Can anyone tell me what this is??? How to cure it???

[Biollante]

Hi JJ,

Sorry about that nerd-speak!


The 3% Hydrogen peroxide, H₂O₂ is just plain old medicine cabinet clean up the cuts and scrapes stuff.

• Just as we can use it to clean up our cuts and scrapes, the same is true for our critters.
  
• We can also use it as an emergency oxygen supply,
  
  
  • 3% H₂O₂ is also known as “10-volume” since each “volume” decomposes into 10 times as much O_2(gas).
    
  • Without going through the arithmetic, you can safely dose
    
  • 1-ml of 3% Hydrogen peroxide for every 5-gallons of water every 12 hours to boost the effectiveness of biological filters or
    
  • compensate for heavy fish loads during warm weather.
    
• Many algae can be treated (destroyed) by applying about 5-ml per gallon of 3% Hydrogen peroxide with a cooking syringe or turkey baster
  
  
  • (you give up a lot of control) over several minutes, wait 24 hours or so check results and reapply.
    
  • (Be very careful with this at higher doses you will start killing invertebrates in a clean aquarium.)
    
• (Also, remember there is little difference between algae and other primitive plants such as mosses and ferns
  
  
  • so you must be very careful and use weaker solutions in tanks with primitive plants.)
    

As with any oxidizer, effectiveness varies with organic load.

• A large amount that seemed necessary to be effective and did no damage the day before may well be lethal the next
  
  
  • since the first dose may simply have oxidized undesirable organic compounds and
    
  • with those compounds gone the oxidizer now attacks desirable organic compounds in the form of our critters and plants.
    
    

Should you overdose Hydrogen peroxide it can be neutralized with dechlorinator or Potassium permanganate that I will write about tomorrow, or later this morning as it happens...


Biollante

[quatermass]

See The Aquarium Wiki Encyclopaedia on H2O2.

A very useful liquid!


If you're getting bacterial diseases then use a bacteria in a bottle product like waste Control or Stress Zyme.

This works by adding billions of harmless bacteria which cleans up your tank, lower the amount of aquarium maintenance and starves out the nasty bacteria.


This is called the Competitive Exclusion method

I've used it for years. Works wonders.

[jerrybforl]

Hey Biollante!

•A very conservative dosing would be 0.05-milliliters 3% H2O2 per liter every 12 hours

•(2-ml 3% H2O2 per 10-gallons is close enough).

So I need to dose 2mL/gallon or .05mL/gallon??? How often do I need to do WCs?

I've been keeping an eye on them and only one seems to have any issues. The water change did help. I have a skoal around 10 BIG tiger barbs ( I got them from Gerry D). I also have 8 smaller ones in a different tank that I plan on adding soon! I also have a skoal of 18 black skirt tetras that will be going in too. Maybe a small group of cherry barbs as well...Will add another filter to it. I have a Korali 4 in there and the barbs love it!

[Biollante]

Hi,

My recommendation was 2-ml of 3% Hydrogen peroxide for every 10-gallon, twice a day. So I would say Stuart¹ and I are on the same track here. Though one wonders as the article he cites cannot make up its mind whether 250-liters equals 66-USgallons or 55-USgallons^2&3.


2-ml per 10-gallon twice a day is a good conservative place to start. The 0.05-ml per liter works out to 1.89-ml per 10-gallons.



In all likelihood, you could get away with a much higher dose of 3% Hydrogen peroxide, but it is the problem with all oxidizers, there effect really depends on the amount of dissolved organic material, then the particulate organic material then the just plain old organic material, which of course includes our plants and critters. Therefore, prudence dictates we work with lower doses.


The issue of organic material in our aquariums is one of the main reason I am a fan of Potassium permanganate, it gives a way of actually quantifying and destroying the problematic organic material.


I meant⁴ to write a piece on PP… However, I did for the first time read Kordon Permoxyn™ product description that give a better explanation than I could.



I prefer a 1% KMnO₄ solution (10 grams KMnO₄ in 990-ml of distilled water) as opposed Kordon’s Permoxyn™ 3.84% solution (38.4-grams KMnO₄ in 961.6-ml of distilled water) as it allows for easier control of the dosage. Just remember that if you follow the recommendations for Permoxyn™ and use a 1% solution you must multiply everything by 3.84.



Using the 1% KMnO₄ solution makes it easy to use the PP calculator provided by the kind (and knowledgeable) folks of the Koi and Water Garden Society of Central New York, the 1% solution means that each milliliter is equal to 0.01-grams.



Biollante
¹Having the good sense and graces to spell his name correctly is obviously a man of knowledge and refinement.
²From Aquarium Wiki article “Hydrogen Peroxide” the table heading under article subhead “As an oxygen aid” “example 250 Litres (66 USG.) tank,” then under the subhead “As an algae killer,” “Concentrations of around 60ml of 3% H2O2 (30ml of 6%, 15ml of 9%) in a 250L (55 US gals).”
³Were I the gambling sort of evil plant monster I would bet on “66” being the better answer to the musical question, How many Us gallons to fill a 250-liter container?
⁴All those good-intention that make-up the pavement of the pathway to Hell.

[jerrybforl]

I prefer a 1% KMnO4 solution (10 grams KMnO4 in 990-ml of distilled water)

Where can I buy this product? I googled it but only found KMnO4 nothing about 1%. What doses do you use? The same as the peroxide? Also, how often should I do WCs?

[Biollante]

Hi,

Too much sanity may be madness and maddest of all is to see life as it is and not as it should be¹.

{For anyone reading or planning to use this or anything else I advise, I do not mean to offend², I am assuming you are of legal age and competent, should there be any issue involve an adult or care giver. Nothing wrong with being young, but some of this has inherent risk. While I believe everything I tell you is correct, and there are lots of folks to jump all over me if I am wrong, the responsibility is yours. Make sure you read and understand everything, especially those annoying links I keep including.}

If you are uncomfortable with the process, I do not mind talking you through it, but sometimes it is just as well to find someone locally to assist you.

The dosing rates for Potassium permanganate (KMnO₄) and Hydrogen peroxide (H₂O₂) are different, sort of; refer to the earlier posts on Hydrogen peroxide.

Keep up normal water changes and as advised earlier on, post #2, I think.

In addition, if you are doing significant or multiple PP dosing, water changes after and in between are a good idea.

Potassium permanganate, KMnO4 is also sold as (known as) Condy’s crystals (I see this most), Permanganic acid Permanganate of Potash and potassium salt, all are essentially “technical grade” for KMnO₄, this means at least 97% pure.

I last purchased it as Filter-Mate® Potassium Permanganate, that is a Summit Brands product and according to the nice folks at Summit Brands, it is technical grade, though it runs closer to 99%, from Lowes, I think it was about US$33.00 for 5-pounds. More on the journey here and here and maybe here.

If you purchase your own Potassium permanganate crystals you can mix as little or as much as you wish.

• As I said I use a 1% solution of PP, the easiest way to do that is add 10-grams of PP crystals into 750-ml of distilled water than add enough water to make 1-liter.
• Store the 1% PP solution in a dark bottle (empty standard 3% Hydrogen peroxide bottles are great for this, rinse them with distilled water and dry before filling) in a cabinet
  
  • (make sure you label the bottle and keep it away from kids).
• Keep it away from light and the stuff will last forever (a long time anyway),
  
  • 1-liter of 1% PP solution should last a couple of lifetimes.

{Warning a little chemistry stuff, a word about accuracy, I know many folks have fancy calculators and like to figure stuff to a quazillion decimal places. Notice I mentioned that the Potassium permanganate we use is 97% or more, pure. This is true with most things we use every day, even if you are purchasing the finest reagent grade chemicals they are still not pure. Next, when we deal with dilute solutions we assume the solvent, in our case water and the solute, KMnO4 in this case have the same density, this works well when we are talking 1.5-ppm or 2-ppm (0.00015% or 0.0002%) but as our solutions become more concentrated the difference in mass (density) starts showing up. In this case if I mix my 10-grams of PP in 990-ml of distilled water I actually end up with a little more than a 1-liter solution. The way I actually do it, is add 10-grams to 750-ml of water and then top it off, this results in a solution that were everything pure would be slightly more than a 1% solution. (For those that want to know the correct answer is 9.993-grams of PP into 990-ml of distilled water.) I say all of this (in addition to being an old gasbag) to say do not worry about all the numbers. By the time you figure the actual purity of the chemicals and the accuracy the scales, not to mention your ability, we are going to end up with a solution that is about 1% (10,000-ppm) that when cut to the 0.75-ppm to 2-ppm range we use will be accurate enough.}

For better accuracy purchase Kordon Permoxyn™ is a 3.84% prepared solution available from Kordon or through pet places. The fine folks at Kordon without specifying a grade say that it is “high grade-Potassium permanganate.”

Then of course, there is the really good stuff from Hach or Fischer Scientific…

If you get the PP we will work on dosing,

• the general rule is never exceed 2-ppm in the aquarium, and
• baths for critters are generally 4-6-ppm, dips somewhat higher.
• Dips for plants are usually 20-ppm,
  
  • much lower for primitive plants,
• buckets for nets and so forth 20-60-ppm.

Biollante
¹oft attributed to Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616) actually from “Man of La Mancha” (1972), Dale Wasserman is credited with the musical and the screenplay, and I do not recall the line from the musical.
²See disclaimer..

[quatermass]

Hi,

My recommendation was 2-ml of 3% Hydrogen peroxide for every 10-gallon, twice a day. So I would say Stuart¹ and I are on the same track here. Though one wonders as the article he cites cannot make up its mind whether 250-liters equals 66-USgallons or 55-USgallons^2&3.

Never fear, it was trivial to fix that error. That site being a Wiki after all.

[jerrybforl]

So this came back again and it's only with the LARGE Tiger Barbs! I noticed two of them today. Tomorrow I will go and get Melafix for a pond. This allows me to dose my 75 without using the whole bottle in two days... I will clean the filters out as well as I just finished rescaping the tank they are in. I used this product on my bushy nose pleco that got caught in a net and had sores and it worked great, so I see no reason it won't do the same job here. Will let you guys know what happens.

[Biollante]

Hi,

I suspect I am wasting my time… Last try for reason.

Tea oil is fine (I suppose for injuries), I believe this is an infection, the fish with the ulcer will most likely die.


You will continue to see outbreaks two to four times a year, if I am wrong, you harmed nothing and probably improved your tank.

I strongly suggest you follow my previous advice.


Biollante

[jerrybforl]

I suspect I am wasting my time… Last try for reason.

You're not wasting your time! I've taken your advice last time...

I strongly suggest you follow my previous advice.

With the H2O2? It's really weird how it only affects the larger tiger barbs!

Tea oil is fine (I suppose for injuries), I believe this is an infection, the fish with the ulcer will most likely die.

The object is to save and heal the fish...