First aid kit for fish

[Playsander]

Agro

 

[TwoTankAmin]

Try to find a vet that can or will treat fish.

Consider that most fish sell for a few doallars and that most of the meds we might useto treat them, if can correctly diagnose the issue, cost more than the fish. It is one thing to take a belovid pet like a cat or a dog to the vet be told it will cost a few $100 to"fix." Are you willing to spend that for a $10 fish?

So as fish keepers we have to do the best we can. This usually means the internet. And we all know how much of their information on the net is garbage.

Buy healthy fish, put them in the proper water and tank, do the needed tank maint., feed them good foods and mostly they will do well and you wont need meds.

The bigger problem is teaching folks that they need to quarantine new fish to peotect the once they already have.

 

[GaryE]

I have only ever known one fish vet. There are none in my city now. So I keep it simple with basic remedies and fatalism. I can get good medical care for my dog, but my fish, no.

I think I'm ahead, too, as with 56 years of fishkeeping, work with importing, tons of reading on the issues and a small library with which I can try to recognize basic maladies, I have better resources than most. It has simply taught me how little I know.

 

[jaylach]

I don't really keep any meds or such. I believe in keeping the tank in proper condition. If that is done it is rare that there will be a disease issue. I DID have a minor Ich infection many years ago but just raised the water temperature to cure with no loss of fish. Other than that I honestly can't remember any case of illness. Well there was one with my current tank where all my fish died but that was not due to illness. It was caused by a contaminated plant that I got from my local Petco. Since it was a toxic substance on the plant I don't think that counts as an illness.

 

[seangee]

The misuse of the remedies we have around, some of which actually work, is rampant. The business has begun to sell what seem to be homeopathic remedies on the apparent principle people will use them blindly and while they don't help, they don't harm. I guess it's better to see someone treat cancer with Melafix than with Erythromycin...

And from a business perspective why not. Sales and revenue matter so they will continue to push these.
Unfortunately "do no harm" is a bit subjective or misleading. It usually only means there is no visible sign of harm or distress in the short term and there is no peer reviewed research on the long term effects.
A bit like saying my grandmother smoked 20 a day for 80 years and lived to be 96, so there is harm in smoking.

 

[GaryE]

The do no harm approach works like this. Your fish begins to bloat. You get it to eat a shelled pea and it ceases to be constipated. If you had been feeding a low roughage diet and that was the problem, terrific. But let's imagine the fish has a tb cyst, a growth internally, another bacterial infection... then what? You could buy a "fix" remedy - a super diluted topical antibacterial. It will do nothing. If the fish rights itself with you providing clean water, the med looks brilliant. Otherwise, the fish dies, but you feel less powerless, and feel you tried to save it.

If you look to your shelf and dose the tank with an antibiotic, you probably get the same sad result, since you can't know what your probably expired antibiotic is targeting. There are people who can regularly pull this off. I have a friend who has worked all his life in the fish business who actually hits the target with some regularity. But even he is concerned about helping antibiotic resistant bacteria.

I live in a northern climate, and fish in transit can get chilled. If the ich parasite is at the store, you have ich to deal with. If I hit it immediately, it's barely a concern. Wait 24 hours for a bottle of malachite green, or crank the heat on a heat loving strain, and fish will die. Quick responses matter. So having a bottle of meds at hand is important.

Then again, ich is not a disease. It's an organism that feeds on your fish, breeding fast and feeding fast.That makes it easier to manage.If you have the tools. We can use remedies for decent success with ich or velvet. It's easy to deworm. If you catch Camallanus nematodes quickly, you save your fish. Both are organisms we can see and diagnose. Big parasites can be treated with online photos to identify them. Micro-organisms are different for us.