Are Fish Medications The Same As Perscription Medicines?

[Mikaila31]

I know the title sounds weird, but this has been annoying me lately.
Background
I was washing the dishes, and my mom and brother were talking in the background. They were talking about refilling a prescription medicine he was taking. My mom started to read the bottle, I wasn't really paying attention. But then she said "Minocycline", and suddenly Maracyn-Two popped into my head. I have no clue why I know that , but I checked the bottle and it said its only active ingredient was Minocycline.

My first question is, are these the same thing. Maracyn-Two says "minocycline activity" is this any different than generic minocycline?

Also I looked up a bunch of the other antibiotics used for fish, and found basically the same thing. With Metronidazole, Ampicillin, Penicillin, Tetracycline, Amoxicillin, Cephalexin, and Erythromycin. If you search for any of those with google shopping, one of the first few results will be from the RX website. All require prescriptions for people, some require prescriptions for cats and dogs. I found this quite interesting, although I am most likely missing something.

Are meds that have the same name actually the same, or is there something different? Are the ones for people more refined or purer than the stuff for fish? For example Metronidazole for fish and Metronidazole for people.


Also on a side note when buying fish meds, if you go by the active ingredient you can get things a lot cheaper. It only works for meds that have a single active ingredient. For example Tetracycline=Maracyn-TC, Erythromycin=Maracyn, ect.

 

[WILDER]

There the same the antibiotics.
Minocycline can used for fish tb it also used for human tb and ache.

 

[Tolak]

It is cheaper to buy e-mycin & such rather than go for Maracyn, and so on. The reason I reccomend brands such as Maracyn is that these are usually more readily available to the aquarist with a sick fish.

Human grade meds are supposed to be produced with higher quality standards than fish meds, how big the difference is I have no idea. From frequenting a few survivalist forums I do know that many of these folks will order animal grade antibiotics for human use, and they have used them with no side effects I can recall.

 

[steelhealr]

Tolak is correct. The antibiotics in the fish prescription and in your own prescription are the same. The only difference is that 'fish' antibiotics are more than likely made with different fillers, probable minimal quality assurance and the antibiotic itself, instead of being made by "Pfizer" or "Johnson and Johnson", may be made by Acme Antibiotic Corp. In spite of this, if you took Maracyn when you needed minocycline, and took the same dosage you would probably get the same effect or it would be 'efficacious'. Obviously, personally, I would prefer the 'human grade' meds.

SH