Safe Medications for use with Inverts

[shrimp bandit]

Hi,:smile:

Can anyone advise what treatments are safe to use in a planted tank with fish and inverts? :confused:


I have a 145 litre tank planted out with various anubias, mosses, fern and crypts.

It contains 4 Valliants Gouramis, 15 spice rasboras, a couple of Hill stream loaches, 15 bummble bee shrimp and a load of breeding Cardina back stripe shrimp.

I am looking for medication that is safe to use with the inverts as I have a bit of a snail problem that a snail trap will not cope with and am a bit concerned about a possible gill infection on one of my Gouramis.

Netting the fish to remove to a hospital tank is out of the question as the tank is heavily decorated with bog wood and plants. I would basically need to strip the whole tank which is a terrifying prospect:nah:

chears

richard

[Melody]

None of the snail chemicals are effective enough and they are hard on the other creatures in the tank. I almost killed my fish using them once, but the snails remained. They are copper-based so they would not be safe for inverts.

If you have to treat a fish, remove it to a hospital/isolation tank and treat it there. Medicating an entire tank just to treat one fish will often result in more problems. Medications are hard on fish and they can also develop an immunity to them. I know its hard to catch fish sometimes, but its one of those things that has to be done.

Otherwise, you can test med's on a single shrimp in a separate tank if you really feel that you need to use it. For infections, nothing beats aquarium salt (if the tank occupants can handle it), Melafix, clean conditions and as little stress as possible (lights out).

Have you tested your water parameters? Snail population explosions indicate overfeeding, which can cause a host of other problems as well. You might be surprised at how much debris can be rotting away amongst all of those ornaments/plants. Pulling what is moveable out and giving the aquarium a good vacuum would be a good first coarse of action, along with testing your water parameters.

Once you do that, we can have a look for more specific problems. Good luck!