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Re: Antibiotics
I'm afraid I haven't had much experience treating fish in a planted tank
with antibiotics (maybe I should say I'm thankfull for this?), but I can
help answer one of your questions.
Tetracycline does not act the same as penicillin, irregardless of the kind
of organism/ disease you are trying to treat - fish, human, or otherwise.
While both medications work against bacteria, their mechanisms of action
are very different. As I remember from biochem, penicillin acts on
proteins within the bacterial cell wall. As the bacteria tries to expand,
protein synthesis in the wall is impaired, causing the cell to burst open
and die. Unfortunately, not all bacteria are suseptible to this (due to
differences in cell wall structure). Tetracycline, on the other hand,
works within the bacterial cell. It crosses the cell wall and binds
within the cell, ultimately interrupting reproduction of the bacterial
genome. The bacteria eventually dies, although I don't belive it is quite
as dramatic as the penicillin mechanism. Again, not all bacteria are
suseptible to this. If your barbs do not have a bacterial infection,
neither one of these will work.
I'm still not sure how either one of these drugs will affect plants.
Input, anyone?
Jennifer Wong
Lurking in Atlanta until now ...
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Date: Thu, 18 Feb 1999 11:12:01 +0100 (MET)
> From: Andrei Tatarinov <Andrei.Tatarinov at cern_ch>
> Subject: Antibiotics
>
> Hi all,
> is it true that antibiotics (penicillin 500 units/l) can kill aquatic
> plants ?
[snip]
>
> Is tetracycline act the same as penicillin?
>
> Can you point me some newsgroup or mailing list about fish disease,
> please.
>
> Thanks in advance,
>
> Andrei Tatarinov
> PhD student
> Budker Inst. for Nuclear Physics
> Novosibirsk, Russia
>
> ------------------------------