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"The Lab" - Josh and Tiffany's IM Nuvo EXT 200

The bad news: my achilles hybrid started scratching again a week or so after the last round of prazipro. Argh.

The good news: after observing and watching for additional symptoms, I'm reasonably confident it's gill flukes due to the primary symptoms being scratching, rapid breathing in some of the tangs, and modest flashing, no white dots/etc, and the fact that prazipro stopped them scratching last time. I tried to confirm this by catching a fish or two for a freshwater bath, but only succeeded in stressing them out. So I took a sample and submitted it for an Aquabiomics test with the rationale that either 1) I'll have confirmation that there were flukes in the tank and I'm going down the right path, or 2) I don't have flukes and it'll give me a better idea of what's going on.

So, operating under the assumption that it's gill flukes - and the fact they seem to be more difficult to treat - I checked on Humble Fish for protocols from people that had used prazipro to treat gill flukes. After speaking to several people who had, I decided to take a heavier-handed approach and do 2.5 mg/ml of prazipro on day 1, 5, 7, and 9. Noting that I turned off carbon and UV to start, turned it on on Day 4, then turned them off prior to each dose for 24 hours before resuming. (Given the mechanism of action of praziquantel, 24 hours should be sufficient to work, it's fully out of the tank within ~72 hours without intervention, and the UV/carbon helps break it down and remove it to prevent overdosing).

My rationale is that my system doesn't have much inverts in it so it's okay to go heavier, and that the more frequent dosing should help overwhelm any treatment-resistant/difficult to treat flukes. Yesterday was the last dose, then I'll be doing a large water change tomorrow and hoping for the best.
 
IOnceWasLegend said:
The bad news: my achilles hybrid started scratching again a week or so after the last round of prazipro. Argh.

The good news: after observing and watching for additional symptoms, I'm reasonably confident it's gill flukes due to the primary symptoms being scratching, rapid breathing in some of the tangs, and modest flashing, no white dots/etc, and the fact that prazipro stopped them scratching last time. I tried to confirm this by catching a fish or two for a freshwater bath, but only succeeded in stressing them out. So I took a sample and submitted it for an Aquabiomics test with the rationale that either 1) I'll have confirmation that there were flukes in the tank and I'm going down the right path, or 2) I don't have flukes and it'll give me a better idea of what's going on.

So, operating under the assumption that it's gill flukes - and the fact they seem to be more difficult to treat - I checked on Humble Fish for protocols from people that had used prazipro to treat gill flukes. After speaking to several people who had, I decided to take a heavier-handed approach and do 2.5 mg/ml of prazipro on day 1, 5, 7, and 9. Noting that I turned off carbon and UV to start, turned it on on Day 4, then turned them off prior to each dose for 24 hours before resuming. (Given the mechanism of action of praziquantel, 24 hours should be sufficient to work, it's fully out of the tank within ~72 hours without intervention, and the UV/carbon helps break it down and remove it to prevent overdosing).

My rationale is that my system doesn't have much inverts in it so it's okay to go heavier, and that the more frequent dosing should help overwhelm any treatment-resistant/difficult to treat flukes. Yesterday was the last dose, then I'll be doing a large water change tomorrow and hoping for the best.
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That's tough. Awhile ago I picked up a fire fish and it ended up having flukes. I read up a lot from them, and it seems like there's a lot of prazi resistant flukes out there; that included mine. I did the full treatments to the book and it did nothing.

Hyposalinity however worked great. Not an option if you have coral and I think not an option with inverts, but it solved the problem for me.

Also I recall reading flukes are one of the types of parasites that shrimp are very effective on. I can't recall exactly what kind, but I think I documented it on bar and there was info on humblefish about it. My recollection was peppermints were the ideal, followed by cleaner shrimp. I think they also could get the trophont stage, preventing spread.
 
richiev said:
That's tough. Awhile ago I picked up a fire fish and it ended up having flukes. I read up a lot from them, and it seems like there's a lot of prazi resistant flukes out there; that included mine. I did the full treatments to the book and it did nothing.

Hyposalinity however worked great. Not an option if you have coral and I think not an option with inverts, but it solved the problem for me.

Also I recall reading flukes are one of the types of parasites that shrimp are very effective on. I can't recall exactly what kind, but I think I documented it on bar and there was info on humblefish about it. My recollection was peppermints were the ideal, followed by cleaner shrimp. I think they also could get the trophont stage, preventing spread.
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Sorry you had that difficulty! Fortunately, one week post-treatment, it seems like my strategy did the trick. None of the fish have been scratching or flashing, and all of them have had a huge appetite again. I suspect prazi-resistant flukes as well, and I'd suspect this treatment strategy may work better than the one suggested on the bottle because 1) prazi degrades pretty quickly, and is out of the system after 3 days, and 2) prazi resistant doesn't mean prazi-proof, so adding it multiple times in short order should help knock out any that survive the first wave or two.

I'll know for certain in a few days if it was flukes, though, since I'm doing an Aquabiomics test.
 
Update 9/10/23

I've been running the big holding tank in my garage fallow for the last few months, with the aim of having pest-free coral to transfer into the display tank. Anticipating the frag swap today and the coral farmers' market coming up in a couple weeks, I started up a small IM Nuvo 14 peninsula tank (thanks @Srt4eric!) to act as a coral and invert QT tank going forward. I'll be following Humble Fish's guide to coral/invert QT, and will slowly raise the tank temp to 80.6 F to shorten the fallow period to 45 days; and the nice part is that adding new coral to this system doesn't reset the timer on the fallow period for the other corals.

Our dragon soul mini-colony and two heads of dragon tamer from our old tank are almost through QT, as are several favias and our elegance. I put everything I got from the frag swap today into QT tonight (with special thanks to @thephoreefer for a large number of torches I purchased from him, and @Invictus for selling me some stunning chalices), and am currently running one of the XR30 G5's over this 14 gallon tank.

Can't wait to see how these look in the display.
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IOnceWasLegend said:
Update 9/10/23

I've been running the big holding tank in my garage fallow for the last few months, with the aim of having pest-free coral to transfer into the display tank. Anticipating the frag swap today and the coral farmers' market coming up in a couple weeks, I started up a small IM Nuvo 14 peninsula tank (thanks @Srt4eric!) to act as a coral and invert QT tank going forward. I'll be following Humble Fish's guide to coral/invert QT, and will slowly raise the tank temp to 80.6 F to shorten the fallow period to 45 days; and the nice part is that adding new coral to this system doesn't reset the timer on the fallow period for the other corals.

Our dragon soul mini-colony and two heads of dragon tamer from our old tank are almost through QT, as are several favias and our elegance. I put everything I got from the frag swap today into QT tonight (with special thanks to @thephoreefer for a large number of torches I purchased from him, and @Invictus for selling me some stunning chalices), and am currently running one of the XR30 G5's over this 14 gallon tank.

Can't wait to see how these look in the display.
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thats a whole lotta light for a 14 gal! lol
 
Arvin R said:
thats a whole lotta light for a 14 gal! lol
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I'm planning on getting a G4 XR30 for it to try and keep as many parameters (salt, chemistry, lights, etc) similar between QT and DT as I can. Plan for one fell through today, so I just pilfered one from the holding tank as a stopgap.

That being said...yeah, definition of overkill right here. :) It's only being run at ~20%.
 
Update, 9/18/23

Main tank is continuing to thrive pretty well. All the fish are happy, no recurrence of scratching or flashing, several fish are noticeably fatter, and - coolest of all - one of our bimaculatus anthias has transitioned to male! My one complaint is that there are 'mats' of green hair algae in a few of the slightly lower-flow areas of the sand bed. They've been receding a bit since the tangs/urchins have been picking at it, but remain annoying. Since I'd have to QT any snails, I grabbed two sand-sifting starfish (ich/velvet tomonts can't encyst on them, so I just rinsed and added them) and we'll see how that goes.

I'm also excited because coral additions will start happening soon. Lots of torches, favia, and goniopora have been in my holding tank, which has been running fallow since June 29. September 13th marked the end of the fallow period. I should have done this earlier, but last Saturday I dipped them in CoralRx to get rid of the red planaria on them, and transferred them to the new (clean) coral QT system. Earlier today, I hit the tank with Flatworm eXit to broadcast kill any of them that had hatched from the remaining eggs. I saw absolutely nothing, so I'm excited to start adding coral to the display later this week!
 
Update 9-22-23
Transferred all the coral that'd finished QT from the QT tank over to the display! Everything's kinda pissed off, though, given the CoralRx dip I did before adding them as a preventative measure (just in case there were more planaria eggs that'd hatched since the flatworm exit last weekend).

Next batch will be ready the first weekend in November.

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Update 10-21-23
Still in a bit of a holding pattern right now as I wait for stuff to pass through QT, but making a bit of progress.

I've had persistent algae on the sand bed, so I started skimming more aggressively and done a bit of carbon dosing to start knocking it back. For a more long-term solution, I spoke with Kenny at High Tide, and I'll be getting a bella goby from him to stir up the sand bed (since they're not quite as aggressive in spreading sand as the diamond gobies are). I also touched base with a new Humblefish-certified QT'd invert vendor, Inverted Reef, and picked up 25 nassarius snails. When their next batch of stuff releases I'll be adding some fighting conchs, trochus, as well as a few dozen blue-legged hermit crabs and a lot more dwarf ceriths (in addition to the strawberry conchs and trochuses I have going through my QT system right now).

Hair algae choked out the little bit of chaeto I added a few months ago, also, so I went ahead and got some clean chaeto, scrubbed out all the hair algae from the fuge, and added a larger quantity of chaeto this time.

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Everything I picked up from the frag swap - including @thephoreefer 's torches and some gorgeous chalices from @Invictus - will be done with QT and ready to add a week from tomorrow. Two weeks from tomorrow, everything from CFM goes in. Then, hopefully in November, we'll have our bella goby, mandarin pair, and porcupine puffer to complete the fish list. For now, though - algae aside - the tank looks happy!

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