I thought that now the choice of proper meds is easily available it is time to discuss proper treatment quickly..
Quickly is an important part of it .The sooner you start to treat an issue the more likely you will be to have success. Example for me lately has been ich .
Thankfully for me I knew what it was on first spot and started treatment immediately .
That being said I had to do a little more then the directions said to be successful.
Here is the deal you all fight and they never address..
Dissolved organics. These [ for the most part] are invisible and many like me think are well under control . Well again I have found my tanks to be as NOT clean as I thought . A test like nitrate or even TDS will NOT confirm this ..If these test showed all D.O. I would know easily..So how can I tell ? The med becomes in active in much too short of a time frame. The best example for me is the use of Kordon Rid Ich plus recently. This is a ' dye based med' that stains the water when added...I have seen the coloration of the med reduce to gone in less then one day... I do large water changes so if you think just one will work [like directions say] I wish you the best .Both times lately on tanks getting 50% +multiple times a week I have had to double dose the med to see it was still in force . Not once did this dose cause one problem [even in a 5g GBR fyr tank ] !
To complete my thoughts and have a more solid belief that I was right I turned to the test that does show D.O. That is potassium permanganate.. It is commonly known that when dosed properly if the water does not stay purple for at least 4 hours then there are too many D.O. and you are safe to re dose again. I added the PP to help treatment as it is a great tool and both times I introduced it the water went brown/yellow in under 1hour... Seeing this was all the confirmation I needed to know I was going to have to do more then the directions stated ... I am not blindly advocating over dosing meds although I will stand by you can't change too much water . For meds that are not dye based there will be no way to tell ? So what am I saying? Change your water if you have sick fish.. Change a lot and change it often.. If clean water is the stick that brakes the camels back then you saved time and money on treating a lost cause IMO.
I just wanted to emphasize that all the test and experiments for these meds are not done on tanks like ours but in labs or actual fish farms so the directions while good are not necessarily all you need to do to have success.
Change water and if you relish the challenge of experimenting in the name of improvement learn about potassium permanganate...It is way more then just a 'med' ,it is safely used weekly by many 'pro' keepers for more reasons then illness...
I will say it is not a beginners product and you need to mind every single safety precaution listed for it. Outside of the tank it is a disaster waiting and will not go away if you have an accident [spill/splash] .In the tank properly applied and used it one of those things I know my fish room will never be without.
