Nathan Hill takes a look at some new medications to treat specific diseases in the aquarium.
JBL, always the innovator, has released new medications for specific diseases.
Gyrodol 2 is designed to counter gill worms and tapeworms. Given its active ingredient of praziquantel, it will be useful against Dactylogyrus and Gyrodactylus, as well as cestode tapeworms – all target pathogens that praziquantel is known to combat well.
However, it will also blight any other invertebrate life in the tank, so using it with snails or shrimps is a no-no.
There’s also anecdotal evidence hinting that scale-less loaches and catfish are overly sensitive to the ingredient, yet this is the pay-off for a fluke treatment that genuinely works.
Aradol is a medicine directed toward surface parasites, such as Argulus, anchor worms and Trichodina. Having diflubenzuron as its active ingredient this will blight anything with a chitin shell and the ingredient is used commercially to control moths and weevils.
Aradol is good for both freshwater and marine use, but of little use with temperate fish, as the ingredient loses lethality below 18°C/64°F. Like gyrodol, it will blight anything without a spine, so shrimps, corals, crabs — you name it — will need to be kept well away when treating with this.
Nedol is a worming treatment with the active ingredient benzimidazol — a derivation of which is fenbendazol, which many who have had worms in fish may already be familiar with. This ingredient has a pretty good track record against hair worms, pin worms and Camallanus, and should represent a treatment that importers of wild fish and Discus keepers will appreciate.
As with the other treatments, forget using this in tanks with inverts. That may seem a hindrance, but half the time the effect a medicine has on other inverts is something of a litmus test, telling whether it’s going to have an effect on pathogens or be up there with homeopathic nonsense.
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