The Puffer Forum

So Im very certain my little guy has IP's (Ask PP shes seen the pics) and after scouring my hell hole of a little city the only internal dewormer I could find was some preformulated little food pellets that Im pretty sure my GSP wouldnt eat. So I decided to leave no stone unturned and went to my local feed and tackle store and they had some powdered dewormer (Fenbendazole) for dogs.

Now that I found some Dewormer I need to get it to my little GSP and thats where Im running into a problem twofold. One, Fenbendazole is dosed as per the IP article is

Fenbendazole. Fenbedazole is another medication recommended by Noga. He suggests the following dosages for aquatic aplications:

Orally: 11 mg/lb of body weight for 3 days or 23 mg/lb once a week for 2 weeks or by tube feeding 23 mg/lb.

If the fish is not eating: Prolonged Immersion — 7.6 mg/g once a week for 3 weeks.

Now my GSP isnt close to a pound, he is more like >1/8th an once (16 ounces to a pound!) so doing the math and adding into account that its only a 22% mixture of Fenbendazole he should recieve a little less than 1 milligram of medicine... UH how do you measure out a milligram if your not in a labratory? And the packet comes with 4 grams, so I need 1/4000th of the packet! Can I OD the little guy on this stuff? If so how on earth are you supposed to feed these guys the right amount without taking them to seaworld labratories first? Second, how do I get it in his mouth? The stuff doesnt like dissolving in water, I can crush it into a watery paste, but its very thick.

Please anyone with some experience or ideas, help me out my little GSP doesnt have much time left.

And a second question, can I overmedicate him? Im using mela and pimafix on him for fin maintenance and for cotton fin (Which after 4 days isnt working well, its actually still growing a bit )
Now he has what looks to be a tiny white string about a mm long hanging from his side and Im afraid its an EP... I certainly learned my lesson, DO NOT BUY PUFFERS FROM WALMART, even if its the only place in town selling them. JUST DONT DO IT.

But I did and now I'm attached and I want to do whatever I can to save my George Saint Pierre.


BTW- Parameters are ph approx8.0 ammonia 0 nitrates a little above 5 nitrites 0.

Also he still eats food. He doesnt destroy the food like most GSPs but he still nibbles on krill and ate a snail recently. So he can take the food orally.

I would dust the dewormer on your puffer's food & soak it for at least an hour in that & garlic. I'd also pick off that wad of fungus off his body.

That wad is gone, unfortunatly it took a chunk of fin with it. The problem is there is a small amount of white stuff starting to grow there again, even using the pima and melafix...

The dewormer med Idea is a good one, Im going to try that today.

have you tried raising the temp to try and kill what ever it is?

...or does that only work on Ich?

Keep your water as clean as possible, do daily water changes if you aren't already.

What I do when I use levamisole (a pig dewormer) is add a little water to a plastic cup, put in a tiny scoop of the powder, dissolve it into the water, then soak the food. The food won't possibly soak up the entire dose, just a bit.. that seems to work. This is my usual method, although I add an equal amount of metronidazole to the water with the Levamisole.

That said, I have only used Fenbendazole with my horses, not my fish, so I couldn't tell you how it works for them. My assumption is that its pretty darn similar, but you know what they say about assuming!

Can I overdose on IP medicine (Fenbendazole in particular) I gave him a dose on monday and I dont want to OD him. Im not sure if I did it right, but I put a little bit of water on the palm of my hand (After rinsing my hands well) and put a bit of the meds in the water and then rubbed them into a paste on my palm. I then lathered the meds on his favorite, soaked krill and fed him. He ate some but Im not sure much got to him as alot of it disolved when it hit the water. At least he swam through it).

I want to try this again tonight if its not harmful.

Thanks!

*Usually* IP meds are pretty tame, but if the fish has a very high load of parasites and they all die off at once, it can be very hard on the fish to purge the dead and dying parasites. My guess is if he's doing fine today, you're just fine dosing him again, usually any problems with IP medications show up in the 24hrs after dosing.