Historically medicating fishes orally either whilst in a quarantine/hospital tank or even within the display has always been difficult and more than a little hit or miss.

 

 Medicating fishes usually involves medicating by dilution which means treating for water volume, this usually impacts bacterial balance of the holding aquarium or medication falls out of solution before having much of an impact on the infection.

 

The other way to medicate would be to soak frost foods in medicated water and hope that the food takes up enough of the medication to treat the fish. This is usually ineffective but carries less risk than the potential to upset bacterial balance and possibly cause ammonia to spike by overdosing the water volume.

 

Obviously there are medications such copper, formalin etc that have to be administered within the water column but is there a way to encourage fishes to take medications such as wormer or antibiotics orally? With the introduction of H2O reef paste I have found that there is!

 

Due to the highly palatable nature of H2Ocean reef paste coupled with the ability to mix it with other foods and stick it to surfaces within the aquarium makes it the ideal transport medium for fish medications. Rather than overdosing the aquarium with meds an appropriate amount of medication can be delivered for the fish to consume.

 

Earlier this month I noticed that my Achilles tang was showing signs of a bacterial infection in one eye possibly caused by catching the eye on rock or coral. I decided to mix in a very small amount of the antibiotic Metronidazole with the reef paste. As all of my fish were taking the reef paste with gusto I soon realised that using reef paste to feed medication was going to be a no brainer.

 

I prepared the feed as follows.

 

1.       Crushed the medication between two spoons as it was in tablet form

 

 

2.       Worked the medication into the paste

 

 

3.       Mounted the paste onto the aquarium glass; I prefer sticking it to a magfloat glass cleaner to position the foods better.

 

 

4.       Allow the fish to feed.

 

 

                                    

 

 

Within three days I noticed a rapid improvement as recorded in the pictures below. 

 

 

                                      

 

 

Please keep in mind many medications are not to be considered reef safe so should be fed within a quarantine tank environment. Use medications at your own risk and research well before using any medications.

 

 

Tony