Using Kanamycin powder

spiff44

Bronze Tier VIP
MFK Member
Dec 20, 2007
924
68
561
Midwest
Has anybody used Kanamycin powder in a custom food before? I'm curious what you did.. dosages.. ect and if it even helped in your situation.

My tank has Columnaris and so far nothing has got rid of it permanently. Up until now I have been dosing the water itself, which hasn't worked and is expensive.

My concern is that I read that Kanamycin is easily dissolved in water.. so mixing up food batch that keeps solid form is going to be the trick here. I'm thinking extra jello solids and make small pellets out of whatever custom food mixture that I come up with. but the pellets need to stay solid through almost a 5 foot depth of water.

Any suggestion or experiences out there?
 

DMD123

Bronze Tier VIP
MFK Member
Oct 23, 2009
7,067
8,709
478
Lakewood, WA
I have used the Seachem Kanaplex and Focus mixed according to the instructions on the package and mixed into crushed pellets and frozen bloodworms. My mix included a bit of Epsom salt and peas along with a little Boyd's vitamin. The thing is I used this stuff in a baby syringe with silicone tubing attached and force fed it to a very sick fish with great results. In your case the best method would likely be to freeze it and then throw whole pieces in the tank to feed.
 

spiff44

Bronze Tier VIP
MFK Member
Dec 20, 2007
924
68
561
Midwest
Thanks DMD... so did it work on your fish.. getting rid of the Columnaris or whatever you was using it for?

I have been using it for week now.. so its hard to tell if its doing anything yet or not. I'm guessing this will be a long term application.. probably a month of feeding them dosed food to make a difference. I'm using a lot of garlic too.
 

predatorkeeper87

Potamotrygon
MFK Member
Sep 8, 2014
4,293
2,029
164
pennsylvania
In my personal experience, I have used the ever-fabled kanaplex/furan-2 cocktail and it works, period. If the columnaris bacteria isn't far along into your fish you should see results extremely quickly. I'm never mixed it in food before however, just treated the tanks. How big of a tank do you have that's infected/how many fish?
 

spiff44

Bronze Tier VIP
MFK Member
Dec 20, 2007
924
68
561
Midwest
That's just it.. the tank has always had it... for 6 years. There are fish that have had symptoms for years... I guess the overall healthiness of the water parameters is helping them fight off this disease that from what I read should be killing them in short order.. as in days. The fastest I have seen a fish die after visible symptoms is several months.. but some of fish have survived a couple years.. its just now the spots and lesions cover much more of their bodies.

At 1700 gallons, options for treating the water is limited.. but on several occasions I have done so and it helped.. but never permanently. Symptoms would usually return a month after the last dose, which makes me think it was never really completely gone.

So probably all of the several hundred fish in the tank are infected.. but this will be the first time I have tried the medicated food approach. I'm hoping a long term.. or maybe even a permanent or semi-permanent med-feeding regime will help eventually clear it up.

I'm glad to hear of the success story for you.. it gives me hope.
 

predatorkeeper87

Potamotrygon
MFK Member
Sep 8, 2014
4,293
2,029
164
pennsylvania
Try adding furan-2 to that mix...I can't attest to the effectiveness or safety of using it internally but with that size tank and stock and that being the only real effective method of combating columnaris bacteria I'd do it. Can you possibly throw up some pics of the infected fish? I'm not doubting your diagnosis, however columnaris showing outward visible symptoms usually spells fate for the fish within a month if not days so I'm curious to see how they look. That's another thing with that particular bacteria...it behaves similar to our ever-loved beneficial bacteria in that it creates a biofilm on surfaces were it can survive without a host for a period of time up to a month or so I've been told. Its also aerobic in addition to being a gram-negative bacteria, so reducing the DO in your water will help combat this problem. Kill your airstones and keep any gas exchanges to a minimum were your fish will still be able to breathe, but low enough to prevent the bacteria from multiplying as easily.
 

spiff44

Bronze Tier VIP
MFK Member
Dec 20, 2007
924
68
561
Midwest
Sure.. I can get pictures.. might be tomorrow.

I just read up on Furan-2... I'm not seeing it available for internal use... for one thing it has methlene blue.. not sure if I would want to add that to fish food. Is this what you did?
 

predatorkeeper87

Potamotrygon
MFK Member
Sep 8, 2014
4,293
2,029
164
pennsylvania
I didn't, I treated the tank with it. Maybe continue the internal kana treatment, and look into salt and H2O2 treatment for the tank, as those both have also been proven effective against columnaris. I've never personally used H2O2 to treat the tank, though a lot of people swear by it
 

spiff44

Bronze Tier VIP
MFK Member
Dec 20, 2007
924
68
561
Midwest
Gotcha.. I misunderstood then.

Yeah, I have doing everything I can... I have been running a high salt percentage... also keep two 35watt UVs going. Parameters are always good too.. nitrates rarely go above 10%. I'm hoping the recently started medicated food regimen will help.

For right now I bought Peabody brand kanamyacin flakes.. but I didn't realize how small the packages are.. these are not going to last long. Plus.. a lot of the fish are too big for flake so they haven't been getting much meds so far. I was dumping a bunch into a cup and then soaking in garlic making a nice paste and then would let this dry overnight into hard rocks. But these "rock" disintegrate pretty quickly.. they don't come close to reaching the floor of the tank.

So eventually I'm going to be getting the pure kanamyacin powder and making my own feed. I was just wondering other than Jello.. are there other products to help make a hard water resistant pellet? Baking isn't an option as I'm pretty sure that will destroy the kanamyacin.
 
zoomed.com
hikariusa.com
aqaimports.com
Store