My fish were wiped by an internal parasite what next?

[Zack333]

A little over two months ago I got my first set of African peacocks and haps all juvenile males. Just two weeks ago I noticed what seemed to be symptoms of an internal parasite (lathargic fish, not eating, long stringy white poop). I took the charcoal out of the filter and dosed with prazipro which only stopped the fish that had white poop from pooping at all, or at least I never noticed it. After a week passed I lost about half my cichlids to this and tried Bifuran+, hoping that it would fix something as I had to leave for the next week and my brother would be feeding them or whatever fish would still eat. When I returned home I was left with one cichlid and my bristlenose pleco. The pleco appears to be fine he has dark poop, but the cichlid I'm not so sure of. He eats a little and isn't lethargic, but I have still yet to see any poop from him, but he seems to be on the road to recovery.
So my question is should I wait before adding more fish to this tank so whatever is in it goes away, and if so how long? Also this first experience for me with internal parasites has me a little shook and I am considering buying hex sheild and other medicated food for new fish I buy just to make sure they are clean but do not know if this is the best way to do so.
Thanks for your responses

 

[Deadliestviper7]

Don't buy a fish for that tank for a few months and continue doing frequent water changes

 

[duanes]

This sounds to me like a bacterial infection.
So I'd like to ask a few question.
How long was the tank set up before you added these fish?
Was it a new tank? If so, how was it cycled?
What was the average water temp?
What are the parameters of your tap water?
Things like pH, hardness, ammonia, nitrite and nitrate.
How often did you do water changes, and what percent, for what size tank?
What were parameters before water changes?
It will be hard to answer your query without knowing some background.
Because symptoms and infections don't just appear, there are reasons they begin.

 

[Zack333]

Thanks viper for the advice
Duans- to help me in the future how can I tell apart bacterial infections from internal parasites everything I googled pointed toward a parasite but it doesn't mean it was one, it definitely could have been something else
I have another tank just a 10g so I know most the basics, but not everything there's always more to learn but in the 56g cichlid tank with the problems:
As far as cycling I did a fish less cycle that I started before Easter ( idk the date) for about two months so these fish were the first ones in
The temperature is about 79 almost 80
Amonia and nitrites at 0 and I have never tested the water and seen over 15 nitrates apart from during the fish less cycle
I've been doing about a 40% water change about every week and a half or so
The tank is a 56g
My tap water has a ph of about 8.2 and it the same in the tank (the rock to wood ratio just happened to turn out that way)
And I don't know the numbers but I do know I have pretty hard water
If you find anything I'm doing wrong just tell me I understand something is probably off if this happened and want to make sure it doesnt again. thanks

 

[duanes]

Sounds like everything is in range, stress sometimes causes normally benign bacteria to become pathogenic so with everything close to normal for rift lake fish, that could be ruled out. Unless one or more fish are hyper alpha and causing stress.
Lake Tanganyika mid water temps are normally mid 70s, so you are not that far out of the ball park, around 80.
Surface water in the lake can hit 82 at certain times of year, but deeper water where peacocks live , is more mid 70s
If your tap water has enough alkalinity to keep pH from crashing between water changes, the water change schedule should be alright.
The only thing might be that one or more fish was infected, and it took two months for it to manifest a noticeable disease outbreak. You would need a lab test to be sure.
Stringy feces are usually indication of an intestinal bacterial infection, so a broad spectrum antibiotic (unless a worm/nematode is visible)
I believe there is a sticky on "bloat" and heximita type intestinal infections.

 

[Zack333]

Do you think that I should lower the temperature of the the tank to more like 78 then? Also the fish never seemed to be too stressed out but there was fish that were a little over one inch and others that were closer to two and a half so it is quite possible those little guys were. Also a fish with a pre-existing infection would make sense as well one of the Cichlids I got I hardly ever saw because he always hid in a cave (designed for the pleco) and was the first to pass which confused me a lot as he was the biggest and looking at him I could not see any external issues.
So as far as the difference between bacterial infections and internal parasites, string white poop means bacterial whereas visiable worms mean parasite. (At the time looking online I believed that bacterial infections caused a external abnormalities like Popeye and were not that contagious).
Lastly I still have my question about feeding medicated food or medicating right of the bat with new fish. Also if doing this is beneficial if you could name the types of medication I should use
Thank you so much for helping me

 

[squint]

Praziquantel only treats tapeworms and some flukes. There are at least 7-8 types of intestinal parasites that require different treatments.

Most parasites are only a nuisance and don't kill their host as that often results in their deaths. Tapeworm are not particularly deadly.

I had a severum that apparently had tapeworm for 9 years. I never noticed any symptoms but when I dosed PraziPro for the first time, worms came streaming out of him. Of course, the fish that were bloated and that I was trying to treat had nothing.


The thing about fish diseases is that they're often not easy to diagnose based on visual signs. Most require a microscope. All the textbooks on fish disease rely heavily on microscopy for diagnoses.

 

[Zack333]

Ok so I just discovered something interesting about my Garrenteed MALE cichlids...
The one survivor did not eat tonight and seemed to just push the food with its mouth shut. It also seemed to be bulging in the mouth and looked way thinner ( I admit I thought I was feeding to much before but the other fish never got this fat and the little ones never got the food fast so I put enough in so they could). Know cichlids are mouth brooders I thought maybe it's eggs, but how in my all male tank?
Long story short I have a female African with eggs guess a female in the tank. Could this be cause agression causing stress and eventually bacterial infections?