Antibiotics and my filter

patoloco

patoloco

De seguro no sabes lo que dice aqu
Oct 20, 2005
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Costa Rica
wetpatoloco.tripod.com
I lost one of my better looking gouramies. It was a blue male almost 4" long to hemorragic septicemia. A bad diagnose and treatment anded up with a nice fish. However, yesterday I saw another gourami in the same tank with the fisrt symptoms tha other was showing.

Being sunday, the only LFS open was a crappy one and thay had no good antibiotics so I got Jungle's Fungus Clear (the box claims it can control septicemia) and treated the entire tank to contain an outbreak.

My concern is now about my canister filter. After the 8 days treatment is done, whay action should I take?

I'm pretty sure I have lost all the bacteria for the action of the antibiotic. My main concern is if I should dismantle the whole filter, disinfect it and set it new or just let it be after removing the medicine from the water in case any bacteria survived. Also, might the filter house fungus spores??
 
What was the active ingredient in that stuff? If it was an antibiotic it probably had a negative effect on the biofilter, but I doubt that it would have totally nuked it. Most over the counter antibiotics are on the weak side.

I'm of the opinion that our tanks are always home to a low level of pathogenic organisms including fungal spores and ich. When the fish are healthy you don't see it, when they get stressed somehow, then you get an outbreak. What I'm saying is, that trying to get "bad bacteria" or "bad fugal spores" out of a tank is a waste of time.
 
Just a word of warning, stay away from the Jungle products!! I have had huge problems with them when I was beginning in this hobby. Just my $.02 :idea2:
 
Bitsy said:
Just a word of warning, stay away from the Jungle products!! I have had huge problems with them when I was beginning in this hobby. Just my $.02 :idea2:
Click to expand...

Jungle and other comercial medications are a mix of drugs that are useful when you are treating a disease. It's like a shotgum blast. Either one or the other should do the work.

Normally I go with specific treatment once I've fully determined my condition. However, I had to treat the tank using this shotgun approach as a mildly desperate solution to prevent an outbreak and because on sunday that was all I found.

Thanks for your comment. It's greatly appreciated. :bowing:
 
Most antibiotics work by lowering the number of pathogens to a level where the fish's immune system can deal with them effectively. They don't completely destroy every single bacterium. Patolocco I would just monitor water quality and take appropriate action to maintain it should this have damaged the biofilter. Don't sterilize the filter since any bacteria left from the antibiotics would be left in the entire tank not just concentrated in the filter. Leave the surviving nitrification bacteria intact so that they can recolonize the biomedia as quickly as possible.
 
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