Treating Flukes In A Tank With Shrimp

[myrtle]

Hi all, I wasn't sure whether to put this in emergencies or the inverts section but thought it might get seen quicker here, sorry!
I have a few fish (3 or 4) who have been flicking for a few weeks now with no signs of Ich. Ordinarily I would have just used Sterazin as I believe it is flukes but the tank is full of breeding Cherry shrimp and Sterazin would wipe them out. As flukes are multi-cellular invertebrates is there anything that I can do to treat the tank which wouldn't affect the shrimp? I have an ADF that can easily be put in my other tank whilst treating. A couple of them were showing signs of worms/internal parasites and I have treated with Octozin which seems to have solved that problem but I'm stumped with the Flukes. I can't remove all the shrimp as it's a very heavily planted tank and some of the babies are only a couple of mm long! Any ideas?

 

[Ben M]

could you set up a separate tank for the ill fish while you treat them?

cheers

 

[guppy love]

I have the same problem in my tank, got a fish with gill flukes I think, no signs of ich but scratching herself silly on rocks but can't treat in the tank as I have some gorgeous apple snails. I've just put her in a methylene blue bath in a bucket and hope that helps her out. Maybe you could try that?

 

[myrtle]

I've considered setting up another tank to treat the fish but I believe flukes "give birth" to live young so any left in the tank would latch on once I reintroduced the fish. I may have the wrong end of the stick though. However, I wouldn't be able to do this until after Christmas.

At least with Apple snails you can fish them out temporarily, with the shrimp I'll never catch them!

 

[Ben M]

also, if you put the shrimp/snails back in afterwards then there will still be traces of the chemicals, so it will still kill them. i don't really know loads about flukes, but if you took the fish out and treated them, could you leave them in another tank until the flukes are al dead? or can they survive without a host?

cheers

 

[myrtle]

Hmm, I'm a bit stuck with this. The guy at one of my lfs said there wasn't anything I could do but I don't entirely trust him (their tanks aren't great and their display tank is full of algae and non aquatic plants...). The fish that are mostly affected are a couple of aged pencilfish (2 1/2 yrs old), 1 Pygmy cory and 1 of the new Celebes. I can understand the pencils being susceptible due to their age but the Pygmy is young (though I've not seen it flick for a week or two). Unless i am wrong and it's something else causing the flicking, though there's no sign of Ich or Velvet and their gills are slighlty pinker than normal though the ammonia and Nitrite is 0...