I have been a hobbyist for many years and have tried many products over time .
I am only a hobbyist and sometimes most hobbyist diagnose incorrectly, so in many cases it is just by chance that the fish recovers. sometimes due to its natural immunity.
I personally don’t know any hobbyist that have access to a microscope to positively identify pathogens and choose the correct medication to target and combat a specific disease. For some it’s a matter of choosing the strongest medication at a high dosage as a quick fix which doesn’t always work. Ask me I’ve recently used medication to help with the symptoms of the dreaded flu bug in CT and over dosed. and my BP almost went through the roof!
Getting back to the Smiths Dewormer. I bought some wild caught Bentochromis Tricotti that were imported from Tanzania. They were in pretty bad shape when I got them and refused to eat. The fish looks similar to a sardine and naturally appears slim and sleek.
The first challenge after about 3 days was to find out what food they prefer after refusing everything from pellets to frozen food. Like many I consulted Doctor Google who claimed that in many cases loss of appetite is a symptom of worms.
My go to product in the past if I suspected worms was Nemarid. (The yellow meds by local SA company Roubalon I think).
Like many I figured the more expensive the product…the better…and I wanted to give my new fish the best chance of recovery. I think if I had Discovery Medical Aid for my fish, I would send them for an MRI scan! 😀
I came across the Aquarium Smiths fish dewormer online which had some pretty good reviews that sparked my interest.
1) It was a local SA product.
2) Reasonably priced for the quantity and volume of water one could dose.
3) Success rate in treating worms were impressive from other users.
4) Easily absorbed through the skin. – something that stood out for me as the species are not a heavy scaled fish. And of course refused to eat.
After the treatment I observed the fish became more active. (I still kept the lights). I just assumed that perhaps due to them being wild caught fish they are settling and getting used to movement in front of the tank. Or it could be the positive effect the dewormer is having on them. Soon after the treatment they went for the dried shrimp I fed!
After a day I could see a fair amount of white stringy feces.
At this point I became desperate to kill this pathogen/ worm or whatever you called it. I just wanted to ‘kill’ it.
I went back to the instructions and saw that the product merely paralyze the worm and that vacuuming of the substrate was necessary – which I did.
I would recommend users to rather use a bare bottom glass hospital tank to treat fish badly infected, so one can actually see and vacuum / siphon out the feces if any is visible on the bottom of the tank.
Using the dewormer as a preventative treatment in a community tank one must just hope you cover most of the surface area when vacuuming.
After about a week my fish seemed on their way to recovery. I decided not to just leave it up to their natural immune system but to give another dose/ treatment.
This time I decided to take approximately half teaspoon of shrimp and soaked it in garlic water. I added two drops of the dewormer over the soaked food and a small spoon of focus (just to bind the medication to the food). This I fed and they happily munched. This time around there was no real visible signs of stringy feces except from one fish.
I wasn’t sure if the second method of administering was correct, but I based it on past treatments with other dewormers – I figured I would give it a try.
In the past I even administered some medication orally with a pipet if fish refused to eat. but this was more with robust cichlids.
But since the Smiths dewormer is absorbed through the skin it eliminates the stress and risk of administering orally.
So, this was my experience using Smiths dewormer.
I sure hope it can be of benefit to users in the future. I will continue to recommend your great and proudly South African product to others.
Regards
Ameen