greenex/hex-a-mit

[Dyncaus]

i am tyring to treat my main tank, a 29g and a quarantine tank i have set up, 10g with 2 clowns in it, for what i believe is oodinium(velvet?). i bought two medications which claim to cure it. in my main tank i have put in the hex-a-mit, b/c the person at the lfs claimed it was more invertabrate safe than the greenex. in my quarantine i wanted to use the greenex, but i have been reading that greenex sometimes kills fish instead of treating them. on the bottle it says safe for fish and invertabrates, but one can never be too sure. anyways, i was just wondering if anyone had any experience with either of these products. sorry for the long post, thanks.

[Isis]

I know someone who used Greenex at the recommendation of the LFS saying it wouldn't harm fish or inverts. It wiped out her whole tank almost completely.

[eleyan]

I've used greenex before in my main FO tank. It cured the ich problem and did not harm any fish, but killed off all my snails.

[Dyncaus]

does anyone know anything about hex-a-mit?

[eleyan]

I thought Hex-a-mit was an antibiotic. I remember using it on my discus one time. Velvet is an skin parasite, so I'm not sure if an antibiotic would cure it.

[Dyncaus]

the box says it works for ich, and oodinium, which i believe is the name for velvet. correct me if i am wrong however

[Dyncaus]

thanks, i'll try to make a trip up there towards the end of the week. losing fish this soon after getting into the hobby is quite discouraging.

[matt]

Actually, soon after getting into the hobby is when most people lose the most animals, so try not to feel too bad about it. I'm pretty sure you will have no luck treating your tank with any medication. You need to quarantine the fish, which I guess by your first post you have done, then treat that tank with a copper based medication. You need copper sulfate, I think, and a decent copper test kit. You'll also need to change water in the quarantine tank really often, probably every couple of days, because the copper will also kill any biofiltration. If you've treated the main tank with any type of medication, it might be a lost cause in terms of the rock and sand bed. I could be wrong (hope i am) depending on what it was that you put in there. If it's chelated copper, sorry, but you should throw out every piece of rock and sand in the tank and start fresh. Otherwise you'll have residual copper in there forever, and forget about trying to establish a decent micro invertibrate community. Hopefully, there's no copper in your medication, in which case you could try changing as much water as possible, like several 50% changes, then run polyfilter and activated carbon under some pressure. If your main tank is empty of fish for a month or so, you can be fairly sure that the parasites will have died without a host. By then, the copper will have killed the parasites on your fish and in that water, and you can reintroduce your fish to the main tank. At least that's the way it's supposed to work. The problem is keeping the copper level up and the ammonia level down at the same time in a small quarantine tank. You might ask at aquatic warehouse if they'll quarantine your fish in their medication tanks for a while. Of course, you should offer to pay them for this service. I bet Richard at CB pets also has a good quarantine set up.

Next time, you might want to think twice before accepting advice like this from an employee at a lfs that's trying to sell you something. Verify it by posting here, or on reefcentral or reefs;org, before adding the stuff to your tank. There's just so much B.S. product in this hobby. Keep smiling!

[Richard]

Guess I missed this one and it's too late too help but since my name was mentioned twice I'll give my thoughts.

Hexamit works pretty well on oscars with hole in the head but I don't think it's proven to be effective on saltwater parasites. Wouldn't be my choice.

Greenex is malachite green and basically the same antibiotic found in Hexamit. Malachite green is a powerful anti-parasite/fungicide/disinfectant. It's too harsh for use on saltwater fish IMO. It is rapidly absorbed and retained in the tissues and organs of fish and is a suspected carcinogen. There's a reason it's banned in the US for use on anything except aquarium fish.

[Instar]

Be careful when you say it wiped out all my snails but didn't harm any fish. It takes some time for a lymphoma to kill the fish. Malachite Green affects cellular reproduction. Once spread thru the lymph system, it could cause lymphoma. That takes some time to show up. And if it does, those fish are dead fish. These "Safe" labels just mean they dropped it in the tank and the test was concluded in an hour with all the things still living. Personally, I like keeping things longer than that. See Kim's post above for a more accurate result of the test using this stuff. That could be because it wipes out the bio filter, but, there's more to it than just that.

Where did you get your fish?

[Dyncaus]

ok, well it has been about two weeks now since i treated my main tank with the hex-a-mit. all the snails i have are still alive, my peppermint shrimp is still alive as well. i have also noticed a lot of pods on the glass. is it safe to assume that the treatment didn't do any harm to my system as far as introducing anything. also, on another note, my clowns died shortly after trying to treat the qt tank with the hex-a-mit. i am wondering how to go about with buying new fish. such as, how long should i keep them there, should i dose copper even if the fish look fine, how do i keep the qt tank parameters in check, etc. thanks in advance

Instar: I have gotten all my fish from Texas Tropical.

[Richard]

I would not treat fish unless you have a reason to, copper suppresses the fishes immune system so it is better not to use it unless you have to. Also, contrary to popular myth copper does not cure everything. I would keep the salinity in your QT tank very low around 1.012. A salinity of 1.009 - 1.010 will kill off most strains of cryptocaryon but you want to use a refractometer if you go that low.