Xubarku

A minor update, the remaining infected shrimp is now completely fungus free. I was getting a bit lazy (I know, horrible me) at the end and just doing a full dose of paraguard with few dips. It may be just as effective as the dips, if not more. As said, definitely seems invert safe. To anyone who stumbles across this post later, give dark therapy and regular dosages of Seachem Paraguard a shot. I had just done that from the start, and it IS cheap. I can't help but feel the dark therapy is important, and it's free, so why not?

So, I've been dosing the Paraguard in combination with dark therapy. I also tried to do some daily baths, as prescribed by Lyana, but I admit I've skipped a few days. Water changes were ~40% every 10 days or so, but no clue if it's necessary. I placed a pond snail and MTS in the tank to see if the treatment affected them any, but they're both doing fine. Tons of eggs on the glass, courtesy of the pond snail. I haven't seen the MTS in a while, but I assume it's doing fine. Of my three infected shrimp, I managed to kill one because he got stuck in the net and I didn't notice. Found a crispy little male the following day, sigh. Anyway, onto the results. The way Lyana describes the cure taking like days to happen really makes me wish I could have saw some before/after photos. My treatment of the two remaining infected shrimp has lasted about a month so far. One molted last night and seems to be entirely free of the parasite, while the second still has a tuff of green here and there. Either way, they both had a full blown carpet under their tail at the start of the treatment, so this is a huge improvement. I am slightly worried that their carapiece has suffered, as one is a bit spotty, and the other seems to have a hole through the body. I'm not entirely sure if it IS a hole, and feel any confirmation would be needlessly traumatic to the shrimp, so I won't check unless she randomly dies in the near future. Both shrimp are still active and otherwise healthy. What was effective: the dark therapy, the salt baths, or the paraguard? Were each only moderately effective at weakening the parasite, but combined became enough to overcome? I'm not sure. Being as I think I've seen someone claim each of the three methods were a potential cure, I wonder if it's the latter. I want to repeat that my shrimp had been getting progressively worse over a couple months, so the infection was very well established. I wouldn't be surprised if my shrimp were worse off than the other posters', which might be why a full recovery took so long. Pleased to say that, other than the initial sick shrimp, there have been no more infected in the few months that I've had my shrimp. This makes me suspect that the parasite, similar to ich, has a life cycle that forces it to either infect a new host or die out in a tank. That's a bit of good news, at least. I'm considering keeping those two poor shrimp forever isolated in quarantine, just in case.

I've tried a little bit of everything. At the moment, I'm doing the dips as described by Lyana, dosing Paraguard at half strength in their quarintine tank, and doing an admittedly halfassed attempted at dark therapy. I haven't wrapped their tank with paper, so they get some indirect natural light, but it's minimal. This will be the fifth day of treatment. I DO have a third in there I thought was getting sick, but she seems to be just berried now. Not sure if I misdiagnosed, or the treatment was successful and she simply happened to be berried. Shame I didn't take photos. It's worth noting I've yet to hear about this infecting a male. The "fungus" was very advanced on my two. Spinnerets were entirely covered, with growth beginning to creep up the sides. Knowing how bad my shrimp were while still seeming otherwise healthy, I have no doubt you'll notice any issues with your jades. Since the above treatment began, I feel the fungus has become a more subdued, yellowish green, with a possible decreased in mass on one of them, but it's still very much hanging on. If the treatment is successful, I'll make sure to post. On the topic of the fungus being a photosynethic protozoan, my experience seems to support that. My quartine tank is actually a one gallon tank with a 13 watt cfl on top. Under the higher par (as said, since stopped using the light) the fungus seemed to undergo a growth spurt. This could also be influenced by cooler (~70 vs 78 degree) water, or me ceasing Melafix treatment (which I originally assumed).

Just curious, how long does it normally take for this "fungus" to kill? I've been trying to save one shrimp in particular for... probably five, if not six weeks now. She's still doing fine as far as I can tell. It makes me wonder if there aren't multiple pathogens being considered the same thing...

It's probably too soon to say for sure, but does the paraguard seem to be having any effect? Currently trying to find something that works for this "fungus" myself.

Curious, is there a reason you seem to be avoiding saying the name of the specific seller?