My turn..... Sick ray

[DB junkie]

What are the symptoms???

Loss of appetite and shy???

Loss of appetitie just started a few days ago.... Shy was a week ago.

Now it's bad. Rear fins are tattered and back of disk is rotting. Her eyes are hazed over and she has a really thick slime coat (kinda greyish) that is shedding. Breathing appears accelerated, but not what I would call gasping. All in all she looks horrible.

She has all of the symptoms my last WC Marble had before passing. I introduced him to the pond and within 3 days he quit eating. I moved him to a hospital tank with higher temp and salt. His disk began rotting and was dead within 2 days. After seeing NO ill effects on any other rays in the pond including the other 2 WCs that came in with him, and little input from anyone else, I concluded it must have been stressed induced. As he was eating and acting just fine for 3 weeks prior to snacking on an Armatus, and in turn earning a one way ticket to the pond.

I didn't medicate the male. Maybe if I did I'd still have him. Maybe if I did he would have passed sooner. All I know is I am still really upset by it and I felt as though I didn't try hard enough, I didn't act soon enough, and lack of meds just leaves me wondering IF I could have saved him. Allready been down the "no meds" road once and it failed me. IF I lose one using meds maybe that is just a sign of things to come if I continue being an irresponsible ray keeper.

 

[tank125]

Well to answer the Binox usage question. Dose EVERY Day for 7 days, doing a 50% w/c every day before dosing. The w/c is just to replenish oxygen and dilute possible ammonia from filter die-off. Therefore you may not need to do 50% daily, but do dose daily. I did it with 10-15% water change daily with no ill effects. But I have 15 gallons of Bio balls on a 300 gallon system, as well as 4 x largest size Hydro sponges, and a large air pump.

 

[DB junkie]

Thank you for the advice. It seems you had a great deal of success with your Binox treatment, so your experience helps me a lot.

Do I add full strength every day? (1 tsp/25 gallons) Or just 50% (since waterchange is 50%) Since I sent 1/2 mine to Canada I only have enough to treat FULL strength for 4 days.

I believe I have at least 50-60 gallons of scrubbies and roughly 20 gallons of Bio balls. Has to be close to 80 gallons total. 3 airpumps total on the pond..... But have a blower I could use to add more O2, tried it for a while but just hadn't got the plumming finished up yet.

Thanks again for taking the time to help me out in my time of need.

 

[tank125]

Well I used pure Nitrofurazone, Binox is Nitrofurazone + Salt*. My dose was a tsp/100Gallons!!! I am not sure now how to advise the use of Binox. Does it say what percentage of it is salt?

I chose 1 tsp/100 gallons, based on the bottle recommendation of:
"1 tsp per 65 to 180 gallons"

So, IF Binox were pure Nitrofurazone the dose on the bottle would be 2.5 times the dose of my bottle of pure stuff!!!

 

[csx4236]

Do a single dose of bixon wait 24 hrs and do another full does. So your double dosing the tank over 24 hrs. Everytime you do a water change say 30% add in enough to cover the 30% only for single dose. I would water change every 2-3 days and replace the meds with each WC.

 

[skynoch]

I've been looking into my own problems more and am trying to come up with some more answers. If it's the same problem as the rest of us I'm sure it is brought out by stress. I don't know if I've even cured mine after all the salt and meds even. I took my leos out of the infected tank about 1-2 weeks ago and put in another system that is run off a drip system with no salt present. There also in with a 18" castexi and they're only 8-9" and eating great and looking great. My other rays in the infected tank kepted getting worse. My rays have now began showing some improvement in the last 5 days and all are eating slightly except two. I took the one that hasen't ate for 3 weeks and has the most damage on it's disk out and put it in the drip system pond with liner also. It is only 7" in with the leos and castexi and is allready shown improvement.
Gumby got one off of rudy which was doing good in Rudy's tank but has now developed the symptoms in his tank. There has to be a connection but not sure what it is yet. Need a little more discussion on this to figure our why
To do over I would dose with binox every day with a 1/3 water change every day for 4 days,temp at 86, and no salt or only 1 pound for 100 gallons and then stop.
Rudy has had this problem slightly and has only raised temp to solve the problem?

 

[tank125]

I've been looking into my own problems more and am trying to come up with some more answers. If it's the same problem as the rest of us I'm sure it is brought out by stress. I don't know if I've even cured mine after all the salt and meds even. I took my leos out of the infected tank about 1-2 weeks ago and put in another system that is run off a drip system with no salt present. There also in with a 18" castexi and they're only 8-9" and eating great and looking great. My other rays in the infected tank kepted getting worse. My rays have now began showing some improvement in the last 5 days and all are eating slightly except two. I took the one that hasen't ate for 3 weeks and has the most damage on it's disk out and put it in the drip system pond with liner also. It is only 7" in with the leos and castexi and is allready shown improvement.
Gumby got one off of rudy which was doing good in Rudy's tank but has now developed the symptoms in his tank. There has to be a connection but not sure what it is yet. Need a little more discussion on this to figure our why
To do over I would dose with binox every day with a 1/3 water change every day for 4 days,temp at 86, and no salt or only 1 pound for 100 gallons and then stop.
Rudy has had this problem slightly and has only raised temp to solve the problem?

The nitrofurazone, stuff in binox, takes 5-7 days to get into the system and start working

 

[vamptrev]

one thing i wanted to throw out there...

when i was havin probs w some pups, i found out i was doing too many water changes. i medicated, salted, etc and couldnt for the life of me figure out what was wrong. i finally left the tank alone for a week and every single pup turned to normal...

to fresh of water is prob too hard on small rays.

to me it sounds like ur doing way too much and u dont even know what the problem is. JMO

 

[DB junkie]

IF it takes 5-7 days to start working then why doesn't the directions tell you to use it for over a week? Tank didn't you stop treatment after 7 days?

I'd wager on the fact that it IS brought out by stress. I've watched this same thing happen allready. 1 ray gets stressed, dies, and no others even miss a beat. Excess buildup in filters could stress, other tankmates, NEW rays..... I think this all contributes. Just like people. IF I only sleep 4-5 hours a night eventually my imune system drops and I get sick. I don't think rays have that great of ability to be able to "deal" with stress. I think more times than not new arrivals are stressed OR cause stress and we pawn it off as an "infected" WC ray.

 

[DB junkie]

to me it sounds like ur doing way too much and u dont even know what the problem is. JMO

By simply adding Binox? I understand where you're coming from, BUT like I said, last time I didn't medicate and I lost the ray. I'm not going to repeat the same situation but expect a different result. That is the definition of insanity.... Which most of us know a lil is common place when you keep rays....LOL

I have heard time and time again that the magic # with drip systems is 20% WCs per day. I have used this as a refrence when doing daily waterchanges.... I'm NOT religeous on the dailys, I skip every now and then. I have had the same routine since I set up my pond. Never had a problem. IF I was changing TOO much would it really take almost a year to present itself as a "problem"? This ray is NOT new to me. It's been with me for probobly close to half a year now. Only thing that's changed is it is now by far the smallest and was in with rays twice her size. Upon adding the Jag and the newest WC male Marble (the 2 MOST active rays I have), I began to notice a change in her habbits. As soon as the habbits became commonplace she was moved to isolation (on the same system).