Please STOP CIPROFLOXACIN DIPS and other antibiotics

[olonmv]

Pouring antibiotics down your drain means you, specifically, are risking creating antibiotic-resistant bacteria in your household. Bacteria that can make you sick, or your neighbors.

This makes better sense as to why and how it could personally affect one. I’m completely for the education of proper disposal with regards to my surroundings.

My thoughts were more along the line of these antibiotics making it into waste management systems and affecting a population on a bigger scale. Sure, one could stop dumping AB into the sewer system but that would benefit nobody if corps aren’t doin the same.

 

[dansyr]

My thoughts were more along the line of these antibiotics making it into waste management systems and affecting a population on a bigger scale. Sure, one could stop dumping AB into the sewer system but that would benefit nobody if corps aren’t doin the same.

I think you're thinking of it as an accumulation/stockpiling issue, when it's more of a natural selection issue. Plenty of environmental disposal hazards are truly stockpiling concerns (hormones, heavy metals, and "forever chemical" type things). Where your axis of comparison is spot-on: an individual's disposal of say mercury is meaningless compared to a corp.

But this is more of selecting for antibiotic resistant strains that are at very very very low abundances and boosting them, then returning them "to the wild" so that there's better odds for someone else to pick them up.

If you look at the antibiotic resistance tracking from ag (I think it was vanc but please forgive/correct me if i'm wrong) that was traced from livestock lots, it wasn't the animal meat in grocery stores or the sewage/effluent enriched in antibiotics that made vanc-resistant bacteria crop up everywhere. It basically just meant that pretty much only vanc-resistant bacteria could survive, and eventually those bacteria got out. So you should think of risk less as total mg's antibiotic used but more of the number of times you apply those mg's. So yea, as always corps are creating the most risk because they're applying the most times, but it still benefits you a LOT if your neighbor isn't rolling the dice once a month.

 

[olonmv]

I think you're thinking of it as an accumulation/stockpiling issue, when it's more of a natural selection issue. Plenty of environmental disposal hazards are truly stockpiling concerns (hormones, heavy metals, and "forever chemical" type things). Where your axis of comparison is spot-on: an individual's disposal of say mercury is meaningless compared to a corp.

But this is more of selecting for antibiotic resistant strains that are at very very very low abundances and boosting them, then returning them "to the wild" so that there's better odds for someone else to pick them up.

If you look at the antibiotic resistance tracking from ag (I think it was vanc but please forgive/correct me if i'm wrong) that was traced from livestock lots, it wasn't the animal meat in grocery stores or the sewage/effluent enriched in antibiotics that made vanc-resistant bacteria crop up everywhere. It basically just meant that pretty much only vanc-resistant bacteria could survive, and eventually those bacteria got out. So you should think of risk less as total mg's antibiotic used but more of the number of times you apply those mg's. So yea, as always corps are creating the most risk because they're applying the most times, but it still benefits you a LOT if your neighbor isn't rolling the dice once a month.

SPOT ON! I’m all for prevention! With that said. I’ve made a stock 50ml 250mg cipro solution once in the past. Used what I needed and let it sit for days where it would received sun-light. After a few days I did exactly what shouldn’t be done….down the drain with a bunch of tap water. Now. What can we do to neutralize or better yet, store stock solutions? I’d love to, if I ever had to again, keep my stock solution. Is it possible while maintaining potency?

 

[dansyr]

SPOT ON! I’m all for prevention! With that said. I’ve made a stock 50ml 250mg cipro solution once in the past. Used what I needed and let it sit for days where it would received sun-light. After a few days I did exactly what shouldn’t be done….down the drain with a bunch of tap water. Now. What can we do to neutralize or better yet, store stock solutions? I’d love to, if I ever had to again, keep my stock solution. Is it possible while maintaining potency?

honestly, bleach! does a number on most things, not confident about cipro* but def should degrade, and most importantly kill any bacteria that picked up resistance. most Ab's don't do well with boiling-level heat (at least kan and the usual lab stuff I work with) too. So some combination of bleach to kill whatever's in there, boil if you want to be extra safe, and then dilute and dispose.

Antibiotics can be really frozen really well too, so if you ever make up stock again i'd do that. Aliquot into little tubes if possible, and they should be good for quite a while.

Edit: this is what we do in the lab - i'm on research side, not treatment. so don't take this as advice for storing anything medical/veterinary

* just checked and looks like cipro is very heat stable, so heating isn't going to do much

 

[olonmv]

honestly, bleach! does a number on most things, not confident about cipro but def should degrade, and most importantly kill any bacteria that picked up resistance. most Ab's don't do well with boiling-level heat (at least kan and the usual lab stuff I work with) too. So some combination of bleach to kill whatever's in there, boil if you want to be extra safe, and then dilute and dispose.

Antibiotics can be really frozen really well too, so if you ever make up stock again i'd do that. Aliquot into little tubes if possible, and they should be good for quite a while.

Edit: this is what we do in the lab - i'm on research side, not treatment. so don't take this as advice for storing anything medical/veterinary

THIS, is super helpful and should be added somewhere. Thanks a lot!!! I will definitely save for future reference!

 

[Reef and Dive]

Acrivat

honestly, bleach! does a number on most things, not confident about cipro* but def should degrade, and most importantly kill any bacteria that picked up resistance. most Ab's don't do well with boiling-level heat (at least kan and the usual lab stuff I work with) too. So some combination of bleach to kill whatever's in there, boil if you want to be extra safe, and then dilute and dispose.

Antibiotics can be really frozen really well too, so if you ever make up stock again i'd do that. Aliquot into little tubes if possible, and they should be good for quite a while.

Edit: this is what we do in the lab - i'm on research side, not treatment. so don't take this as advice for storing anything medical/veterinary

* just checked and looks like cipro is very heat stable, so heating isn't going to do much

Activated carbon does the job.
I don’t think bleach does.
But I don’t believe people will ever use activated carbon before dumping.

 

[olonmv]

Acrivat


Activated carbon does the job.
I don’t think bleach does.
But I don’t believe people will ever use activated carbon before dumping.

Depends on the process. If its as simple as adding activated carbon in dipping container after treatment is done then tossing, I don’t see why not.

 

[Bruce Burnett]

Agree 100% - also from a physicians perspective. Antibiotics should be used for specific reasons and goals. It is also theoretically bad for the fish to disrupt it's natural flora with cipro. About 25% of my day at work is dealing with patients who have been over exposed to strong antibiotics and now suffer from MORE infections due to disruption of the natural flora. Three exposures per year is enough to cause this problem in humans at this point.

It should also be noted that the amount of cipro used for cattle is measured in the metric ton. Shocking.

Using antibiotics for a known infection is a different matter. That is the purpose. Using chemiclean for cyano after conservative measures fail, for example, is something I have done more than once.

I think responsible removal of the antibiotic with carbon and UV, before the water change, is a good thing to do.

My question is using carbon removes the antibiotic from the water but then it gets dumped in land fills. All chemicals that go into landfills eventually get washed down into the water tables. So there really needs to be a way inactivate these chemical.

 

[Reef and Dive]

My question is using carbon removes the antibiotic from the water but then it gets dumped in land fills. All chemicals that go into landfills eventually get washed down into the water tables. So there really needs to be a way inactivate these chemical.

Yeah true. I question myself if there is any sense on making these cipro / amoxicillins dips at all, I honestly believe they should just not be done.

 

[Fishy888]

Just a little food for thought. A few years ago I had a rare pneumonia type. They weren’t playing around with it either. I got antibiotics through an IV and when they released me I was put on clindamycin (hopefully I spelled that right). I have to say it was like a kick to the gut. I had a hard time swallowing due to the esophageal pain it caused. Before that I had to have amoxicillin because I had to have a partial right nephrectomy due to early stage kidney cancer.

I shudder to think what it would have been like if I developed an infection resistant to these drugs. How much worse is the next step up from clindamycin? I feel that if we think of it that way we might be more careful in how we handle antibiotics whether for our fish or ourselves.

We ALL need to be smart about what we’re doing. I agree that the little guy who dumps a cup in the river is as guilty as the one dumping million of gallons in said river. The one dumping the larger amount should pay the larger price in proportion to how responsible they are are for the condition of the river. We should lead by example though.

 

[KrisReef]

Would be good to have some data. Common sense dictates that we don’t use things we don’t need and resistance is definitely a thing but what is the predicted contribution from the hobby relative to all other things?

Kinda feels like more of a peeing in the ocean vs peeing in the tub type of thing so actual data would be nice.

Spoken like a true statistics and math whiz.
Careful with those drops.

 

[KrisReef]

I’m all confused here… sorry too many questions.

I’m not entirely against cipro or other antibiotics for specific cases in hospital tanks. The antibiotic is near inactive when the treatment is finished.

I’m entirely against DIPS with Cipro and Amoxicillin because the substance use is frequent, by many people, and goes fresh and entirely active down the drain. And also because these 2 antibiotics are too important for human care and resistance may cause serious problems.

These things you’ve said things are both detrimental. None is good to me. But the one I’m alerting is alarming and should be warned specifically.

For the sake of discussion, would you approve of dumping the dip on the driveway where it can evaporate and be exposed to sunlight? I am not certain what the activity of the carbon and antibiotic solution and unknown bacteria present can't result in creating an unwanted selection event with bacteria that survive on the wet carbon? Add bleach?

I rarely but occassionally use cipro in my tanks, not as a dip, and I don't run carbon or change water very often so hopefully the antibiotic is broken down after in tank treatment for "brown Jelly"

 

[Tired]

I think another important thing to consider is the risk/reward balance here. What are you (general, not anyone specific) trying to prevent with antibiotic usage, versus what could potentially happen as a result of that usage? Is the risk of antibiotic resistance really worth it on a may-or-may-not-be-effective attempt to protect a hobby investment from a hypothetical infection?

Also worth noting: dead bacteria can still spread antibiotic resistance. Bacteria can pick up DNA they find in their environment. That's why you have to boil water so thoroughly to sterilize it when there's an outbreak of something- it's not to kill the bacteria, it's to kill the bacteria and then destroy the DNA from them. Otherwise the harmless bacteria that immediately re-colonize the water as it cools could pick up the DNA and become harmful.

 

[StatelineReefer]

Yea, I’m more worried about waste away disease jumping from deer to humans than a I am a few SW hobbyists using AB. If you don’t know, look it up. Very scary disease. That virus can’t be killed.

Because it's not a virus, CWD is caused by a prion.

 

[olonmv]

Because it's not a virus, CWD is caused by a prion.

Still. More worried about something that medical science has absolutely no chance at beating. None. CWD wreaks havoc and is in the deer population. When are we gonna hear the alarm bells about eating deer with possible infection vs us pouring meds down the drain is all I’m saying.

 

[livinlifeinBKK]

Still. More worried about something that medical science has absolutely no chance at beating. None. CWD wreaks havoc and is in the deer population. When are we gonna hear the alarm bells about eating deer with possible infection vs us pouring meds down the drain is all I’m saying.

Has it caused extinction of deer yet? And how can you possibly say there's no chance of beating it????

 

[olonmv]

Has it caused extinction of deer yet? And how can you possibly say there's no chance of beating it????

No and I watched docs on the matter. Whatever causes the CWD has no opposition. Not even when introduced to extreme heat and cold. It still carried on. Once in the system, there’s no stopping it. Disease jumps from animal to humans all the time.

 

[livinlifeinBKK]

No and I watched docs on the matter. Whatever causes the CWD has no opposition. Not even when introduced to extreme heat and cold. It still carried on. Once in the system, there’s no stopping it. Disease jumps from animal to humans all the time.

Do you really think scientists are trying as hard to cure the afflicted deer as they would be if it were a human issue? Also, viruses and bacteria aren't the only organisms that adapt...every organism does-including humans. Covid was a pandemic that we had no idea how to treat at first...we figured that one out.

 

[olonmv]

Do you really think scientists are trying as hard to cure the afflicted deer as they would be if it were a human issue? Also, viruses and bacteria aren't the only organisms that adapt...every organism does-including humans. Covid was a pandemic that we had no idea how to treat at first...we figured that one out.

Yes, yes I do. Why? Because CWD is something that has great potential to jump from animal to human especially since we actively hunt and eat the animal that’s affected. It hasn’t made the jump yet, thankfully. Covid was a pandemic. With education and prevention we made it through it. Just like, with education and prevention we can get better methods of disposing the things we as aquarists use to help our livestock.

 

[livinlifeinBKK]

. Covid was a pandemic. With education and prevention we made it through it. Just like, with education and prevention we can get better methods of disposing the things we as aquarists use to help our livestock.

I agree with this part...why do you think the same wouldn't apply? Like i said, every organism adapts. And yeah i agree 100% we can get better at disposing of wastes such as Cipro so why focus so much and worry about something that you fully believe is out of our control instead of focusing on and doing whatever we can to solve problems we have solutions for?