Has anyone used Acriflavine as a treatment for protozoan diseases? I am looking for something to treatment trichodina and haven't had any luck with salt, PP, or malachite green/formalin treatments. I have used it one time in the past, but it wasn't for a protozoan infestation. I did turn the tank a bright yellow-green color for quite a few weeks until I could get rid of it with water changes. Also, anyone know if it stains silicone?
Anyone used acriflavine?
- Thread starter jjohns
- Start date
I did use acriflavine a few years back along with everything but the kitchen sink when it appeared my new imported discus brought some unknown illness into the house that affected all my domestic discus. Fish symptoms were very similar to what you will find on the internet described as discus plague. I noted the fish improved most once acriflavine was added. During treatment I kept the tank lights off during the day and very dimly lit at night for a few hours and I think this helped to also avoid any staining of the silicone. I was also changing 75% of the water every day for a month.
Thanks for the info. I am glad to hear that it didn't stain your silicone. I have a 90 gallon tank that is only 1 1/2 years old, so I don't really want to color the silicone just yet. I am at a loss to try to get rid of whatever is in the tank. I have used Prazi (thinking maybe flukes), and PP, Formalin, salt, thinking maybe protozoan. I did finally confirm a month ago that I saw several trichodina on a scraping slide, so I am pretty sure that is what is lingering around. Problem is that I have 2 tanks that need to be treated, and I will have to do it similutaneously to avoid cross contaminating from a treated one into the non-treated one. I have 2 options--either straight formalin or acriflavine. I have tried formalin a few months back, and symptoms reappeared a few weeks after treatment. So, maybe leaning toward acriflavine at this point. It just makes such a mess out of the tank and turns everything yellow-green.
By the way, how many days did you treat with the acriflavine? I see some places say 4-5 days with daily water changes & adding more acriflavine only for what you take out with water changes. Did you go longer than 4-5 days for treating? The Kordon brand says use a concentration of 5-10 ppm for treatment. Is this what you used?
Are you SURE it is Trichodina?? If you have used all those meds and you still have something showing up, either you didnt treat correctly or its not trichodina. I wouldnt use acriflavin as it has been vastly overused in the years past. It's most common use in today's industry is mostly for shipping fish, not treating them. If it was really trichodina, the formalin/malachite green would have taken care of them no problem. A nice salt dip would have worked as well.
-Ryan
-Ryan
It was not Koron's brand. Unfortunately I do not remember what med it was or how long I treated. Acriflavine was not the only ingredient in the med I used. Dkarc is correct though. PP should have eliminated Trichodina.
I know PP should have eliminated trichodina, but I am still seeing flashing. I tried to do another scraping yesterday on one fish that I saw flash several times, but I don't think I got a good sample. It looks like they are trying to scratch their gills mostly, and I scraped right around the gills and under the mouth area, but the fish was really fighting me so I wasn't able to get under the gill plates. I may try it again today. I looked at the slide and nothing jumped out at me...no obvious trichodina, or other protozoans, and I didn't see any flukes. I know you can scrape one area and not see anything, and another (or in the gills) and see a bunch. So, I just don't think I got a good sample. I will try to get some from the gills. A few weeks ago I had done a scraping and confirmed trichodina. That one is pretty obvious on the slide. So at least I know I did have that.
Wierd thing is I have seen flashing with these fish on and off over several months, but it usually doesn't get to the point where I loose any fish. They continue to eat, their color usually stays good, but they try to scrape their gills on tubing, etc. I don't see any mucus on the fish, so it has me stumped. I do lots of wc's and like I said, have gone thru salt, serial PP treaments, and others. I had thought it was flukes, so I treated for a month with prazi, but as soon as I stopped treatment, they started flashing again. Then a few weeks ago I saw slime build up on one of them, and I scraped and saw trichodina. That made me think I have been fighting this on and off. Maybe I killed off the trichodina, and am fighting something else now?
Last night I decided to go back to formalin. I will need to treat both tanks at the same time if it looks like it is working to prevent cross contamination. I am using a bottle of AP brand formalin, and it says to dose at 1ml/18 gallons and dose every 48 hours until a cure is achieved. Whatever that means. Then a 50% wc done 24 hrs after final treatment. It doesn't say anything about wc's in between treatments. I used 2ml in my 30 gallon tank which is a little over what the bottle said to do, and is close to 2 drops/gallon since I counted as I added it. Someone else said 1mL/10 gallons is a better dose. Should I up the dose to that? Not sure if what the bottle says is really strong enough. Then, should I dose every 48 hrs like it recommends, or is every day better? And dose for how long? One week, 3 or 4 doses...repeated 1 week later also?
Wierd thing is I have seen flashing with these fish on and off over several months, but it usually doesn't get to the point where I loose any fish. They continue to eat, their color usually stays good, but they try to scrape their gills on tubing, etc. I don't see any mucus on the fish, so it has me stumped. I do lots of wc's and like I said, have gone thru salt, serial PP treaments, and others. I had thought it was flukes, so I treated for a month with prazi, but as soon as I stopped treatment, they started flashing again. Then a few weeks ago I saw slime build up on one of them, and I scraped and saw trichodina. That made me think I have been fighting this on and off. Maybe I killed off the trichodina, and am fighting something else now?
Last night I decided to go back to formalin. I will need to treat both tanks at the same time if it looks like it is working to prevent cross contamination. I am using a bottle of AP brand formalin, and it says to dose at 1ml/18 gallons and dose every 48 hours until a cure is achieved. Whatever that means. Then a 50% wc done 24 hrs after final treatment. It doesn't say anything about wc's in between treatments. I used 2ml in my 30 gallon tank which is a little over what the bottle said to do, and is close to 2 drops/gallon since I counted as I added it. Someone else said 1mL/10 gallons is a better dose. Should I up the dose to that? Not sure if what the bottle says is really strong enough. Then, should I dose every 48 hrs like it recommends, or is every day better? And dose for how long? One week, 3 or 4 doses...repeated 1 week later also?
You have burned through a lot of meds on these fish. Are you sure you are seeing flashing and not mating behavior? Im worried you may be doing more harm than good using all those meds. Also, when you get a gill sample you cant scrape a gill, you must get a gill clipping to get a proper sample. It is not something I would recommend to a hobbyist keeper. And if you do indeed have a parasite problem still, then I would do a 3% salt dip instead of formalin.
-Ryan
-Ryan
If I do a 3% salt dip, won't the parasite still exist in the tank? I may get it to drop off the fish, but it could still be on the rocks, glass, filters, etc. Right? I am not opposed to doing a salt dip, but I just don't think it alone will fix the problem. And I am very sure that what I am seeing is flashing and irritation and not due to mating. I can tell the fish are irritated by whatever is in the water. I know what you mean by doing more harm than good with meds. I was trying to get it pinpointed to a specific parasite before treating. Formalin is suppose to work on protozoans and some flukes and other parasites, so I figured it would be the best next option. If it helps great. If it doesn't, I should know that before too long as well.
I did a couple more scrapings today and have 2 microscopic slide photos on photobucket. It almost looks like a large round cyst with concentric lines and thorns on one area. Maybe this is just something that appears as the water dries and forms crystals & is not a parasite at all. It seems pretty large and takes up the whole view field at 100x. I saw it on 3 out of 4 slides I made. I will go back later today and see if I see anything smaller on there that could be a parasite. Here are the links to the photobucket images...see if anyone can help me figure it out:
http://s206.photobucket.com/albums/bb169/jpenner15/?action=view¤t=Jennifer3.jpg
http://s206.photobucket.com/albums/bb169/jpenner15/?action=view¤t=Jennifer2.jpg
I did a couple more scrapings today and have 2 microscopic slide photos on photobucket. It almost looks like a large round cyst with concentric lines and thorns on one area. Maybe this is just something that appears as the water dries and forms crystals & is not a parasite at all. It seems pretty large and takes up the whole view field at 100x. I saw it on 3 out of 4 slides I made. I will go back later today and see if I see anything smaller on there that could be a parasite. Here are the links to the photobucket images...see if anyone can help me figure it out:
http://s206.photobucket.com/albums/bb169/jpenner15/?action=view¤t=Jennifer3.jpg
http://s206.photobucket.com/albums/bb169/jpenner15/?action=view¤t=Jennifer2.jpg
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Hehehe! Oops, I was just told that the photos were of scales! Actually, that's a relief, and now I can go look at them closer for anything smaller :duh: I will report back if I see anything.
