disease
Hi Ashley.
My views are not popular with many people, I have studied fish disease intensively over the last decade and I have been keeping and breeding fish for over 35 years. I once was one of those people who liked to "diagnose" fish and start dumping antibiotics and remedies into my tanks without any real understanding of what was happening. I saw the removal by the FDA of antibiotics out of aquarium stores 20 years ago, then saw them allowed again and I cringe at the way they are used. They are dangerous to our environment, they are dangerous to the people in your house and certainly have questionable benefits to your fish.
Fish are not unlike people in that they remain healthy until some type of stress situation cause their immune system to be supressed. In that situation they(and people), are suceptible to infection from various pathogens.
In fish, the main causes of stress are poor water quality, transporting from point A to point B, incompatible tankmates, and certainly poor feeding regimens. Fish are particularly prone to disease during new tank cycling.
When a fish is showing signs of illness the best thing to do is to start doing small partial water changes to reduce build ups of toxins in the water,,,stabilizing the temperature is also important and understanding what caused the stress and eliminating it is important.
Unfortunately, many people feel compelled to move fish to a hospital tank, and in more cases than not this causes more problems for the fish because the stress of being moved,,and then the inevitable barrage of chemicals.
The over the counter chemicals available to aquarists have questionable value, certainly it is out of the scope of most fish keepers to identify specifically which pathogen is infecting their fish. Adding antibiotics is a futile thing, there are gram positive and gram negative bacteria that need to be treated with specific antibiotics,and just randomly tossing in drugs usually has no effect on the causative bacteria. Dosing is the major problem,,,adding drugs to the water has little effect on the germs in the fish's body.
Prevention is the easiest way to treat illness,,,doing a 10-15 percent water change weekly, keeping the environment STABLE, feeding very small feedings and sparingly, will ensure good health in fish.
Of course, buying sick fish from the
LFS is never good, and learning how to choose healthy fish is important and learning which fish are going to be compatible in your tank is as important. Bill P.S. Where in florida are you?
