Octozin for white spot?

[Millns84]

Afternoon all

My tank is on day 5 of an octozin treatment as my blue acara was showing signs of internal parasites.

I noticed last night that a ram and a couple of hatchfish have several white spots (definitely ich) and was wondering whether the octozin might also take care of that?

It doesn't appear to be a full blown outbreak, but equally I don't want to have to delay treatment for ich if I have to start that... Also the potential for harming the fish mixing meds is a no-no!

I see that octozin is recommended for marine white spot, but is it possible that it's also fighting this outbreak as it does seem very limited in terms of the fish effected and the amount of spots.

 

[Simon Cole]

Octozin is a secret formula. My best guess is that it is oxolinic acid. If so, I can understand why it might be used to treat protozoan diseases like white spot. It is a protozoacide.

A precious few fish stores treat and quarantine fish before you buy them. The manager at my local shop is very proud of his tank-water system and he showed me how it was designed to keep the fish healthy. It was a feat of engineering accomplishment in my opinion. He also explained how he sources healthy fish. There are never any infected fish for sale in his store. All my fish from them arrive healthy.

Now, Pets at Home is a different kettle of fish. I typically observe half of the tanks under treatment in the shops where managers are following corporate protocols, and 90% disease in shops where the managers don't care. In one shop they have been perpetually treating white spot for the last 5 years. The managers have explained the problem to me and it is simply overstocking, cross contamination and poor design. But some shops are better at feeding the fish - so typically you find a few PaH shops with big healthy specimens if you can be bothered with quarantine.

A far more comprehensive solution would be a UV sterilizer.

I stopped using the big 10 fish treatment companies about 4 years ago. Fish died due to the treatments, not the diseases. I have only had disease fish from bad shops (usually because my mother has bought them), and we have always quarantined. I now mix my own drugs based upon the scientific papers, many of which can only be prescribed. My sister is a doctor and her partner a pharmacist - they were rather impressed with my success. The situation in the USA and the rest of the world is entirely different. They have access to everything we need, and the EU have banned. There is no control over what antibiotics you can fling into fish ponds in the third world. My sister is so scared of this that she reckons within a few years it will cause massive mortality rates in routine hospital treatment... scary.

Worming treatments can include organophosphates which if I remember right are bio-accumulating. You should never have had an outbreak if it was going to work in the first place, but then again, maybe it only works on certain life cycle stages. I would have thought that minimizing these treatments is the best course of action unless you find out the secret ingredients.

Hatchet-fish are notorious disease carriers because they are wild caught, and many speculate they naturally have high pathogenic levels and shorter lives in the wild, but white spot and worms are down to your supplier.

Please can somebody else answer this?

 

[Millns84]

Thank you for the detailed reply.

I was under the impression that Octozin was dimetridazole, so might actually work for white spot. I won't pretend to be an expert, but I believe that that is an anti-protozoan treatment.

I'm guessing the white spot was not in its free swimming stage while the Octozin has been in the water, but even today I'm seeing less spots on the fish and it hasn't spread to others.

I actually use two in line UVs, but these have been switched off while treating the acara.

I'm due to remove the octozin on Sunday when the 7 day course is over. I'm concerned that that might be the opportunity for the white spot to really get going, or whether I should keep it in the water a bit longer?

I've successfully treated it by raising the temperature to 32c in the past, but that was in a 60 litre tank and I appreciate that it's quite hard on both fish and plants.

 

[Simon Cole]

Try potassium permanganate baths for 20 minutes once or twice per day at 1ppm. This is a proven ick treatment.
It will cost about £3 to get 10g off ebay, then dilute with deionised water several times to get the right concentration. A set of scientific scale for £10 would be a great investment to cut down on the number of dilutions. The solution will go too dark for you to see whether the crystals have dissolved, so sometimes it is better to estimate what 1 gram looks like and dilute from there. Put the fish in a bowl in the sink with and air-stone, and hold for about 20 minutes while observing. Fish do not need rinsing.
Try not to go above 4ppm as this is totally unnecessary. Check the safety data sheet and watch out how you use it (especially if undiluted)!

Don't keep adding dimetridazole. It's probably worked already. I don't know enough about the toxicology, and stretching this to 30 days would worry me a tad. There are far better ways, and it will help you long-term if you can become familiar with baths.

Honestly - potassium permanganate has completely changed how we keep fish. I use it as part of every treatment plan when treating columnaris with antibiotics, and the results are remarkable. You should chat with my mum. She couldn't believe it.

You could of course wait, but I always look at a holistic treatment plan:

Diet (live foods high in fats for energy)
Salts (to reduce the isostatic burden, epsom to help digestion)
Topical treatment (swabs, baths etc) to sterelize the fish externally.
Specific treatment (antibiotics, systemic medications to work internally)
In tank sterelization (UV, KMnO4 etc.) to sterelize environment.
Environmental adjustments (temp as you mentioned etc.)

Are you happy mixing chemicals? It's not for everyone because you need steady hands. I wish I could come up and help you. It looks like it's going away anyway, but hopefully you will have this as an idea if you need to come back to it.