Successful Med Treatments

[rykna]

Basic diagnosis and treatment for most fish is easy and routine. I just took a sick Koran Angel from my LFS to treat the hole-in-the-head infection it had. I know what this disease looks like, how to treat it, and what generally causes this ailment. The Angel is 95% healed and has just a tiny speck left that will be gone by the end of the month. And I can stand by my diagnosis with 100% confidence. However, I am very frustrated with the lack of success I have had treating/medicating my sick seahorses.
My treatments basically follow in this order:

Move sick horse to QT.
Make a 85-95% diagnosis of what is ailing the seahorse
Go over my books and online sites to select the best
medication to treat the seahorse with.
Pray
First five days I see some change
5-8 days seahorse show definite signs of health
increasing
Pray
After 2-3 weeks of treatment health will decrease and
seahorses become listless and die over a week
Pray
Any remaining seahorses will put up a good fight,
but the disease hangs on and eventually all horses die
Have any of you had success in healing a sick horse and returning it healthy and happy back into the DT?
If so I'd like the name of the disease and themed you used to treat the symptom, and the QT dose and length of treatment until you determined the seahorse was healed and ready to return to the DT.
~Rykna

 

[sueandherzoo]

Thanks for posting this query -- I've often wondered just how successful the meds and treatments are when trying to heal sick seahorses. I read and read about all the work and effort and dedication that goes into it but I don't often read about happy endings and it's very sad and discouraging. And then I have to wonder - do some of the treatments just make their last days more unpleasant or maybe even stress them to death? I don't know enough about seahorses yet to make that statement but it's definitely something that's run through my head. If they are almost always certain to die anyway, is a "kinder and gentler" approach the one to take?
Sue

 

[cleve_seahorse]

I managed to save my males with air in their pouches....good ol' bobby pin and alot of patience....and tried to save my female who died of a secondary bacterial infection from snicking a bristle worm up her snout , the infection set in about a good 1 1/2 months after the worm incident , but was unable to save her as she couldn't eat.I also was able to save my "special" male etectus who was choking with a baby medicine dropper , put it up to his snout and sucked it out [ larger piece of sand ]. He was never the same after that ....never wants to mate and is a bit slower than my other horses

All in all I never had much luck with meds except as a preventive , like prazipro .Maybe by the time we notice there acting funny , it's almost to late? That being said I'm trying to save 2 of my kelloggis from what looks like webbing....some sites say its parasitic , some say gram negetive bacteria....I'm covering the bases by bringing my sg down , and will start triple sulpha tom. morning....wish me luck....there still eating, so I'm cautiously optamistic

 

[sueandherzoo]

Good luck with that! Whether or not treatments are successful, it's hard to stand by and NOT do something -- our basic instinct insists we try as best we can.
Sue