Tilapia Topic: Disease Treatment:

Potassium Permanganate (KMnO₄)

KMNO4 is not approved for use with food fish.

KMNO4 can cause damage to the gills of fish, thus should not be used or applied only with caution to fish that have known, significant gill disease.

Do not use KMNO4 if the pH of the water is smaller than 5.

The 15 minute potassium permanganate is DEMANDED.

Water used should be free of organic matter.

KMNO4 is algicidal so its use as a bath treatment should be avoided in phytoplankton rich tank or pond water.

potassium has not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for use with tilapia. Thus, it is not currently legal to use this substance to treat tilapia especially if these fish or their offspring are intended for human consumption.

potassium may be legally used only if there is a current Investigational New Animal Drug Application (INADA) in effect for treatment of the particular disease at the particular site. It is the responsibility of the user to know if an INADA is in effect for potassium for use with tilapia on his or her site. The user must be familiar with and to comply with the conditions for an INADA for potassium.

Types of KMNO4 use in fish culture

KMNO4 is 100% active compound and comes as a crystalline powder.

Information about KMNO4 treatment

Potassium permanganate is an oxidizing agent that has had widespread use for many years in fish culture. The compound is applied as a treatment for certain external bacterial, protozoan and metazoan parasite infections; and as a detoxicant for rotenone, antimycin and H2S.

The use of KMNO4 to increase oxygen concentration in O2 depleted pond water was once thought to be an important benefit of this compound. However, research results have demonstrated that the amount of molecular oxygen contributed to the water is small and toxicity to photosynthetic organisms and subsequent breakdown of organic matter has detrimental effects on the water quality. Thus, use of KMNO4 in pond or tank environments with a high density of algae should not be done without a strong justification. Moreover, if applied under these conditions frequent monitoring of oxygen levels must be carried-out during and after the treatment.

Organic matter in water reacts with KMNO4 and increases the amount of the compound needed to maintain a therapeutic dosage level for disease treatments. For prolonged bath treatment in tanks or ponds, the dosage of KMNO4 should be determined by doing a þ15 minute KMNO4 demandþ. The demand amount is then added to 4 mg/l to determine the dosage level used. It is not necessary to do a 15 minute demand study, when a high dosage KMNO4 dip treatment is used. potassium&*

Determination of the 15 minute KMNO4 demand.

1. Add 1 gram KMNO4 to 1 liter of distilled water to make up a working stock solution.
2. Prepared a series of five 1 liter samples of pond or tank water to be treated.
3. Add 1, 2, 4, 6, or 8 ml of the stock solution to each of the 1 liter test water samples. This gives a 1, 2, 4, 6, and 8 mg/l concentration series.
4. Wait for 15 minutes and examine the 5 test water samples. The lowest treatment level that still has a faint pink coloration is taken as the 15 minute KMNO4 demand.

Equipment needed:

1. One, 1,000 ml graduate cylinder
2. Five, 1,000 ml clear glass containers.
3. KMNO4

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