the water, yes in theory and at tons of cost, 100% flubendazole could be extracted from 5% substance, but you can't change it's state by adding it to water
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Corvus
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Post by Corvus »

Deadly dose for mice is given by

Thienpont, D., Vanparijs, O., Niemegeers C & Marsboom (1978): Biological and pharmacological properties of flubendazole.- Arzneimittelforschung 28; 605-612.

Deadly dose for pigs see:

Campbell, B., Newcomb, K. & Guerrero, J. (1983): Evaluation of the safety of flubendazole premix in swine .
Am J Vet Res 44; 486-489.
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Corvus
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Post by Corvus »

I agree, practically it is almost impossible to kill your fish with flubendazole, especially f5 or f15, but there are deadly doses in the g/kg range.

I recall a case of a fishkeeper who managed to over dose (will look for reference) by adding to the water. But he was using flubendazole (dissolved in non fish toxic organic acid) and no diluted product such as f5 or f15 and he used g instead of mg.
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Post by Paul Fox »

Do you now agree with my point about add three lots of 5% will never get to 15%? and that 5% is not strong enough to kill all parasites?
The actual amount is a little less than 15% but this was picked as its a little over whats needed, but not too much
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Corvus
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Post by Corvus »

Not with regard to feeding. Adding 3 drops of f5 to the puffer's food is the same amount of flubendazole as adding 1 drop of f15.

Just like 3 "Aspirin 5% ASA" will do the same job as "1 Aspirin 15 ASA" (if there were such pills) when I digest it.
Give a man a fish, and he'll eat for a day. Give a fish a man, and he'll eat for weeks.
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Post by Paul Fox »

getting this thread back on track......
The member that started this thread is in the uk? then the only wormer that will work and is legal is flubenol 15, if this fish has IP like it sounds like it has, flubenol 15 would be the best course of action, along with number 9 at the same time (assuming thats ok for puffers?)
The reason its not seen in many shops is that it is hand made by one person. He originally developed it in conjunction with the German Vetinary Board for personal use as he owns a discus farm and wanted an effective wormer for his own use, as there was no alternative med available over here.
It is possible to ship it to the states - or anywhere for that matter, its only local law that might become a problem and thats only been for one person in Norway.
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Fella
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Post by Fella »

Im in the Uk. Someone point me in the direction of flubenol, I'll see if I can get it to work.

Although, I am still dubious it is IP's, I've got an open mind about it.
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Paul Fox
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Post by Paul Fox »

http://www.flubenol.co.uk
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Post by Pufferpunk »

I'd like to see someone weigh a F8 or DP!
You are getting sleepy... you only hear the sound of my voice... you must do water changes... water changes... water changes... water changes...

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Fella
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Post by Fella »

Pufferpunk wrote:I'd like to see someone weigh a F8 or DP!
One of my F8's is far bigger than any of my red-eyes have ever been!


And I'll order some of the flubenol now, thanks for the link paul. Fingers crossed she's still alive by the time it gets here.
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Post by Paul Fox »

Corvus wrote:Not with regard to feeding. Adding 3 drops of f5 to the puffer's food is the same amount of flubendazole as adding 1 drop of f15.

Just like 3 "Aspirin 5% ASA" will do the same job as "1 Aspirin 15 ASA" (if there were such pills) when I digest it.
We are talking at cross purposes here, toxic levels of a substance fed to a mouse cannot be used as data as to it's toxicity in humans or any other species except that to which it relates. Mice can eat food and absorb substances from it even in a dry state, they don't live submerged. Absorbtion rates for flubendazole in fish by food intake is very low,and how do you guarantee each fish is getting the exact grammage needed, from your arguement you will kill the greedy ones by overdose, and leave the ones that need it, not getting enough. the only way to get it into the fish efficiently is by absorption through the gills, flubendazole is not water soluble. In water flubendazole is not toxic to fish, it's not the amount they absorb that does the damage to the fluid sucking parasites, it's the amount they absorb at a percentage. I hear the same arguement about adding 3 times the amount of 5% flubendazole to make 15% flubendazole, extending this point means if I added 30 times the amount of flubendazole at 5% I'd have 150% flubendazole, and we all know that's impossible. Why not use the example that if you put in 50:50 petrol water into your car, at some stage there will be enough petrol to run it, it cannot happen, even though the weight of petrol is increasing, it won't run the car. Flubendazole is not a toxin to fish, it's not a nerve stimulant like prazi, and isn't a cumulative toxin in fish.
Hope this makes sense, and you're talking about extremes here, I can find studies showing how much sugar it takes to kill a human, but sugar is still not deemed a toxic substance. You can drink any amount of chlorinated 1% tap water and not kill yourself, if you drink 10 litres of 1% chlorine, it has little or no effect on you, drink 1 litre of 10% chlorine and your insides are burnt to shreds, with toxic results, again it's the concentration, not the amount/weight, although you've ingested the same total amount.
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Post by Nick »

Let me see if I understand this right, it's been more than a few years since college chemistry and only a few less than that since I had any good coursework in neurology... So, flubenol is a chemical compound with a certain ammount of flubenzadole bound to it. This compound will bind with a certain receptor in certain invertebrates, and have an inhibitory effect on nutrient uptake, more so depending on the percentage of flubenzadole that molecule of the compound contains. Since you will be adding enough such that effectively all receptors will be acted on, reguardless of if it's eaten or added to the water, the only way to get enough receptor activation to block enough nutrient uptake is to use the binder with the higher percentage of the flubenzadole?
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Post by Paul Fox »

Nick wrote:Let me see if I understand this right, it's been more than a few years since college chemistry and only a few less than that since I had any good coursework in neurology... So, flubenol is a chemical compound with a certain ammount of flubenzadole bound to it. This compound will bind with a certain receptor in certain invertebrates, and have an inhibitory effect on nutrient uptake, more so depending on the percentage of flubenzadole that molecule of the compound contains. Since you will be adding enough such that effectively all receptors will be acted on, reguardless of if it's eaten or added to the water, the only way to get enough receptor activation to block enough nutrient uptake is to use the binder with the higher percentage of the flubenzadole?
Long queston, simple answer, yes :)

5% flubenol leaves a residue of resistant parasites, most koi keepers have to treat several times because of this, and this is the first year alot of koi keepers have had serious fluke problems that are not being eliminated by the usual measures, so flubenol 15 has now found a use in the koi world.
Please be aware though, flubenol 15 was developed over 15 years ago for a discus supplier and his customers, and for fish at discus tempratures, due to European red tape it is now available on the open market to allow the discus supplier to comply with the regulations and continue using it for his custmers and him. For discus it needs to be used at the dose rate on the pack, but fish at lower temperatures with slower metabolising parasites, need less of the substance, until these levels are determined it would be best to continue with the discus instructions.
Bottom line, if too low a concentration of flubendazole is used, parasite resistance can occur, using too little of the substance can mean only a temporary or partitial receptor shutdown. Overdosing has shown no adverse effects even at very high overdosing even on ultra sensitive species like stingrays.
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Fella
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Post by Fella »

When this stuff arrives in the mail, I'll be needing much shorter explanations of how to dose it. I'm sadly not very scientifically minded!
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Nick
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Post by Nick »

The packets I got were 100 gallon treatments, so to treat 30 gallons, I cut the pile of powder into 3 equal parts on a sheet of paper, a piece of tag board or credit card works fine, dumped 2 back into the packet, and the other into a pitcher of dechlorinated water, which I dumped into the tank after mixing it well. Very easy, just added it along with my evaporation topoff water.
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