The Puffer Forum

Its apparent I've a parasite in my tank... as most my fish are affected one way or another.

Purple tang, flamehawk and puffer all are scratching against the live rock. Puffer has been stay at the very top of the tank. And SADLY, one of my clownfish jumped out of the tank in the wee hours of the morning.

Yesterday, I medicated the tank with Kent RXP.

I'm wondering can I add cleaner shrimp or with puffer eat the cleaner shrimp. If I can't add cleaner shrimp... can I add a cleaner wrasse? To help rid the fish of parasites?

Purple tang seems to be going up to each fish... wanting them to clean him.

I cannot stand to watch them suffer...

Any advice is welcomed!

Kent Rxp is a pepper based treatment. It has not been proven to eradicate parasites. The parasites normal life cycle is to feed on the fish for 1 - 7 days and then drop off as cysts waiting to develop into hundreds to thousands of free swimming parasites looking for a fish to feed off of and continue its life cycle. Adding many of the cure all treatments may irritate the parasite to fall off of the fish or the parasite may have been ready on its own (natural life cycle) - BUT the parasite has eaten and is continuing its life cycle in the tank. The pepper base or any of the other "natural" or "reef safe" treatments do NOT eradicate the parasite.

As mentioned in other threads....the only way to prevent ich is quarantine.
The only way to treat parasites - fallow (fishless) display tank for 4- 6 weeks (I prefer at least 6) and to treat ALL fish (even if you don't think all are infected) with hyposalinity OR copper.
Best of luck.

I would definitely follow Puffer Queens advice and run the tank fishless for six weeks while treating all your fish in a quarantine tank(s). It's really the only way I know of to get rid of a parasite infestation.

Afterwords, you could consider adding a cleaner shrimp, but depending on your puffer's personallity, you might be adding an expensive snack (I've heard of people having success with porcupines and cleaner shrimp though). You could also consider neon gobies - they're pretty handy little cleaners, but tiny, so again, they could become fish food.

Good luck,

Dan