Don't you love posts like this one:

[TwoTankAmin]

The water is perfect which is why the fish are perfectly dead. It isn't rockette science after awl.

 

[Itsadeepbluesea]

I am a physical therapist by trade and as someone else said, people come in the eval with the same lack of information and expect to be fixed.

 

[WhistlingBadger]

I am a physical therapist by trade and as someone else said, people come in the eval with the same lack of information and expect to be fixed.

So, this is where we need to be patient, though. It actually took a couple of different PTs to help me figure out what was wrong with my head/neck/shoulder. I didn't know enough to even ask intelligent questions or give intelligent answers until quite a bit of work had happened. I think a lot of beginning fish keepers are the same.

I remember when I first went to a fish-keeping forum (not this one), feeling like I was a fairly experienced and accomplished keeper, being offended by what I saw as "the ceremonial bashing of a new member's stocking and setup." It took me a long time and a whole lot of hard-earned humility to realize that I had kept a lot of fish for many years, but I was still a beginner who knew next to nothing about how to keep fish well.

Sometimes people just don't know enough to realize how little they know. If we're going to engage with beginners, especially beginners who have been keeping fish for a long time, we have to somehow make peace with that. Sometimes that means deciding that engaging with a particularly obstinate person just isn't worth it. It happens.

 

[Magnum Man]

I used to be a Jeeper... I had a couple 4 wheelers, before, so I though I was "up there" .... then I went to a large jamboree, 30,000 Jeeps... hours into the jamboree, I had a pouty face, that didn't go away, until I had a long list of improvements needed... sometimes we think we've got this, only to find out we are really far from having it... it builds character... those without it quit and go away... those that have it, bite their lip, and jump in with both feet...

 

[Colin_T]

It would be helpful if the website had a form to be filled out by the type of posters you are describing. The form would ask all the necessary questions we want answered. I think anewbie should create said form. The administrators could figure out the rest.

They do have one. It's a sticky at the top of the emergency section

Tropical Fish Emergencies

Need help right away? Then post up here!

www.fishforums.net

There are 4 stickies at the top of the emergency section. The first 3 include antibiotics, stringy white poop, and what to do if the fish get sick. The 4th one (start here with your emergency) is the form to fill out about water quality, symptoms, etc.

Do not use anti-biotics unless you know what the problem is.

This thread is going to be harsh and a lot of people are not going to like what I have to say. But it needs to be said because anyone who uses anti-biotics when they don't know what they are treating, is contributing to the death and extinction of all animals on this planet, and that includes...

www.fishforums.net

What to do if your fish has Stringy White Poop.

Fish do a stringy white poop for several reasons. 1) Internal Bacterial Infections causes the fish to stop eating, swell up like a balloon, breath heavily at the surface or near a filter outlet, do stringy white poop, and die within 24-48 hours of showing these symptoms. This cannot normally be...

www.fishforums.net

What to do if your fish gets sick

If your fish ever looks sick or unwell, then the following steps might help. Test the Water and Clean the Tank. Test the water quality for ammonia, nitrite, nitrate and pH and write the results down in numbers. Check it for general hardness (GH) and carbonate hardness (KH) too if you can, but...

www.fishforums.net

Start Here With Your Emergency

What Others Need to Know to Help You When posting a request for help can you please include the following info 1. Water parameters. (ammonia, nitrate, nitrite, PH, temp', Hardness etc) 2. A full description of the fishes symptoms. 3. How often you do water changes and how much. 4. Any...

www.fishforums.net

 

[Colin_T]

Everything is perfect. My water is perfect. My care is perfect. Why are my fishes dying ?
-----

Hum... lets see everything perfect and you are doing everything exactly right yet your fishes are dying. Doesn't that suggest that something is not quite perfect? I mean isn't the fish dying a hint that something isn't quite right ? Or maybe everything really is perfect and the gods have decided to curse you and just you with dead fishes.

Sigh.

What you have to remember is most beginners don't know what is happening to their fish and they are concerned because their new pets are sick or dying. They might be in panic mode or young and simply have no experience with something being sick. They simply don't know what to do and just need some help and guidance.

When we get posts like this it's up to us to ask appropriate questions to find out more information. I ask for pictures and video, water quality in numbers, maintenance procedures, etc. Once I get more information, then I can help. But I try not to blame the OP for the lack of information because we were all beginners once and we all lost fish. The first time I lost a fish I was devastated and we put it in a match box and buried it in the garden. We went back to the shop and bought another and lost that too.

If someone comes to a forum asking for help and they have a very simple post asking for help, ask them for more information, including pictures and symptoms, water quality in numbers, etc. Then we get more to work with and the OP will be helping their fish and feel better because someone is helping them. You might not be able to identify the problem but hopefully someone with more experience can come along, read what has been written and help fix it.

You can also refer people to the following links, which are stickied at the top of the emergency section in the forum.

What to do if your fish gets sick

If your fish ever looks sick or unwell, then the following steps might help. Test the Water and Clean the Tank. Test the water quality for ammonia, nitrite, nitrate and pH and write the results down in numbers. Check it for general hardness (GH) and carbonate hardness (KH) too if you can, but...

www.fishforums.net

Start Here With Your Emergency

What Others Need to Know to Help You When posting a request for help can you please include the following info 1. Water parameters. (ammonia, nitrate, nitrite, PH, temp', Hardness etc) 2. A full description of the fishes symptoms. 3. How often you do water changes and how much. 4. Any...

www.fishforums.net

----------------------

The other issue, which others have touched on, is the quality of the fish they bought. You can have perfect water and a nice healthy tank and buy sick fish from a pet shop, which die a week or two later. I was at my doctor's office last week and they have a 4ft display aquarium in the waiting room. They have someone come in and look after it for them. The person who does this recently took out the cichlids and mollies and replaced them with neon tetras and dwarf gouramis. The cichlids and mollies had been in the tank for several years and were healthy. The tank is well established and healthy. But the dwarf gourami has sores on its body and one of the neons had a bacterial infection (Columnaris or neon disease) on its back. So their tank was good but they got a batch of bad fish.

 

[GaryE]

So, this is where we need to be patient, though. It actually took a couple of different PTs to help me figure out what was wrong with my head/neck/shoulder. I didn't know enough to even ask intelligent questions or give intelligent answers until quite a bit of work had happened. I think a lot of beginning fish keepers are the same.

I remember when I first went to a fish-keeping forum (not this one), feeling like I was a fairly experienced and accomplished keeper, being offended by what I saw as "the ceremonial bashing of a new member's stocking and setup." It took me a long time and a whole lot of hard-earned humility to realize that I had kept a lot of fish for many years, but I was still a beginner who knew next to nothing about how to keep fish well.

Sometimes people just don't know enough to realize how little they know. If we're going to engage with beginners, especially beginners who have been keeping fish for a long time, we have to somehow make peace with that. Sometimes that means deciding that engaging with a particularly obstinate person just isn't worth it. It happens.

This is one of the best posts we've had here, and it should be a sticky for experienced posters.

 

[Back in the fold]

In the olden days we flew by the seat of our pants and hit a few rough patches here and there but we stuck with it and landed okay .

 

[TwoTankAmin]

I would add a caveat to what was recounted above regarding treating fish and using antibiotics. In fact this applies to choosing any treatment for dealing with "sick fish."

The most difficult part of this hobby any of us face is diagnosing the cause making a fish or many fish ill. There are a lot of potential causes. It is not difficult to choose a given treatment if we know what ails the fish. But there are times out fish are dying and we have no idea of the cause. All we have is our best guess. This leaves us faced with only two choices. The first is rarely acceptable and that is not to treat and watch them die. The other is to make out best guess as to the cause and then treat accordingly. That is we must take our best shot at a cure.

If we are lucky we are right and we save the fish. If we are wrong the fish die. But I would much rather take my best shot and have the fish die than doi nothing and have the fish die. In the first instance I have succeeded but never have I done so in the second. However, I do make a great effort to try and discover the nature of the problem before I use take the "best shot" fall back.

As always, the above is just my opinion. It may or may not be the best way to act in a given situation. Readers must decide for themself if it is a good idea or there are better ways to deal with things.

 

[WhistlingBadger]

In the olden days we flew by the seat of our pants and hit a few rough patches here and there but we stuck with it and landed okay .

I landed okay, but a lot of my fish sure didn't.

When I was younger, I thought that adding dechlorinator and ich cure to my water put me in the ranks of advanced fish keeper. And back then, in my time and place? It did.

If someone had simply told me about the nitrogen cycle it would have changed everything. None of the aquarium books I read as a kid (and I read a LOT of them) had that information. So I used to rinse out my gravel and under-gravel filter thoroughly and dry it in the sun, thinking I was really taking good care of my fish.

If those books had added in something about fish compatibility, water changes, and the concept of small tank=small fish? Away we go. But oh look pretty pictures!

 

[anewbie]

If only fishes were like kittens.

 

[WhistlingBadger]

If only fishes were like kittens.

Oh, I'm so glad they aren't. On so many levels.

 

[GaryE]

I landed okay, but a lot of my fish sure didn't.

When I was younger, I thought that adding dechlorinator and ich cure to my water put me in the ranks of advanced fish keeper. And back then, in my time and place? It did.

If someone had simply told me about the nitrogen cycle it would have changed everything. None of the aquarium books I read as a kid (and I read a LOT of them) had that information. So I used to rinse out my gravel and under-gravel filter thoroughly and dry it in the sun, thinking I was really taking good care of my fish.

If those books had added in something about fish compatibility, water changes, and the concept of small tank=small fish? Away we go. But oh look pretty pictures!

There are a lot of things we take for common sense now that oldtime aquarists didn't now about. We aren't discussing the head in the aquarium sand arguments of a father fish type, who doesn't want to learn and sells 1970s dogma. There will always be people who stop dead faced with complexity and run to the easiest answers.

People didn't know about how the nitrogen cycle affected a fish tank. They knew something called the new tank or old tank syndrome happened, but why? They didn't believe in water changes, with a magical view on old water. As many people then as now didn't know about shoaling behaviour being so important. They didn't consider predator/prey interactions. They dismissed the all important water hardness questions. Then, as now, they thought of fish as disposable ornamental life. I had a book that advocated a new approach to fishkeeping - bare tanks painted black on three sides and the bottom, (though you could go with fluorescent colours) and submerged coloured lights to show the fish from many angles. Glass tubes, curtains of air - it was a cross between a McDonald's play park and a 70s disco. Funny - that author never mentioned stress.
There's no progress that can't be undermined, and the scientific grounding of the hobby is no different. That old stuff will float back up to the surface any day now.