Pond Boss Forums INTRO Questions & Observations Medicine for food fish?

What if you have a pond full of rainbow trout and they get a bacterial disease?

Are there any medicines you can put in a pond to treat food fish?

Gam,

Interesting question. The major drug companies really do not have any incentive to test medicines on fish as the market is just too small to support costly research and FDA approval. A lot of people are misusing animal medicines due to this problem, for example, an antibotic approved for turkey and chickens is used by some rabbit breeders. Some dog breeders use antibotics approved only for cattle....

The problem is really a dosage problem. How much is enough and how much is too much.

You may want to call some of the fish farms and ask them what they use.

First determine what specifically the fish have. Then ask at an aquarium store what they would use to treat that specific illness. From what I remember most of the medications would treat the water not the food. This might prove to be too exensive to treat a full pond. Some medications can be harmful to your ecosystem. Make sure to tell them it is for pond use and not just an aquarium. Others would be prepared and the fish would be dipped into the solution. Good luck!

Gambusia,

You can order a bag of feed with either Romet or terramycin from one or both of the manufacturers below. You can have it shipped UPS. It will probably have to be sinking feed. Romet is more of a broad spectrum feed if you don't know what bacteria is hitting them. Not sure which one has the Romet anymore. Could be another manufacturer in PA that the name escapes me at the moment.

That said what kind of environmental conditions do you have? Is your water getting too warm? Oxygen levels concurrently getting lower? Are your fish stressed for any reason? Did you get fish that were health inspected?

Even with health inspections there are some bacteria that are always present and not a problem unless the fish are stressed due to warm water temps, fast changing water temps, low oxygen etc. Even if you treat your fish and they recover, if the conditions persist that stress the fish, they will only have problems again.

http://www.zeiglerfeed.com/aquaculture.asp

Silver Cup Fish Feeds
118 West 4800 South
Salt Lake City, UT 84107
801-262-2991

Best way to prevent diseases in fish it to get healthy fish in the beginning that are inspected to be free of pathogens and to provide a stress free environment. That is optimum temps of 55 to 65 F. for trout, plenty of oxygen, no overcrowding etc.