safe medicine

[love2fish]

Hi All: I have a pearl gourami that has some sores and I'm going to have to use an antibactial or parasite medicine. Can anyone tell me the names of some safe medicines I can use for him with clown loaches and a kuhli loach? Thanks

[starsplitter7]

Do you know what the cause of the sores is? I ask because using an antiparasitic for a bacterial infection won't work.

I would use a quaratine tank and treat just the affected fish with extra clean water first. If that doesn't work, Maracyn 1 and 2 work well, but you have to do the entire course of treatment. A 10 gallon treatment tank would work much better than a show tank, since the medicine is designed for 10 gallons, and if you have to treat a big tank, it can be almost as expensive as buying a ten gallon treatment tank. Also if you use a antibiotic, it will also kill the good bacteria in your filters, and so you will need to cycle your tank again. Much easier to keep the cycle on your main tank and treat the small tank. Lots of water changes during treatment help with the lack of cycled tank.

Then when your gourami is healthy, you can put him back in the cycled main tank.