Antibiotic Use with Cories and a Britlenose Plec

[Sophie's Mom]

New to this forum so not sure if this is where to post this. I have a 4 year large cichlid in a 125 gal. tank with 2 other cichlids, 6 small common cories, and a Bristlenose. One of the cichlid's developed pointy hard-looking nodules all around both eyes which I treated successfully with Ampicillin 250 mg. (1 capsule per 10 gal.) in a quarantine tank every other day for three weeks. After medicating I kept him in the q-tank for another two weeks before returning him to his home tank (fully cycled with no water chemistry issues- I check regularly as well as do weekly water changes) Two weeks later the nodules are back and I want to treat him in the main tank now that I know the Ampicillin will work.

Mostly concerned with the use of Ampicillin with the cories and BN. Any experience with this?

[MatsP]

I wouldn't think that antibiotics are a problem to catfish in general, and almost certain that bristlenose and cory will be fine with this. However, many antibiotics do harm the filter bacteria, which is bad for ANY fish.

Most bacterial-based infections are caused by some sort of problem with water/fish conditions - under good conditions, the fish should have the ability to fight the illness in itself. So if the illness is coming back, we need to understand what is the underlying cause.

--
Mats

[Ozcattie]

My experience with Anitbiotics is that some just DESTROY your biological filter!!
Chloramphenicol will knock it but bio filter will recover- Having used this in the form of, Chlorsig eye drops, i've found that a sick fish (normally floating near the surface) can have drops dropped right in it's little mouth or Gill area. But it's affects are often found lacking...
Amoxillin- Keflex capsules. I love the way the powder goes into the water like fish food & your fishies just eat it up like some treat- Cory's always gorge themselves on the floor Not sure that's a good thing... but it only makes their colours come out!?! But the treatment as a whole is quite dramatic & things you thought were going to beat your tank forever, are annihilated... But with this one definitively, your Bio filter is cactus...
Have not tried eryc- ethromyacin, but seeing that is a lot stronger than Amox' I would only use that in a hospital tank...
Not trying to do definitive list, haven't even tried tetracycline. But I know that all the standards like Malachite green etc hurt Bio filter.
Easy lesson is that anti Bio is anti Bio...
Doesn't happen with Melafix & Pimafix, but they're not affective against everything either...
My biggest concern with the Meds that stain & sink is my cats & plec's getting more than their fair share & eating the residue later as well. But they always respond the best to meds, so???

[apistomaster]

The few antibiotic that are allowed for sale to treat fish diseases are becoming largely ineffective.
My first choice used to be chloramphenicol but it's water soluble 250 mg capsules were withdrawn by the FDA in 1992 due to the dangers of severe bone marrow depression and high incidence of irreversibly fatal aplastic anemia ranging from 1:24,000 to 1:40,000 patients depending on which reference you consult. Now only the liquid ester form remains available and primarily for topical administration to certain eye infections.
I don't find the remaining antibiotics to be of much use and the herbals are worthless, imo.
The still permitted antibiotcs have been so heavily used in the ornamental fish industry for so many decades it seems all the most dangerous bacterial diseases have become quite drug resistant. The effects on biological filters are the least of the problems. You should only be using them in bare quarantine tanks in the first place. Just supply aeration and rely on water changes to control nitrogenous toxins produced by fish metabolism.
The dye based medications most often used to treat protozoan skin parasites have little effect on biological filters but they are rendered much less effective in the presence of much organic material.

[Bas Pels]

Habituation (that is, adaptation by bateria to antibiotics) is precisely the reason why I decided NOT to use any antibiotics in my fishes

Some bacetria are not only dangerous for fish, but for humaens as well. Imagine having an infection on your finger which does not heal - because you used the only effective antibiotic in your tank, for safety measures too short, and a few bacteria managed to survive - infecting you, and you were not resistent

Then, you may be lucky: only the finger has to go of. Or, quite lucky still, remouval of your arm will cure you

After all, being infected, and having an immune failure, should result in death. It normally does

I think rather a fish, any fish, then me myself

[Sophie's Mom]

Thanks for everyone's help. I didn't want to treat one fish and lose the BN and Cories as a casualty of the antibiotics. I enjoy all of them.

[apistomaster]

My opinion is that the antibiotics are not likely to harm the fish so much as they have lost a lot of their original effectiveness after so many years of excessive use resulting in so many antibiotic resistant strains.
Of course the unwanted side effect of damaging a biological filter system is relatively still affected by most antibiotics.
It is never very effective to use antibiotics in anything other than bare quarantine tanks. I would never use any antibiotics in a display tank.
Correct use of antibiotics always depends on an accurate diagnosis of the organism causing illness and that is beyond the capabilities of most fish keepers. And even if you had the knowledge and facilities to determine the causative organism and which antibiotic has the best effect by then the fish are dead. If you handle wholesale quantities of fish you eventually get pretty good at identifying what the problem is and the correct drug to use. Acquiring that experience always costs a lot of money.

[apistomaster]

More on the rising problem of antibiotic resistant infectious disease from the Science New York Times.
The indiscriminate use of antibiotics among poultry and livestock is even worse than that in the ornamental fish industry.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/27/busin ... jinazFZbPg

[Ozcattie]

Apistomaster, I had to use antibiotics in one tank, because I determined the organism was living in the tank!!!
I kept getting the fish healthy & returning them to the tank, whence they would become diseased again....
So I treated that Fekker with so much amoxocillin (about 1500mg in a 29ltr)that it was a "Christmas tank" for a couple of hours. I put in a different filter to circulate/aerate the water & switched the normal filters off. After about 18 hours I did about an 70% water change (adding water from my other tank) & it only took a week & 2 more water additions from my other tank, to establish the bio filter again.
The fish in the tank were only affected positively by the experience.
If I had the same problem, I would attack like this again.