Hexamita....

[captmicha]

Super pissed right now.

Got some new fish from Congressional a while ago, did a ten day dosing of Nitrofuracin Green and a 30 day dosing of Sulphamycin bc I suspected tuberculosis in one.

Yes, I pre-emptively hit these two meds bc I can't afford to keep losing fish I buy. And it's really cut down on my losses.

Anyways, after this long and arduous window, I put two of the mosquito fish into my community tank. It has various species and will house some SA cichlids or possibly Rainbow cichlids.

Anyways, my queen mosquito fish (not is one of the new guys) bloated like crazy today and is shedding her intestinal lining. Hexamita.

Either my meds went bad, or they don't treat this (I'm checking).

But what would you do at this point? Wait and see if anyone else shows signs or go ahead and treat the entire tank?

I have her some oral epsom salt (1 tbl to 17 oz of water). I don't think she's going to make it either bc I gave her too much, or from the stress, or the disease. Don't think I smushed her.

Apparently the drug of choice is Metro but it can he hard on kidneys and hard to treat a big tank with bc it stays in suspension for only about 6-8 hours.

On the other hand, I can treat epsom salt soaked feed but it reduces the parasite, it doesn't eliminate it.

Should I just buy/make Metro flakes/pellets and feed to everyone before anyone else dies?

 

[CSnyder00]

I'd treat individual fish, but that's just me. If you truly want to be safe, you should probably treat the whole tank. It seems odd you are losing that many fish. Are you doing your water changes and filtering enough?

 

[mchambers]

My understanding is that Hexamita can be present in a tank routinely, but be asymptomatic for long periods. So I would not assume that the new fish introduced it or that the quarantine was insufficient. In other words, it may have been present in your tank for a long time.

 

[CSnyder00]

My understanding is that Hexamita can be present in a tank routinely, but be asymptomatic for long periods. So I would not assume that the new fish introduced it or that the quarantine was insufficient. In other words, it may have been present in your tank for a long time.

I agree. This is why I asked the questions that I did. Like Ich and other fish diseases, stress can bring this about.

 

[Becca]

I'm pretty sure Hex is always there but fish get flare-ups when there's some sort of environmental issue - water quality, diet, stress-level. If your fish have good immune systems, they should keep Hex in check.