Hey guys I have a pair of large dovii and the female has contracted some mild HITH. They are currently in a 500 gallon. I do not want to move the fish to another tank as it is very hard to scoop them out of this large tank. Is there a way to treat HITH in a tank this size without spending a ton on the required amount of chemicals? Possibly similar to how one may treat the disease in a pond? The water parameters are perfect. I have a feeling the infected female was already carrying the disease when I purchased her 2 months ago. The male I have had since 1 inch and he is 13 inches and is displaying no signs of the disease that I can tell. Maybe some very very early signs of lateral line erosion. Any help on the topic would be greatly appreciated.
HITH huge treatment?
- Thread starter Torchia32
- Start date
I think you're gonna have to take her out. I usually see people use metro for hith along with a million water changes.
Treating the tank is a last minute resort that is not really effective. The best treatment is ingestion. You can get metro over the counter (hikari/seachem) or measured dosage from a vet which you can then soak food in for ingestion. NLS also makes a pellet called HEX that is suppose to be very effective which mixes metro and epsom salt. There is also just treating via epsom salt soaked food.
If you go to the disease section you will see stickies on this and tons of posts. Hith is the likely cause of death of my fish where I treated multiple times over 2 years. If you can get to them to eat, that is the best. Next step is figuring out dosage.
If you go to the disease section you will see stickies on this and tons of posts. Hith is the likely cause of death of my fish where I treated multiple times over 2 years. If you can get to them to eat, that is the best. Next step is figuring out dosage.
This should have been made a sticky .......
http://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/forums/threads/hith-revisited.650466/
Hope that helps.
http://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/forums/threads/hith-revisited.650466/
Hope that helps.
RD - Was waiting for you to post. My rhom that you were helping me with unfortunately passed away on the weekend. Nothing I tried helped and his HITH accelerated. I don't know if that killed him as I suspect that he might have had other parasites that I did not treat He was eating such little for so long but never showed starvation effects which is why I think that. I got so focused on the HITH I did not bother treating with something like prazipro. This is all theory but makes me wonder.
Impossible to say with certainty, at that stage of life some older fish such as yours just don't have what it takes to fight off whatever the ailment might be. No different than a 90 yr old human with a weakened immune system, vs a healthy 25 yr old. For the latter a simple chest infection can probably be fought off on their own, with the former even with antibiotics the same respiratory infection could lead to a case of pneumonia, and ultimately death. Sorry to read about your fish.
A method I recently came up with (at least I think I did never seen it elsewhere) for getting a fish to injest a known quantity of met was to make an aqueous solution of met powder in warm water and inject it into a night crawler. Just don't inject so much that the worm explodes which takes some trial and error. Next time I do this im going to make the solution less watery and make it more pasty if it works. I don't know if the met is soluable enough to do that though.
Second suggestion would be to make some gel food. See my thread of DIY make your own worms if you haven't tried the DIY gel food yet. I would suggest dosing the met powder into each cube of gel before going into the refrigerator instead of into the whole batch as you can control the dosage better.
Second suggestion would be to make some gel food. See my thread of DIY make your own worms if you haven't tried the DIY gel food yet. I would suggest dosing the met powder into each cube of gel before going into the refrigerator instead of into the whole batch as you can control the dosage better.
Here's the link to making gel food. Best of luck with the fish.
http://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/forums/threads/diy-make-your-own-worms.667696/
http://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/forums/threads/diy-make-your-own-worms.667696/
If your fish eat pellets, personally I would get hold of some NLS Hex-Shield. Hands down one of the best options currently available. If that doesn't clean your fish out, they don't have HITH, or are too far gone to be helped. If they flat out refuse to eat the food then you need to become more creative.
FYI ..... both Epsom infused food, and metro infused foods has been used. The problem being that according to experts such as Noga et al, when feeding metro it requires being dosed at a certain rate in relation to the weight of the fish. Not always easy to do. Overdosing can create secondary problems, such as organ damage. The main issue with gel food is that some nutrients (such as vitamin c) and the medication itself (Metro), will be negatively affected by the temp of the boiling water.
FYI ..... both Epsom infused food, and metro infused foods has been used. The problem being that according to experts such as Noga et al, when feeding metro it requires being dosed at a certain rate in relation to the weight of the fish. Not always easy to do. Overdosing can create secondary problems, such as organ damage. The main issue with gel food is that some nutrients (such as vitamin c) and the medication itself (Metro), will be negatively affected by the temp of the boiling water.
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If you can point to a study or data showing the accepted quantities of met for fish of various weights I would love to see it. It may help me in the future. As far as met breaking down at temp I would agree it's probably a bad idea to add it to the boiling mixture but it could be easily added to an ice cube try in individual doses before the gel has cured and when it's well below the breakdown temperature. I imagine that the storage temperature recommended for various medications is at least an indicator of what temperatures the medication will remain stable.
The problem would be that if the doses suggested by those who have done the research are very small, it may be hard for someone without the right equipment to weigh out very small quantities. It seems theoretically possible that dosing meds this way could be very accurate assuming the proper doses of the medication could be administered in the desired quantity. I'm sure this method would be more accurate then soaking pellets in the met/water solution.
As far as vitamin C breaking down at boiling temperatures that's a whole different topic. I haven't read about this but wouldn't be the least bit suprised. As far as gel foods go however, I have found them to be useful in supplementing at least one finicky fish I have and feeding fry easily. Would I feed them only that for life or even for long periods? Probably not, without being sure that it was well rounded and it's easier just to offer a varied diet anyway.
I'm sure the met-laced foods are the way to go when available, but when my fish was sick he stopped eating entirely other then taking nightcrawlers so I did what made sense. Snuck it in his food.