Question that I'm confused about

[panboy]

I have a 46g and 10.
I usually do a 20% waterchange on them once a week.

My father's friend also fishkeeps and has several tanks as well.
He says he never does a waterchange, but only adds water when it has evaporated.

A couple times I have asked him some questions regarding my fish if they got sick. In the last couple months I got one more rummynose to my schoal of 9 to make it 10. He didnt look good at all when I got him and soon after he got ICH, which spread to 2 other rummynose. I treated the tank and everything turned out good except for the one rummynose that died.

Then couple weeks after that my 2 year old Bolivian Ram started to loose his balance. I tried to give him peas thinking it was his bladder, but it didnt help and I had to put him down because he was upside down for days barely breathing, but did not die. I didn't see him imoroving, so that was my best choice.

However, now my father's friend says all those problems are related to too many waterchanges, and that too many hurt my fish... I really do not believe him. He works at petsmart as a product distributor person i think, and hes been fishkeeping for a while, but this I don't believe him. I have kept rummynose for a while, and I know they are sensitive, and my Bolivian Ram, well I don't know what happened to him.

Anything I could say to him to kind of convince him its not the waterchanges. I just kind of know its not that, but I don't have a good reason. And he always brings it up when every fish things come up.
Thanks

 

[smb7676]

Tell him to look up water changes in most any book and it will tell you to do something along the lines that YOU have been doing!!!!

 

[OohFeeshy]

OK, the two problems you had- ich and dropsy. Ich is very common, in fact, a lot already have it when you buy them. It becomes more of a problem with stress, eg. m moving to a new tank. Dropsy is usually fatal. I think its a bacterial infectiony thing, but its very hard to treat. Anyway, no way can it be related to water changes. Unless you forget to dechlor or the pH or something is totally different.

 

[silvershark]

the reason we do our water changes is remove nitrAte. this is relativly harmless in low amounts but if left to concentrate, things could get bad...

also you could just say, "well, you do work for petsmart so thats one big reason not to listen!!" (just kidding!)

 

[Paul_MTS]

yep, just tell him to test his nitrates....

 

[isu_guy]

In a tank that is perfectly balanced - water changes would be completely unnecessary. Perfectly balanced doesn't happen very easily.

Huge water changes can be bad for fish.

Small and often is good practice.

Some people unknowingly do just enough to have things work out for them. Plenty of people have cycled tanks and don't know anything about the nitrogen cycle, for instance. he might have a decent balance of fish and plants to not have things go out of control. I'd say you're on a better track though.

 

[Tokis-Phoenix]

OK, the two problems you had- ich and dropsy.

Where does it say his fish had dropsy??


Anyways, swim bladder disorders are most commanly related to internal bacterial infections or/and poor water quality; constipation can be the cause but more often than not i find it is one of these 2, "anti internal bacteria" by Interpet for example treat these but swim bladder disorders are very hard to treat with only a 50/50 survival rate at best.
Ich is a fairly common desease and is hard to detect early as to begin with there are very few visable symtoms so if you want to avoid it, quarentining the fish for 2weeks is nesarsary.

 

[freddyk]

You'd be amazed at the nitrates most fish can handle. It is more stress to the fish, and it does affect their breeding, and I'm not saying it's a good thing, but the fish do adjust to the slow rise.

 

[panboy]

thanks for the ideas. Ill ask him what his nitrates are at, maybe i'll outsmart the petsmart employee. lol, which shouldnt be to hard. Just kidding though, he's smarter than the average fishkeeper, who knows, maybe he does have a perfectly balanced fishtank. I dont know how many fish he has in his tanks, so that can be understandable if he has few.