My journey using Chloroquine Phosphate begins...

[b0bab0ey]

Originally Posted by jamesbaur13

I'm curious and not as educated as I'd like to be, so please don't take this the wrong way.

But b0b, wouldn't tank transfer method reduce the majority of the ick infestation within the first couple transfers and eventually fully cure the fish within a couple more? Or is it that you have some odd strain that is rarely documented that goes through it's life cycle entirely on the fish?

In this particular case, I didn't know what was wrong with my Tang (still don't). I know she had Ich in the DT, so I treated with copper for 30+ days. The white spots went away, but she continued to scratch and twitch her head. A f/w dip didn't show any Flukes. And yet after almost two months she continued to scratch and twitch her head. She would go into these violent episodes of doing so, almost like convulsions. Well, I knew I could never return her to the DT while these symptoms persisted, and I didn't want to just keep her in QT indefinitely, hoping these symptoms would go away on their own. So I decided to roll the dice and treat with CP. So far, so good. Her symptoms are completely gone.

I agree tank transfer sounds like a good method for treating Ich. But it's not without it's drawbacks. First, a lot of people are very busy (or lazy) and aren't going to want to go through the hassle of constantly setting up/breaking down QTs. The larger the fish you want to QT, the larger the QT needs to be, the more time/effort it's going to take to do tank transfer. Secondly, I would think ammonia would be a constant worry (I guess you could just use Amquel everyday). But there's also the cost of the salt to consider, the constant having to catch the fish with a net, etc. I don't know how in the world people have the patience to catch a fish with a specimen container.

With CP, it's one and done. You turn off the lights, dose once, wait 28 days and it's done. No WCs during that time so long as you have a seeded sponge. Just feed the fish once or twice a day. I know it sounds too good to be true and CP has yet to be verified as a "proven method" for treating Ich & Velvet. But if enough people start experimenting with it and have positive results then maybe one day it can replace hypo in the sticky.

[SueAndHerZoo]

Just following along with interest for any possible follow-ups and possible future use.

[snorvich]

Originally Posted by b0bab0ey

I agree tank transfer sounds like a good method for treating Ich. But it's not without it's drawbacks. First, a lot of people are very busy (or lazy) and aren't going to want to go through the hassle of constantly setting up/breaking down QTs.

I cannot help lazy. It really is not a lot of work.

The larger the fish you want to QT, the larger the QT needs to be, the more time/effort it's going to take to do tank transfer.

I disagree. A 20 gallon tank should be sufficient unless your fish is huge

Secondly, I would think ammonia would be a constant worry (I guess you could just use Amquel everyday).

Exactly. No copper, therefore no interaction

But there's also the cost of the salt to consider, the constant having to catch the fish with a net, etc. I don't know how in the world people have the patience to catch a fish with a specimen container.

Cost of salt compared to cost of fish???? I never use a net, it is very easy.


With CP, it's one and done.

You hope. At this point it is not yet a proven method. But each person should do what they think is best.

[b0bab0ey]

Originally Posted by snorvich

I cannot help lazy. It really is not a lot of work.

I'm just trying to be realistic about it. I know a lot of people who truly love this hobby but just have too much on their plate. Kids, job that makes them travel, taking care of elderly parents, etc. But they don't want to put their life on hold; They still want to have a tank. So for them, I would say tank transfer is a bad option.

Originally Posted by snorvich

I never use a net, it is very easy.

When doing tank transfer, how do you not cross contaminate using a specimen container? (Or a net for that matter.) Even if you are very careful, a little bit of water must get transferred over with the fish.

Originally Posted by snorvich

You hope. At this point it is not yet a proven method. But each person should do what they think is best.

It will never have a chance of becoming a proven method unless people start using it and experimenting with it. Unfortunately we can't rely on anyone in the aquarium industry to test it for us. They're quite happy selling us diseased fish and copper based products.

[snorvich]

So, when you used tank transfer, how did it work for you? And no, there is no water that gets transfered from one tank to the other during tank transfer.
But each to their own, do whatever seems right to you.

[b0bab0ey]

Originally Posted by snorvich

So, when you used tank transfer, how did it work for you? And no, there is no water that gets transfered from one tank to the other during tank transfer.
But each to their own, do whatever seems right to you.

I've never done tank transfer. Hope to do so in the future though. Just another experiment for me.

[b0bab0ey]

Day 34 update: PB Tang (and Maroon Clown) continue to look great, eat great. I'll probably wait until after I move in a few weeks to return them to the DT but I'm 99.9% convinced the Tang is cured of whatever she had. Can't wait to get my hands on a fish loaded with Ich or Velvet so I can treat with CP & document (w/pics) the whole thing.

[salty joe]

Good for you! Glad your tang & clown made it. Please keep posting about CP. Thanks.

[vaporize]

b0bab0ey - have you tried and see if CP will get rid of brook also?

[b0bab0ey]

Originally Posted by vaporize

b0bab0ey - have you tried and see if CP will get rid of brook also?

Sorry, no experience with CP and Brooklynella. Hopefully alprazo will chime in on this, as he is the CP guru.

[alprazo]

I just never see brookynella anymore. My days of keeping fish with bones are really in the past. I've never tried it.

I can tell you that I successfully treated a group of chromis with Uronema. This is not an obligate parasite and therefore nearly impossible to eradicate from the tank. Even though the chromis improved in QT, when placed into a DT, where it was probably present, it returned and they one by one died.

With brookynella I would still recommend formalin or flagyl.

Brookynella and Uromena are difficult to distinguish and therefore I would stick with the latter two.

[b0bab0ey]

Day 46 update: PB Tang continues to show no symptoms of Ich/Flukes. Clown looks good too. Only thing with the Tang is her Lympho has come back a little bit. I can't remember seeing Lympho on her since when I first got her (well over a year ago), although my wife claims she saw it once while the Tang was in the DT. I'm not really all that concerned with it.

I can tell the Tang is tired of being confined to a barren 29g QT. She sleeps in her PVC cave, but whenever the lights are on she usually swims back and forth by the front glass. She goes crazy whenever she sees me (begging for food) so I've been feeding her 3x daily to keep her happy. She also gets nori daily. I can't even get the nori on the fish clip before she starts eating it out of my hand.

She hasn't seen a DT since Jan 1st and if I weren't moving soon, I would have put her back already. I'm upgrading to a 150g as part of the move, so I'm hoping she'll be happy in there. I just hope I don't lose her during the move.

[alprazo]

Thx for posting your experience with CP. I hope more people try it and post their results. I have had nothing but success in both ich and velvet. IMO, it is the best treatment out there for these two parasites.

[mowhawk]

I too have used CP to treat fish. CP is available in the UK over the counter (from a pharamcy) for malaria prophylaxis.

My experience with this drug is also positive. I have treated a powder blue tang and several other fish that had WS successfully.

The following is an account of my observations:

1) Minimum treatment should be over a period of 14 days.

2) Dosage should be 5-10mg/l

3) I carried out partial water changes every three days and ensured I replace any CP that was removed by the water change and any that was broken down by the effect of light.

4) I ran a skimmer during treatment (not usually recommended) however I turned the flow through the skimmer down to prevent the skimmer from removing the CP.

5) CP kills algae, inverts and corals (except hermit crabs).

6) The fish responded quicker to CP than copper medication; WS cleared up within 3 days.

7) Treating in a QT is far better and effective than feeding CP directly to fish.

I never observed any ill effects (like cloudy water) during treatment time, however I lost a flame angel early in treatment (prob due to CP overdose).

HTH

Sanj

[VeL]

Great thread and big thanks to everybody who is sharing their experience with CP. I myself am fighting Ich outbreak (I think) that I could not eradicate during the 4 weeks copper treatment. During all times copper levels were 0.5-0.6 (tested with 3 test kits) but the parasite still remains. I have doubts that it may not be Ich, as the parasite looks bigger/longer-worm-like but not copper nor PraziPro (double treatment) killed it and it keeps appearing on fish.
So now I managed to get some CP drugs (pills with active ingreadient 250mg CP) and I am about to treat my 100l QT. My initial plan was to use 10mg/l as suggested here, however I stumbled upon this thread:

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/sh....php?t=2027415

Under post #6 you can see scanned pages from FAMA magazine, where Bob Goemans suggest using:
1) for QT purposes - 10mg/l CP and then repeat the dosage in 10 days
2) for disease outbreak - 20mg/l CP and then add aditional 10mg/l CP every 7 days till you hit 40 days treatement.

So I was wondering if 10mg/l with no second dose would be sufficient to eradicate the parasite. My fish have gone through so many medicines and I am not sure if they would handle more if I had to make a second CP treatement if the first one does not work.

[mowhawk]

Originally Posted by VeL

Great thread and big thanks to everybody who is sharing their experience with CP. I myself am fighting Ich outbreak (I think) that I could not eradicate during the 4 weeks copper treatment. During all times copper levels were 0.5-0.6 (tested with 3 test kits) but the parasite still remains. I have doubts that it may not be Ich, as the parasite looks bigger/longer-worm-like but not copper nor PraziPro (double treatment) killed it and it keeps appearing on fish.
So now I managed to get some CP drugs (pills with active ingreadient 250mg CP) and I am about to treat my 100l QT. My initial plan was to use 10mg/l as suggested here, however I stumbled upon this thread:

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/sh....php?t=2027415

Under post #6 you can see scanned pages from FAMA magazine, where Bob Goemans suggest using:
1) for QT purposes - 10mg/l CP and then repeat the dosage in 10 days
2) for disease outbreak - 20mg/l CP and then add aditional 10mg/l CP every 7 days till you hit 40 days treatement.

So I was wondering if 10mg/l with no second dose would be sufficient to eradicate the parasite. My fish have gone through so many medicines and I am not sure if they would handle more if I had to make a second CP treatement if the first one does not work.

I have found 10mg/l to be sufficient to treat WS.

However I do partial water changes and add extra CP at the same time (replace CP for a like for like basis).

HTH

Sanj

[b0bab0ey]

Just wanted to thank the above posters for contributing to this thread. As others have already noted, CP was considered a "proven treatment" for Ich and Velvet back in the 70s and 80s. Apparently it fell out of favor simply because it became so hard to get. However, alprazo has a veterinary pharmacy contact who can sell you the medication. Look here for more info:

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/sh....php?t=2152307

Look folks, I'm not saying this stuff is a "miracle cure", as I myself have limited experience with it. All I'm saying is unless people start using it and posting their results, newbies are never going to move past treatments like hypo (which is tedious and doesn't work on all strains) and copper (which is a poison - need I say more). Also, for what it's worth, I think tank transfer sounds like a helluva good option as well. Just be prepared to spend a lot of $$$ on salt. So, I guess it's whichever option you wanna spend your $$$ on... CP or salt.

[alprazo]

Mohawk,

I WOULD NOT dose 20mg/l and add every 7 days. Stick with 10mg/l or 40 mg/gal.

[mowhawk]

Originally Posted by alprazo

Mohawk,

I WOULD NOT dose 20mg/l and add every 7 days. Stick with 10mg/l or 40 mg/gal.

Neither would I 20mg/l was Bob Goemans suggestion and NOT mine

[VeL]

b0bab0ey sorry to invade your thread but I think it will be good to keep all feedback on CP in one thread so people can read it all.
Anyhow. After treating ich (I think, or some type of crypto) with copper at 0.5-0.6 for 4 weeks and after the syptoms kept showing over and over again I decided to give it a try on CP. On 3rd of May I bought some anti-malaria pills that have 250mg CP active ingreadient per pill. They have cornstarch and some other minor ingreadients which make the water cloudy but I can't find pure CP here. After making 4 pills /1000mg CP/ into powder, I disolved them in a plastic cup and shortly after added them to my 100l QT, which gave me concentration of 10mg/l. The QT lightning is turned off. Three days later once again I saw white spots on the Regal Tang and I decided to increase the dose with 25%. After some water change with the appropriate dose of QT added to the new water, i put 250mg more, which gave me 12.5mg/l. I also added the recommended dose of PraziPro /I may have flukes too/. Five days passed but the Yellow Tang still breathe a bit fast. Today I also saw a possible white spot on one of the clowns, which may also be a little wound - it is very tiny and I cannot see good but seems to be ich. However what worries me more is that the yellow tang has been scratching on the pvc pipe all day long.
Today I will do a 40% WC, redose Prazi at full dose and redose CP for the new water.
As alprazo mentioned the symptoms should disappear in a few days, however I still see them 7 days later. So I am wondering if I should wait or increase the dose to 15-20mg/l in case I have some very resistant Ich strain, which survived copper and keeps thriving in CP.

[alprazo]

The malaria pills are perfectly fine.

I would not go past 12.5 mg/l. I have to look back, but in my initial research, I remember the LD50 being somewhere around 20 mg/l.

If your disease has failed copper and not responding to chloroquine, it is unlikely that you are dealing with crypto. I'm sure resistance to chloroquine exists in nature, but copper too- I would think is less likely.

[b0bab0ey]

Originally Posted by VeL

b0bab0ey sorry to invade your thread but I think it will be good to keep all feedback on CP in one thread so people can read it all.

You're not invading; You're adding useful information to this thread, my friend. The more folks we can get to experiment with CP and post their results, the more we grow in knowledge as a fish disease fighting community.

I would give CP the same treatment time as copper (3-4 weeks) before giving up on it. It took my PB Tang (Typhoid Mary) that long to stop showing all symptoms. Speaking of which, Mary is still doing great! Hopefully she can make the 12 hr move this weekend to her new home, a 150g reef.

[VeL]

Originally Posted by b0bab0ey

You're not invading; You're adding useful information to this thread, my friend. The more folks we can get to experiment with CP and post their results, the more we grow in knowledge as a fish disease fighting community.

I would give CP the same treatment time as copper (3-4 weeks) before giving up on it. It took my PB Tang (Typhoid Mary) that long to stop showing all symptoms. Speaking of which, Mary is still doing great! Hopefully she can make the 12 hr move this weekend to her new home, a 150g reef.

I really hope that 3-4 weeks treatement is what I need and that the CP treatment is working for me. It has been 12 days now in CP and the respiration problems have been present at all time. At the begining I thought there were flukes as well so I've done two 5 days PraziPro treatments together with the CP without any improvement. For the past two days the respiration rate of the clowns has icreased a lot and the tang and clowns have been scratching badly but what's worse - I saw two very small white spots and a bigger white spot on one of the clowns. I can't believe it's been 3 days at 10ppm and 9 days at 12.5 ppm of CP and symptoms seem to develop

P.S.
On Wednesday I'll perform 80% WC and to the new water ill add a fresh dose of 12.5 mg/l CP /malaria pills again/. The only thing I could think of is that the 20 mins a day when the lightning is on may break down CP to a point where it is not effective anymore. Or it may be PraziPro that makes CP less effective. But again that's only an assumption.

[Chicago]

Tagging

[Chicago]

Need source got quilarium. Sorryon spelling