Healthy looking sick petricolas

Robin · Post by **Robin** » 23 Mar 2005, 20:21

Hi,

I've got a somewhat unusual situation with some petricolas.
First:
55 gallon tank established for 3+ years
PH:8.3
Ammonia, nitrite: 0
Nitrate: 15
KH: 12
5 syno petricols
1 s. angelicus

Long story short:two of the petricolas were added to the tank last November after being in quarantine for over two months. I kept them in there that long because even tho they looked great they were somewhat lethargic, (hanging in a fake plant all day) not eating much, allowing me to poke them with my finger, etc.

I treated them with Maracide and there seemed to be a little improvement and finally I put them in the 55 and right away they started acting like real petricolas and I concluded that their problem had been the small q-tank and lack of tank mates. Yipee.

Now the mbuna who use to live in the 55 with all the petricolas is in a hospital tank dieing from velvet. (Have tried all meds--nothing has worked). The only place he could have gotten the velvet from was the petricolas.

The petricolas show absolutely NO symptoms of velvet or any other problem. They are as healthy and as happy as petricolas get, but I know its got to be there and my concern is that eventually they will start to show signs of it.

What would you do? Wait till they show symptoms? Treat the tank now, and if so with what?
Anyone have any experience with petricolas AND velvet?

Sorry for the length--it was the only way to ask for help with fish that seem to have no symptoms and appear to be healthy.

Robin

Post by **Silurus** » 23 Mar 2005, 20:29

It seems to me that the petricolas came down with velvet in the quarantine tank, and then recovered, gaining some immunity in the process.

This isn't so unusual, since I had a velvet wipe out an entire tank, save for one large woodcat, who recovered and is probably immune to velvet (I wouldn't want to test that out, though).

I think your main concern should not be the catfish, but the potential for any new tankmates introduced into the tank to develop velvet.

Robin · Post by **Robin** » 23 Mar 2005, 21:54

I think your main concern should not be the catfish, but the potential for any new tankmates introduced into the tank to develop velvet.

Well that is one of my concerns: the other is that eventually the synos will become ill with it. I think the mbuna being older and bigger made him a better host/target for the parasite and now with him out of the way the synos may be more at risk.
It took a few months of the infected synos being in the tank with the mbuna before he developed symptoms.

So I'm left with the question of how to treat the 55 without hurting the more sensitive synos with the med.

One plan of attack would be to do more frequent water changes and gravel vacs (3x/week) to knock the parasite's numbers down before treating.
I also thought if I moved the synos out and then nuked the tank with something strong, that and the lack of hosts would destroy any in the tank but then I'm still left with any parasites actually on the synos.

What meds has anyone had success with for velvet on synos? I was thinking a couple rounds of Maracide???

Thanks for any help/suggestions anyone might have.

Robin

Post by **Silurus** » 23 Mar 2005, 22:25

I started this thread to try and deal with the aftermath of the velvet outbreak.

Some treatments are covered here.