How long to wait...

[GaryE]

There are wasting diseases, with an s. Like dropsy or swim bladder, we are calling the symptom a disease and that leads to errors.

Flub is brilliant for nematodes. If it were them, all the fish would be dead by now. It is is also great for a range of other parasites that'll cause wasting.

Bacterial infections cause wasting.

The bacterial infection, Myco causes wasting.

Poor nutrition.

Extreme damage in shipping.

Your survivors weren't treated, and they are fine. So I would suspect bacterial. You can dose with flub, but that's probably for you to feel active. The main source of fish dying right after arrival is shipping stress outbreaks combined with farms crowding. I just read a paper on how to profitably get maximum growth to move bronze Corys to market. The research showed 100% daily water changes at a density of 30,000 fish per square metre. Can you imagine how rapidly a disease would spread if it got into such dense populations? The poor fish would almost be stacked up.

The fish die 2 days after arrival and we say to pull out the test kits. We so rarely focus on what the fish look and act like - we go straight to the reagent kits, which implies we've done something wrong. Sometimes we have.

Every purchase has a risk, for stores buying stock and for aquarists buying fish.

 

[Wills]

Crikey

 

[GaryE]

Crikey

Yeah. I read that paper and I must have looked like a cartoon character with its jaw dropping to the floor. I would imagine with Medakas being so popular in the Asian market, they would be produced in numbers we can barely imagine. They are dead easy to breed.
Even if they aren't the next big thing here, we'd be getting the smaller numbers from the same growouts as the big markets, and with the high cost of shipping right now, I would expect some serious numbers in the bags as well. The large US chains have driven the profit margins so low that the farms will cut a few corners to survive. There are more ethical farms, but they cost more, so we don't see their stuff much outside of the higher end of the trade. The fish I looked at the last time I was in the UK looked to be from the better places - they carry the bread and butter fish but also a few of the weird things, and the stores I saw tended to have a few interesting choices you would never see in similar US stores.

In my new home, I don't have inexpensive access to wild caughts, and am tentatively putting my toes into fishfarm waters again. I have bought 6 farmed species in the past 9 months, and only one has crashed out after arrival. That's a pretty good record. 62 fish, with 56 of them thriving.

 

[Wills]

Yeah. I read that paper and I must have looked like a cartoon character with its jaw dropping to the floor. I would imagine with Medakas being so popular in the Asian market, they would be produced in numbers we can barely imagine. They are dead easy to breed.
Even if they aren't the next big thing here, we'd be getting the smaller numbers from the same growouts as the big markets, and with the high cost of shipping right now, I would expect some serious numbers in the bags as well. The large US chains have driven the profit margins so low that the farms will cut a few corners to survive. There are more ethical farms, but they cost more, so we don't see their stuff much outside of the higher end of the trade. The fish I looked at the last time I was in the UK looked to be from the better places - they carry the bread and butter fish but also a few of the weird things, and the stores I saw tended to have a few interesting choices you would never see in similar US stores.

In my new home, I don't have inexpensive access to wild caughts, and am tentatively putting my toes into fishfarm waters again. I have bought 6 farmed species in the past 9 months, and only one has crashed out after arrival. That's a pretty good record. 62 fish, with 56 of them thriving.

Thats an excellent track record!

I would actually suspect that these were home bred, Wharf get a lot of home bred fish in and Medekas are not traded in the UK very much because some species are classed as invasive. But there is quite a big hobbyist network that breed them and sell on ebay and etsy etc both eggs and live fish.

The thought of Myco actually makes me want to weep so unless I get definitive proof I don't really want to entertain it...