I think you may have misinterpreted my comment.
I was by no means saying that looking for alternatives or different was being lazy. In fact, I wasn't calling you lazy at all. I only used the term because it was said in another post in this thread. There is no doubt and there is plenty of evidence that if you take a closed fish system and do nothing to it, it will eventually implode because there needs to be some regenerative measures to keep it "sound". Unless you have an open system where new water is being brought in and old water is being removed, you need to address conditions in your tank. You cannot ignore this. The frequency is always situational. There are some generic guidelines or routines that make these things habitual. That's all I was saying.
As for the dust argument, it's older than the hills.
I heard it when all my hair wasn't grey. LOL Old news to a new generation.
Think about this, HITH is most commonly found in fish that either create foul water quickly or extremely acidic water rapidly. Discus, Angels, Oscars, larger Cichlids, etc. But yet all fish have the same lateral line (which is the area most effected after the initial holes) so why don't all the other fish "catch" this condition? Why can you expose a tank of 100 neon tetras, for example, in a small tank with unwashed carbon in the filter, and they don't come down with HITH? They might come down with some other stress related disease but not HITH. See my point? Carbon or it's dust is not the cause. There is just too much evidence to disprove it. If carbon dust were the problem, then dust from the gravel would also, or from any granular product that you purchase. Don't talk to fellow hobbyists about this, talk to the scientists that are trying to find the cause. They haven't been able to prove carbon is the cause either. They even point towards improper keeping of the fish which supresses the fish's immune system as a major factor. Whether it's the vitamin deficiency caused by the diet or the parasite wrecking havoc on the organs is still up for debate but the bottom line is that the fish in clean tanks don't get HITH while fish in dirty tanks do. I have discussed this point with veterinarians and ichthyologists at length. The answer I got was that if the carbon was the cause, it would cause it in both clean and dirty tanks. You just don't see HITH in clean tanks. Feel free to disagree but I'd bet if someone with a fish with HITH were to have a gaschromatigraph done on their "clean" water, they would see that it isn't as clean as they thought.
( I had this done at the U of Miami school of marine science when they were testing out their new equipment. It's nice when you have friends in high places.
And please don't take this as bragging as I'm not. My eyes were opened to a bunch of things I thought were one thing then later proved to be another. It's a very expensive testing method
) The point is that the reason their is no concrete reason for HITH is because it seems to be caused by multiple situations and that these different situations together are causing the fish to develop the condition. If science could cure AIDs, why can it not cure HITH? ( Sorry, that's an old question we used to ask in the pet shop.
)
As for changing carbon every 2 weeks, why? That says to me that you are either not using enough or you are wasting it. I changed mine monthly at best. Granted, that was back in the day when we didn;t have just HOBs with filter cartridges with minimal amounts of the carbon in them that it needed cleaning so often. If this is your situation, get a bag and fill with carbon and let it sit behind your filter cartridge. If you are not sure you need to change your carbon, you can run this little test: put some methyline blue or other colored medication in some water and pour it through your carbon bag. If it comes out clear on the other side, your carbon is still good. Don't change it
As a fish breeder, I am using M. Blue on my Angelfish eggs. I use a bag with 3 teaspoons of carbon in it to remove the blue once the eggs hatch. It takes that bag about 18 hours in 10 gals of water to collect up all the blue. In my gallon jars, the bag takes about 4-6 hours. I use the same bag multiple times so I know when the blue doesn't go away in these time frames, I know I need to change it.
Lastly, I too took a break from fish keeping and recently got back into it. It's a new and strange world for sure. (Thankfully, I still have friends that are still in the pet business so I have people I know and trust.) But the internet unfortunately, is about the least reliable source for information. Anybody with a keyboard can put stuff out onto the internet. I've read through many online forums that were just fraught with misinformation. And many stores are no help either. You should only have heard some of things I have when I talk to the salespeople.
My favorite came in a store ( whose name shall remain nameless, but it sounds like Pets heart
) when the salesgirl told a couple they could put in a new 10 gal tank: 3 neon tetras, 1 pair of Guppies, 3 Platies and a medium Oscar in it that day. ( I was standing next to them when they told her they had just put water in the tank that morning.
) Need I say more?
So my apologies if you thought I was saying something I wasn't.
I actually find that us "old timers" tend to have less problems with keeping our tanks as we used to keep them when it was a hobby and more correct info was available. There is no doubt that the business of tropical fish keeping has changed the hobby tremendously. Just remember, new is not necessarily better, just different.
I am currently using equipment I stopped using in 1988 and have kept in storage. You can read about my results using this stuff in the "Wigglers at last!!!!" thread in the breeding forum.
Keep us posted on your results please
