How to use focus

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Deadeye

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I recently picked up focus so I can feed metro to my puffers. One is looking a little too thin for comfort.
I understand the instructions- but I’m still pretty much lost on how to actually feed this stuff to the fish. I mixed it and metro with the food in a very small amount of water, and lots of powder went into the tank with it. The food was frozen mysis (thawed). Do I have to re freeze food? Does it only work in a paste type food? Or is a lot of metro being bound to the food and just not all of it gets on?
 
If I have some substance that I want to get inside of my fish, but which is something that can't be simply fed to them...either because it will be lost in the water, or they won't eat it, or whatever other reason...I have had great success with a couple of different methods.

First, if you happen to feed your fish any type of gel food, either commercial or simply DIY stuff, it is very simple to add the supplement to the gel during mixing. A properly-mixed gelatin food dissolves very slowly in the tank, so if your fish have anything resembling an appetite, the stuff will be eaten before any is lost. With larger fish, you can be quite accurate with the dosage simply by doing some math to create a mix that contains a known quantity of supplement, divide that amount into individual portions that contain the amount you need the fish to eat, and then cut that into small enough pieces so that you can add them by hand, one at a time, making sure that each fish gets the correct amount.

For larger fish, it's even easier to buy empty gelatin capsules at the drug store and then fill them with the appropriate quantity of supplement, then slit open a larger piece of food and tuck them inside before feeding. This works great with things like whole frozen fish, fresh earthworms, etc. Jam the capsule into the food item, from front to back, as a predator normally swallows food headfirst and this keeps the capsule from being squeezed out during swallowing. Again, this requires that the food item be swallowed whole.

Either method works well with powdered supplements. For liquids, it works fairly well to apply the correct number of drops to a couple of freeze-dried krill or a partial cube of freeze-dried tubifex, and feeding this after the liquid has been completely absorbed. Freeze-dried foods soak up liquid like a sponge. This isn't as accurate in terms of dosage as the other methods, so maybe not ideal for medicines but great for vitamin supplements, etc.
 
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Thanks for the tips - I guess part of the issue is that the puffers are super picky as is.
Both the focus and metroplex are in powder forms. The focus is designed so that the metro can be bound to food, it just seems like a lot is lost.
 
Bump
 
Mix it in a bit of warm water, soak ur food in it. IMO ull always have a bit of “loss” but metro does wonders when ingested. I usually do a treatment like that for 3-4 feedings based on results and go from there. Ive had fish turn around in 24 hrs. Works well with pellets. I mix in a bit of water, add pellets, let it absorb the mixture for a few hrs until it almost dries back out, then feed. Could work well with a piece of shrimp also. Let it soak in the mixture for a few hrs in hopes to absorb some of the meds. Honestly my “go to” is the cheap api “general cure”. It contains metro and prazi in little powder packets and can be had at the chain stores. There smart, they may spit it out… just b persistent. Even 1 soaked piece may do it for ya ?. The hard part is guessing how much powder to use for a “soak”. I just wing it and repeat if needed.
 
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Not sure what theyll take for ya food wise, u can mix a bit in water then syringe/inject it into a night crawler also. Maybe worth a shot if there super picky.
 
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Not sure what theyll take for ya food wise, u can mix a bit in water then syringe/inject it into a night crawler also. Maybe worth a shot if there super picky.
They will eat mainly brine shrimp, mysis, and bloodworms. So far I’ve been putting the food in a bit of water with focus + metro and mixing it together.
 
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They will eat mainly brine shrimp, mysis, and bloodworms. So far I’ve been putting the food in a bit of water with focus + metro and mixing it together.
About all u can do then, keep the water minimal so its as thick/potent as possible. Ive read once it hits water it starts losing its potency but def. let it soak for an hr to get it in the food then into them as best u can.
 
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They will eat mainly brine shrimp, mysis, and bloodworms. So far I’ve been putting the food in a bit of water with focus + metro and mixing it together.

doesn't the defrosted food already have water? That should be sufficient. Or are you using dehydrated food?
 
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doesn't the defrosted food already have water? That should be sufficient. Or are you using dehydrated food?
The brine shrimp is freeze dried, but the mysis and bloodworms are frozen. I’ll keep that in mind.
The instructions are annoyingly vague for how to actually dose the medication in anything but gel foods.
 
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