# Parasite Clear & Acriflavine: What plants does it kill?



## DJKronik57 (Apr 17, 2006)

I'm trying to cure a poor clown loach of knifeback disease and every time I treat him I put him in a quarantine tank and then back into the main tank. He does better for a bit, but then gets worse. I'm thinking other fish in the tank are reinfecting him and he's weakened. So I'm going to try treating the entire tank with Jungle Parasite Clear. I did some research and found some reports of acriflavine (one of the ingredients) killing Java Moss, but not much else. How worried do I need to be? I've collected portions of every plant and put them into the quarantine tank in case everything dies. There are no inverts in the tank. Anyone treated a fully planted tank with Parasite Clear before?


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## Darksome (Feb 15, 2009)

I've had very poor results with everything from Jungle Labs, including Parasite Clear and Fungus Clear. I dosed one of my tanks a while back with Parasite Clear, a 10 gallon tank halfway full of java moss and most of it died within a few weeks, I should had known better. 

It didn't cure my fish and I just thought it was a waste of money since those tablets didn't seem to have the right concentration of medication. I used them several times, becoming completely confident about a product because of a well known-brand, I came out losing in the end. It didn't heal and it didn't prevent further infection. I lost all my fish. 

Always remove plants in a medicated tank they might not stand a chance. As for the disease, I'm not familiar with it. I hope someone can help you with that. Best of luck!


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## DJKronik57 (Apr 17, 2006)

Just as an update, 3 months later and the clown is back to being healthy and plump. The parasite clear did the trick, and, in the concentration I used, didn't kill any plants. I did a 50% water change 24 hours after treating it to minimize any negative impacts.


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## Six (May 29, 2006)

FYI you probably fixed the problem that was causing the fish to get sick rather than the product really working. those products are kind of placebos. In the aquarium hobby you can make a product, claim it does something and sell it to people without there being any proof that it works. I always liked tea tree oil that smells like its doing something and foams up too, but it's instructions say "do 25% water changes every other day" or something like that and guess what really fixes the problems? The water changes- not the "medication".

so, fyi, there are more and more products out there that do the same thing.


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## DJKronik57 (Apr 17, 2006)

Six said:


> FYI you probably fixed the problem that was causing the fish to get sick rather than the product really working. those products are kind of placebos. In the aquarium hobby you can make a product, claim it does something and sell it to people without there being any proof that it works. I always liked tea tree oil that smells like its doing something and foams up too, but it's instructions say "do 25% water changes every other day" or something like that and guess what really fixes the problems? The water changes- not the "medication".
> 
> so, fyi, there are more and more products out there that do the same thing.


I can see how you may think that, and it could be the case that it was entirely unrelated, but after losing another loach to knifeback and battling to save this guy for a while, what finally "cured" it was the ParasiteClear on the entire tank. Loaches are particularly prone to parasitic infections because they are all wild caught. The parasites can sit "dormant" or controlled by the immune systems of the fish for years until stresses weaken the immune system and the knifeback rears its ugly head. When the fish is as sick as this one was (he was literally skin and bones and couldn't eat), it doesn't just miraculously get better without medication. I didn't change anything else. I do 50% water changes weekly anyway.

By the way, praziquantel and metronidazole are well known and tested anti-parasitic medications used in all sorts of animals and veterinary practices (and even humans, praziquantel is on the WHO's list of Essential Medicines). There's no way they're just "snake oil."


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