Thursday, January 31, '08
Ok. Well I received Fenbendazole in a 10% pellet in the mail today (Thank you girlfriend ). I received 4g of it total. I have been fasting my fish since Saturday (almost a week now) so they would be hungry and eat a lot of the medicine when I got it.
I took the pellets and ground them up. Then I put the powder onto a piece of paper evenly, in a circular disc like pile. Then I used a splitting technique to cut the pile down into 1/12 (in half, then one half in half, then looked at the quarter pile and eyed up 1/3). This was quite a bit, but I knew my fish were very hungry and I could feed them twice today and get a good amount of this med in their systems in case they don't eat again for another few days.
I took this 1/12, or .3g, and put it into a bowl with a bunch of fish food. My girlfriend's dad found information on how to dose this stuff on the internet (unfortunately I was not given references, and thius neither will you
). I misread how to dose this stuff as it turns out- I thought it was 1.26g/lb of fish, NOT 1.26g/lb OF FOOD GIVEN. I realized this when the medicine seemed to be a lot for how much I feed my fish. But I kept the same dose anyways as I had already added the fish food- but I added a lot more fish food (a mix of flakes and freeze-dried bloodworms) in the mix to dilute it a bit. Then I added a bit of water- my intention was to make a sort of paste, but I ended up making more of a stew . I soaked the food in there for a little while while stirring and crushing a bit while in the bowl.
I then took a spoon and drained off water water I could of each little bit I put into the tank (to make sure a minimal amount of chlorine entered my tank). I put it in bit by bit so the fish had time to eat it. MAN were they hungry- looks like fasting them worked well. All of my fry have round little bellies and the adult guppies are well fed, and the neons also have good round little bellies. The shrimp even devoured whatever landed on the bottom in short order.
My hope is that enough of the Fenbend soaked into the food so they digest some of it. My plan is to do this every other day (except with half the meds each feeding I think) for a week or two, then give it a break, feeding maybe once every third day normal feed, then I will do the same dose again two weeks later. My plan looks like this:
Phase one (started January 31): feed medicated food every other day 10-14 times
Phase two: feed regular, unmedicated food once every third day 2-6 times
Phase three: Repeat of Phase one until either 14 feedings have occured or the medicine runs out.
I overfed quite a bit today on purpose, so I made sure enough food made it to the bottom for the smaller fry as well a the shrimp (I was unable to find conclusive reports of whether or not shrimp are affected by the camellanus parasite). From now on I will not be over feeding so much.
I am not, nor will I, use any carbon filtration as the medicine is in the food and in small quantities. Whatever medicine is floating around in the tank is harmless and so carbon filtration would prove no benefit. Also, I will be doing water changes on regular schedule, but this is subject to double during this the times of over feeding when/if it does occur again. I would normally double this but I am unfortunately very swamped in school so I lack much time to be able to do that (I shouldn't even be writing this article :S).
I will update this thread regularly to alert of anything that happens. I am using this thread as a detailed description of what happens- good and bad- to my tank during the next few month or two so others may learn from my experience. This thread should be particularly useful to Canadians as Levamisole is not available here. I hope it is helpful.
I will be updating using the "edit" function to keep my experiences at the top and peoples' posts at the bottom (just for clarity). When I am given advice I will quote it or let you know it was given below.
Sunday, February 3, '08
Well I dosed my tank again. I did not reduce the dose- still ~.33g, but this time I tried dissolving the meds into hot-ish water first, griding it up even more in the hot water. Then I used just flakes with a small amount of bloodworms (their normal diet) to mix the meds into. They did not go into a frenzy like last time but they still ate a lot. Before feeding I did a 60% w.c. (this was unrelated to the medicine or the parasite- I aquascaped and scrubbed all my glass of algae) and then fed afterwards.
The fish and shrimp seem just fine- eating it without discrimination and swimming happily. I have been watching very carefully since I first saw the worm reappear and have seen no sign of it in any inhabitants. No inhabitants seem to be upset by either the worm or the medicine.
Monday, February 4, '08
I have noticed some worms protruding from one of my female guppy adults- however the worm is sot of flaccid and not so red- dying I think. On another note, my tank has been holding a .25 ammonia pattern.... I am not sure if this is from adding untreated water to the tank (less than 3mL total for both feedings, with a water change in between). Due to this alarming fact I will be monitoring my ammonia levels every day possible to try to rule out the possibility of this form of medicine causing any sort of ammonia spike.
Tuesday, February 5, '08
Well I used tank water this time to mix the medicine and food together and it worked just as well. The fish have been colouring up again and seem very happy after they have eaten and are progressively more active each day. Because of this I am going to feed the the tank every day rather than every other day.
At this current dosage I notice a lot of the medication is not dissolved, and the fish let a lot of it sink to the gravel. My new plan is as follows.
I currently have 4g-0.33g-0.3g-0.33g=3.04g; I will round down to 3g. I have another three and a half weeks worth of medication to go, and since I am feeding everyday, with roughly half the feed each time, I will be halving the dose to go along with it. This means if I feed everyday as planned (and will continue as long as they eat it and don't turn away) I need to use (0.33g/2)= around 0.15g of medication fer feeding.
I am thinking of using a coffee filter to drain off the water and leave behind the solid particles from the medication, but we will see how this reduced and more often feedings goes.
Wednesday, February 6, '08
I fed again as stated yesterday- 0.15g dose with regular feeding amount. The fish still frenzied over it so it seems like this will be my continued method. I did not use the coffee filter in this method as it did not seem to have as much medicine undissolved as before.
Friday, February 8, '08
I did hte same dosage as two days ago and all is well. I am even noticing a few dying worms protruding from some of my adult guppies.
Tuesday, February 12, '08
Well I have been dosing .15g of medication in the food every day, and things seem to be going well. I have not sen any worms for a week or so now, and I have had zero casualties or water quality problems.
Ok. Well I received Fenbendazole in a 10% pellet in the mail today (Thank you girlfriend ). I received 4g of it total. I have been fasting my fish since Saturday (almost a week now) so they would be hungry and eat a lot of the medicine when I got it.
I took the pellets and ground them up. Then I put the powder onto a piece of paper evenly, in a circular disc like pile. Then I used a splitting technique to cut the pile down into 1/12 (in half, then one half in half, then looked at the quarter pile and eyed up 1/3). This was quite a bit, but I knew my fish were very hungry and I could feed them twice today and get a good amount of this med in their systems in case they don't eat again for another few days.
I took this 1/12, or .3g, and put it into a bowl with a bunch of fish food. My girlfriend's dad found information on how to dose this stuff on the internet (unfortunately I was not given references, and thius neither will you
). I misread how to dose this stuff as it turns out- I thought it was 1.26g/lb of fish, NOT 1.26g/lb OF FOOD GIVEN. I realized this when the medicine seemed to be a lot for how much I feed my fish. But I kept the same dose anyways as I had already added the fish food- but I added a lot more fish food (a mix of flakes and freeze-dried bloodworms) in the mix to dilute it a bit. Then I added a bit of water- my intention was to make a sort of paste, but I ended up making more of a stew . I soaked the food in there for a little while while stirring and crushing a bit while in the bowl.I then took a spoon and drained off water water I could of each little bit I put into the tank (to make sure a minimal amount of chlorine entered my tank). I put it in bit by bit so the fish had time to eat it. MAN were they hungry- looks like fasting them worked well. All of my fry have round little bellies and the adult guppies are well fed, and the neons also have good round little bellies. The shrimp even devoured whatever landed on the bottom in short order.
My hope is that enough of the Fenbend soaked into the food so they digest some of it. My plan is to do this every other day (except with half the meds each feeding I think) for a week or two, then give it a break, feeding maybe once every third day normal feed, then I will do the same dose again two weeks later. My plan looks like this:
Phase one (started January 31): feed medicated food every other day 10-14 times
Phase two: feed regular, unmedicated food once every third day 2-6 times
Phase three: Repeat of Phase one until either 14 feedings have occured or the medicine runs out.
I overfed quite a bit today on purpose, so I made sure enough food made it to the bottom for the smaller fry as well a the shrimp (I was unable to find conclusive reports of whether or not shrimp are affected by the camellanus parasite). From now on I will not be over feeding so much.
I am not, nor will I, use any carbon filtration as the medicine is in the food and in small quantities. Whatever medicine is floating around in the tank is harmless and so carbon filtration would prove no benefit. Also, I will be doing water changes on regular schedule, but this is subject to double during this the times of over feeding when/if it does occur again. I would normally double this but I am unfortunately very swamped in school so I lack much time to be able to do that (I shouldn't even be writing this article :S).
I will update this thread regularly to alert of anything that happens. I am using this thread as a detailed description of what happens- good and bad- to my tank during the next few month or two so others may learn from my experience. This thread should be particularly useful to Canadians as Levamisole is not available here. I hope it is helpful.
I will be updating using the "edit" function to keep my experiences at the top and peoples' posts at the bottom (just for clarity). When I am given advice I will quote it or let you know it was given below.
Sunday, February 3, '08
Well I dosed my tank again. I did not reduce the dose- still ~.33g, but this time I tried dissolving the meds into hot-ish water first, griding it up even more in the hot water. Then I used just flakes with a small amount of bloodworms (their normal diet) to mix the meds into. They did not go into a frenzy like last time but they still ate a lot. Before feeding I did a 60% w.c. (this was unrelated to the medicine or the parasite- I aquascaped and scrubbed all my glass of algae) and then fed afterwards.
The fish and shrimp seem just fine- eating it without discrimination and swimming happily. I have been watching very carefully since I first saw the worm reappear and have seen no sign of it in any inhabitants. No inhabitants seem to be upset by either the worm or the medicine.
Monday, February 4, '08
I have noticed some worms protruding from one of my female guppy adults- however the worm is sot of flaccid and not so red- dying I think
. On another note, my tank has been holding a .25 ammonia pattern.... I am not sure if this is from adding untreated water to the tank (less than 3mL total for both feedings, with a water change in between). Due to this alarming fact I will be monitoring my ammonia levels every day possible to try to rule out the possibility of this form of medicine causing any sort of ammonia spike.Tuesday, February 5, '08
Well I used tank water this time to mix the medicine and food together and it worked just as well. The fish have been colouring up again and seem very happy after they have eaten and are progressively more active each day. Because of this I am going to feed the the tank every day rather than every other day.
At this current dosage I notice a lot of the medication is not dissolved, and the fish let a lot of it sink to the gravel. My new plan is as follows.
I currently have 4g-0.33g-0.3g-0.33g=3.04g; I will round down to 3g. I have another three and a half weeks worth of medication to go, and since I am feeding everyday, with roughly half the feed each time, I will be halving the dose to go along with it. This means if I feed everyday as planned (and will continue as long as they eat it and don't turn away) I need to use (0.33g/2)= around 0.15g of medication fer feeding.
I am thinking of using a coffee filter to drain off the water and leave behind the solid particles from the medication, but we will see how this reduced and more often feedings goes.
Wednesday, February 6, '08
I fed again as stated yesterday- 0.15g dose with regular feeding amount. The fish still frenzied over it so it seems like this will be my continued method. I did not use the coffee filter in this method as it did not seem to have as much medicine undissolved as before.
Friday, February 8, '08
I did hte same dosage as two days ago and all is well. I am even noticing a few dying worms protruding from some of my adult guppies.
Tuesday, February 12, '08
Well I have been dosing .15g of medication in the food every day, and things seem to be going well. I have not sen any worms for a week or so now, and I have had zero casualties or water quality problems.
Last edited: