3 Step Treatment Program
Note: This is an excerpt from my Guppy Care Simplified book available on Amazon: Guppy Care Simplified
I use this program for three purposes:
- To screen fish for diseases before they are integrated into my fish room.
- To treat stressed fish that appear to be in the first stages of getting sick.
- To diagnose disease
The main sources of disease are:
- those already existing in your tanks, and
- those introduced through food, new guppies, or plants.
The main causes of disease are:
- lowered immunity to existing diseases (poor water conditions or other forms of stress), and
- infectious diseases from newly introduced fish.
Once your fish show signs of disease it is usually too late to treat it, so taking preventative measures is really the only effective disease control program.
Feeding your guppies nutritious foods sparingly and maintaining them in a healthy environment are covered extensively in this site. This is the most basic disease control measure.
There is little you can do about highly infectious viral diseases introduced from new guppies and many bacterial diseases because they do not respond well--or not at all--to most fish medications. The only effective treatment I have found is the use of the caustic alkali potassium permanganate, found in some pet store "water clarifiers." This is a dangerous chemical, but it is useful to reduce the organic load in your tank, effectively removing the food supply for pathogens and killing small pathogens.
But more generally, you should try to spot and remove sick individuals from tanks and weather the disease storm. My own inclination, and this is only true of viral or lethal bacterial diseases, is to empty a chronically sick tank of fish and bleach it.
The most obvious disease control measure is to quarantine newly acquired guppies. The three step program is used to clean them of common parasites.
Newly arrived guppies may have highly infectious diseases for which they have developed immunity. Or they may develop infectious diseases as a result of the stress of adapting to a new environment. Or they may have no immunity to diseases carried by your strains. An outbreak of those diseases among the new guppies can overwhelm existing guppies immune systems. Keep them in a separate tank with its own cleaning utensils for 3-4 weeks.
However there are parasitic diseases that you can virtually eradicate from your fish room and from newly introduced guppies. Here is a three-step program for treating existing guppies and new guppies. All the suggested chemicals will not destroy the nitrifying bacteria.
I also use the three step program as a diagnostic tool. If the sick guppies do not respond to the chemicals in the program, then I know they are infected with an unknown parasite or a bacterial disease. My last ditch effort is to treat the tank with potassium permanganate, although I only take this step if the guppies cannot be replaced. Otherwise I cull the tank and bleach it.
I have added a section that follows on suggestions for sourcing the medications if the products I mention are not available in your area.
Three Step Treatment Program
Step One: Fish arriving from a long journey immediately get treatment with a natural healing product called Aquarium Pharmaceuticals Melafix. It will help heal any wounds that occurred from handling and help prevent skin and fin infections.
On the same day, I treat the guppies with a drug cocktail effective against a broad range of parasites. Tetra, the large U.S. pet products manufacturer, provides a product that dissolves in the water and has four active ingredients that are effective against the most common internal parasites. It is called Parasite Guard.
Here is how it is described by the manufacturer:
Fast dissolving pre-measured tablets means easy and convenient removal of parasites, including flukes, internal worms, lice, anchor worm and flagellates such as hexemita or spironucleus associated with hole-in-the-head disease. Also protects against secondary infections. Contains diflubenzuron, praziquantel, metronidazole, and acriflavine. One tablet per 10 gallons.
If the guppies’ immune system has been compromised by a long and stressful journey, this chemical cocktail removes parasites and makes it easier for the guppies to recover. And it prevents the introduction of these parasites to my fish room.
I use this product throughout its treatment regime, which consists of three treatments two days apart.
If this product is not available, look for products with the active ingredients: diflubenzuron, praziquantel, metronidazole, and acriflavine.
Step Two: The second day after the first step I treat with a product that acts as a fungicide and bactericide. This is the Tetra product Fungus Guard product. It is effective against fungus, tail, fin or mouth rot, hemorrhagic septicemia, clamped fins and dropsy. Also clears furuncolosis (open red sores), eye cloud (white hazy film on eyes), pop eye (enlarged eyes), sim bladder disease (fish swims on side or upside down). The active ingredients are nitrofurazone, furzolidone and potassium dichromate.
I follow the treatment regime with a second application four days later.
Step Three: After I have finished the course of treatment with the Parasite Guard and Fungus Clear products, I finish with a more thorough internal parasite and bacterial treatment.
This is the most difficult of the steps, because the parasite treatments are hard to acquire.
What I do is acquire the chemicals, dissolve them in water, pour the water into a fine mist sprayer (one used to moisten plants) and spray the mixture on fish food spread out in a pan. Then I point a fan at the food and thoroughly dry it out. The fish are fed exclusively with this medicated food for the prescribed treatment period.
You can buy medicated food, but like most food it has to be refrigerated and thrown out after six months. A good source of medicated food is Angels Plus (http://www.angelsplus.com/MedsParasite.htm) in the U.S. The food base they use is excellent.
For an additional dewormer that is effective, use the drug fenbendazole.
I have also used piperazine as a dewormer, but it has to be fed for a month because it apparently only paralyzes the worm. There is a danger the guppies will swallow a paralyzed worm and its eggs.
Camalanus is a particularly difficult worm. It appears as a long red thread out of the fish’s anus. Some success has been reported using the vet medicine levamisole. But it is so aggressive and hard to treat the general advice is to empty the tank and bleach it.
You cannot remove all types of parasites from your tanks and you may introduce new parasites through live foods and some dry foods. So when the denizens in a tank look stressed, these products provide a relatively inexpensive way to screen them against the most common diseases.
If you do get a breakout of diseases that appear to be parasitic, marked by shimmying, guppies scratching themselves on objects or the bottom of the tank, lack of appetite, hanging near the surface, or a hollow belly, then it is a good bet it is one of the parasitic diseases identified above. Treating incoming fish with these chemicals is an absolute necessity.
Columnaris
Because I use the three-step program to treat incoming fish, and because worm infections are relatively easy to diagnose and treat (with the possible exception of camalanus), the most common disease I encounter in the "disease-free" fish room is columnaris. In fact it is impossible to rid the fish room of columnaris. It shows up when conditions in the fish room deteriorate, especially when the water is fouled, or has a high bio-load.
Columnnaris is a gram negative, aerobic, rod shaped bacterium called Flavobacterium columnare. There are different species, some extremely infectious and deadly. A strain for which your fish have not immunity will often be introduced into a stable fish room by new fish.
The symptoms of an outbreak are fairly obvious. What I have noticed is the fish suddenly become weak, barely able to lift themselves off the bottom of the tank, or hovering at the back and top of the tank. They may shimmy. Their fins may close.
You have to jump on this right away. Do a fifty percent water change (siphoning all debris from the tank) and thoroughly rinse out your filter media in the water siphoned from the tank. Add five or six drops of Potassium Permanganate (PP) to the tank (per five gallons), depending on the strength of PP you are using. The water should turn purple. After a few hours it changes to a brownish, yellowish color. Add five or six more drops. I use a product sold as a "water clarifier." Do a search on the Internet for a source for this medication and be very careful how much you use. Because it is a caustic alkali it can burn your fish's sensitive gills, causing permanent damage. It will also burn away a lot of the organics in the water, which may have created the bacterial bloom in the first place. Or it could be a fouled filter.
Do not feed your guppies, even if they seem to rise in the morning hungry.
Once they appear to recover a bit and return to feeding, move them to a clean, but not sterile, tank with the same parameters as the tank they have been moved from and sterilize the tank they were removed from with bleach.
Sourcing Medications
Medications I have listed here are available in the U.S. and Canada and some international countries, but not all. And the availability of the medications in small towns and in some stores varies greatly. Many online pet pharmacies will not ship internationally. A good place to look for medications is eBay. Often sellers will ship to your country, although if the medication is prohibited in your country it may be seized by customs.
Another alternative is to use a freight forwarder like reship.com. The product is shipped to this company’s address and then repackaged and shipped to your address. I have never used this service and cannot recommend it for obvious reasons.