PlanetCatfish.com

Hello everybody,

This is my first post here, and I wish it were under better circumstances. I want to report my experience with the product "Ick Clear Tank Buddies", produced by Jungle, so that no one else loses their precious cats so senselessly.

I recently moved, and I was unable to bring 80% of my aquarium's water, as I know I should, which caused "new tank syndrome" to set in. This lead to a nasty outbreak of ick in my tank, presumably due to a lowered immune response in my stressed-out fish. One of my two hoplos (Megalechis thoracata) was covered in white spots, and even my plecostomus (gibbiceps) started "flashing" and getting a few spots, so I knew that I needed to start treating them immediately. I went down to the local pet shop and found the product in question, which says "Fast - Safe - Effective" on the front of the box, and cautions to use only 1/2 dose on scaleless fish. The box also says that if the infection persists after one treatment to change 25% of the water and dose again - daily - until the infection subsides. That is exactly what I did.

The second day of treatment I started noticing the barbels on my hoplos were disintegrating and breaking off about half way down their length. I don't have any experience with ick, and I thought that the damage to their barbels must have been from the affects of the ick infection. The third day I noticed that the ick spots had completely disappeared from my hoplo, and most of them were gone from my pleco, so I decided to give them one more dose after changing out 25% of the water. This was a huge mistake. The next day my hoplo's barbels were completely warn off, and all that remained was infected nubs. I also noticed that their armor plates were lighter in color (whitish), and seemed to be inflamed (their eyeballs, which usually protrude, were flush with the plates on their heads). At this point they had also become very lethargic. Usually they would frolic all day long, chasing each other, only taking breaks to cuddle on their favorite log.

That was yesterday, and by the end of the night their poor little mouths were swollen and infected, presumably from a chemical burn inflicted by that awful medicine. This morning I woke up to find one dead hoplo, and the other in its death throes - she is still struggling to breathe as I speak - which just breaks my heart to watch.

So please, anyone who is not trying to torture and kill their Megalechis thoracata: DO NOT USE THIS PRODUCT. It is just awful to think that a company would label a product "safe" when it is so clearly toxic to certain fish in the doses they recommend.

Thanks for your time, and I wish you and your cats the best,

Dave


R.I.P. Ferdy and Fidel

Sorry to hear of your problems.
One thing to remember is that correlation is not the same as causation.
Have you considered any other possibilities for your fishes deaths?
What are the ammonia and nitrite readings in your tank?

I just tested it and the nitrate is at 20ppm, and the nitrite is at 0ppm, nothing that should cause hoplos to lose their barbels and die. I also have an angelfish in the tank that would most likely display symptoms of improper water conditions long before any catfish...

I don't have an ammonia test kit right now, so I can't say what the level is. I'll pick one of them up shortly.

I had these guys for 10 months and nothing seemed to affect them. They even went through a move about 7 months ago, complete with new tank syndrome and everything, and they were still the healthiest animals in the tank. The only thing that changed prior to their demise was the introduction of the ick medication.

I suppose it could have been the ick that killed them, perhaps having damaged their gill tissue too severely to recover, but only one of the hoplos exhibited symptoms of ick, so I doubt that that is the case.

Thank you for your comment though. It is good to keep questioning why things happen in our aquariums so that we can avoid future catastrophes, and improve the lives of our little friends. In fact, I would prefer to learn a valuable lesson about tank maintenance and care from all of this rather than feeling like this product was responsible for their untimely deaths. Either way, the responsibility for this event falls squarely on me, and Ferdy and Fidel paid the price for my ignorance.

Thanks again,
Dave

See you on the other side little buddies.

mummymonkey wrote:Sorry to hear of your problems.
One thing to remember is that correlation is not the same as causation.
Have you considered any other possibilities for your fishes deaths?
What are the ammonia and nitrite readings in your tank?

I am of a similar mind with mummymonkey on this discouraging outcome.

Since you stated you haven't had to deal with Ich it is quite possible that you still haven't.
Without confirming the identification of the organism by microscopy one cannot be certain that the disease was Ich or one of the other external skin parasites. Many of which are more quickly devastating and much less reponsive to medications used commonly for Ich.
The door is also open for a more complex picture of multiple diseases; the primary protozoan and the secondary bacterial infection presents much as you described.

Real Ichthyothirius multifilis rarely kills fish in good condition when treated promptly and it responds quickly to most medications designed to treat it.
Similar in appearance initially are other diseases like; Chilodonella, Costia and Trichodina which often is found along with Ichththyothirius but is not visible to the naked eye since it attacks the gills. All of these other diseases respond to similar medications as Ich but are more resistant and have life cycles different enough to make taking a longer treatment period necessary and perhaps with adjuncts such as salt.
The possibility and even probability of secondary bacterial infection may require the use of antibiotics, too.
A bare treatment tank will always give you better control and results than treating fish in situ.

It sounds to me that it is much more likely to be ammonia causing the problems with your fish, I have had occasions in the past where a tank has crashed unexpectedly, the fish have looked uncomfortable and nitrite readings have been 0ppm. Only the fish getting progressively worse, and this often shows in catfish by degradation of the barbels, led me to a belated testing of ammonia. It was only on testing ammonia levels that the true scale of the problem was revealed to me. If your bacteria are not converting the ammonia to nitrite then your nitrate readings will be 0, yet the tank would be getting more and more toxic. I would recommend a very large water change immediately to try and get the level down, then a dosing of something like ammo lock to further reduce the toxicity and then large waterchanges continuing over the next few days. An addition of a bacteria culture may speed things up but don't expect miracles from this type of product. It is certainly very worthwhile buying an ammonia test kit

It does appear that different types of fish are more suceptable to ammonia (or at least show signs of distress sooner) than others, my catfish always show problems far sooner than my cichlids, although I guess this is just my combination of cats and cichlids. I have found close observation of all of the fish in the tank to be the best method of preventing problems, any early signs of problem such a reduced appetite, barbel erosion, seeing a nocturnal fish during the day or just a usually active fish being lethargic will often allow you to address any issues before they become a more serious problem.

I'll read through these posts more carefully when I have more time. But I have seen a fast-spreading disease which kills hoplos and Dianema within 48 hours. I think it is probably a bacterial infection, and your fish, perhaps weakened by the move and the ick, might have caught it.

I doubt that it was the medication unless it is some sort of counterfeit product, but you might try a Google search on the name of it and see if other people have had problems.

If you moved the filter across with the fish, as I assume you did, you should not have had new tank syndrome unless you cleaned the filter in undechlorinated tap water or filled the new tank without adding dechlorinator.
(Or if the filter was left switched off for a long time during the move, but it would recover fairly quickly from that).

Thank you for all of your comments, I really want to figure this one out. To my horror last night I discovered that my gibbiceps also suffered some barbel erosion, and I saw that there was dead skin hanging from one side of his mouth. This morning he seems a bit better, with a bit of dead skin hanging, and he has an obviously red and irritated mouth. The nightmare continues.

When I moved I did in fact keep the old filter, and I moved it in a bucket of aquarium water to prevent a die-off. It was my understanding that I would still have new tank syndrome since I didn't keep the majority of the water (I think I was able to move about 30%). I did notice the tank getting a little bit cloudy, so I still think that new tank syndrome did set in.

Regardless of the species of parasite I was/am dealing with, the medicine seems to have annihilated it. All visible signs disappeared after the third dose, but that is not to say that the damage could not have already been so severe as to kill my hoplos. One fishkeeper suggested that the active ingredient "victoria green" is an indiscriminate killer of microfauna, and therefore probably killed off the critters involved in the nitrogen cycle in my tank. Oh goody.

With your descriptions of high ammonia levels as the potential culprit of barbel erosion, I am starting to think that perhaps that was the killer. It would make sense that my bottom feeders would bare the brunt of the damage done by ammonia too.

I just can't get over the link between the doses of medication, and the damage to my fish. The timing is just too perfect...

Anyhow, I will follow your directions for reducing ammonia levels, and of course I will purchase an ammonia test kit so I can avoid this kind of thing in the future. I'm kicking myself for not having one already... I knew I needed one, I suppose I thought the nitrite/nitrate levels would indicate an ammonia problem, but, alas, not so much.

Thanks again for all of your help, and if anyone else has any ideas I am more than open to changing my fish-care strategy for the benefit of my little buddies.

Dave

P.S. Here's a wiki page on this victoria green stuff. Seems nasty.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malachite_green

I've had a few more thoughts occur to me throughout the day regarding the ammonia theory.

1) wouldn't daily 25% water changes (vacuuming from the bottom, of course) reduce the chances that harmful levels of ammonia could build up?

2) I have a juvenile (under one inch) corydora julii in the tank that seems to be unaffected, which doesn't seem to jive with the idea that ammonia built up and harmed my bottom feeders. Of course I also have to wonder why the medication, if it was the culprit, didn't harm the cory as well...

Just a few thoughts. Any more information or ideas that you guys might have are much appreciated.

Thanks for reading,

Dave

25% water changes will certainly reduce the level of ammonia that builds up every day by 25% but if the tank has a large bioload a 25% reduction may still not be enough to take it down to levels that don't affect the fish, remembering that ammonia is toxic at pretty low levels. It is possible therefore for ammonia levels to rise even with water changes

With regard to only some of your fish being affected then that is not necessarily surprising. for example the two tanks that I have had crash on me were as follows.

1) Lima shovelnoses, Hoplosternum Littorale and Severums. Shovelnoses suffered, Hoplos and Severums didn't and infact were still eating as normal. Even within species groups individuals were affected differently with two shovels being much worse than the other two with one infact dying. The only reason I knew something was wrong was because of the shovelnoses behaviour

2) Platydoras Costatus and Megalechis thoracata. The Hoplos were swimming around like there was nothing wrong whilst the Platydoras costatus were in a huge amount of trouble, the only reason I knew something was wrong with the tank was because one morning suddenly all of the platydoras were out from their hiding places with clouded eyes and damaged barbels.

On these tanks I had to do massive water changes over several days to get the ammonia levels down whilst the filters recovered but I did find that cleaning out other tanks filters and adding this water to the crashed tank dramactically improved matters after a short time. The question I asked myself was why the tanks actually crashed in the first place as they were both well established tanks with no new additions and the only reasons I could think of was something put in the water by the water company that knocked the filter out. This of course means that doing water changes might still have the chemical in and the filter will not be re-establishing itself so quickly but this is definitely more preferable to having high ammonia levels for the fish. Since joining a local fish club many people in my area have said only ever do water changes on mondays and tuesdays as they too have had problems. I also never clean out my filters at the same time as doing a water change, I always seperate the two jobs, but that may be me being over cautious!

If the water is circulating well throughout the tank I can't see any reason why ammonia concentrations should be worse at the bottom as the concentration should be pretty much the same through all levels of the water so I wouldn't dwell on the fact that the julii wasn't affected it could just be a species/individual that has a slightly higher tolerance level.

I have also in the past had new tank syndrome on a moved tank where I reused the filters but couldn't transfer too much old water across, whereas when I have been able to move the filters and a large majority of the water then I have not had too much of an issue. When I move a tank nowadays though I always feed very sparingly if at all for the first few days to a week and test the water throughout that week.

Bear in mind if it is ammonia levels causing your problems when you get over the ammonia issue you may then have to watch out for the nitrite peak as well.

Out of interest how big is your tank and whats in it?.

Currently I have one pterygoplichthys gibbiceps (9 inches), one polypterus senegalus (5 inches), one angelfish (4.5 inches) and some feeder danios in a 50 gallon hex tank. I know, not big enough for the plecostomus once it gets bigger, but I'm about to put them all into a 4'x1.5'x1.5' tank that I have laying around so that they will have a larger footprint. At that point I will use the 50 gallon hex as a quarantine/feeder guppy breeding tank so as to avoid future contamination from the lfs.

I am considering getting one or two clown or gold nugget plecos once I switch tanks. Would that be too many fish for the tank considering that the pleco I already have should reach 16", and the polypterus 12"?

Thanks again for your help,
Dave

Woops, forgot to mention the julii cory...

I just finished testing my tank's ammonia level, which was around 0ppm.

Dave