Tyler777
Fish Fanatic
Maybe a stupid question ....
Would it be silly to add ich medicine in the tank everytime you add new fish ?
Would it be silly to add ich medicine in the tank everytime you add new fish ?
I would set up a 5 g quarantine tank instead of over using meds.Maybe a stupid question ....
Would it be silly to add ich medicine in the tank everytime you add new fish ?
I like to keep a lot of live-bearers and I have pretty much accepted I better be ready to treat them all for internal parasite because it's very likely to happen. I miss the 80's when I don't remember it being anywhere this bad.Most fish medications are poisonous and contain things that cause cancer (Malachite Green) or act as preservatives (formalin, formaldehyde). The more you expose the fish to these chemicals, the more you shorten their lives. The medications draw a fine line between treating the disease and killing the fish. Hopefully if it's done right, you treat the disease without wiping out the tank.
If your tropical fish have white spot you can treat it with heat. Just raise the water temperature to 30C (86F) and keep it there for at least 1 week after all the spots have gone. If you have goldfish or coldwater fishes with white spot, you need to use a chemical medication that contains copper or Malachite Green. You can use copper or Malachite Green on tropical fish too but they are pretty toxic chemicals so heat is a safer alternative.
A quarantine tank (as mentioned above) is a good way to prevent diseases getting into the main display aquarium. Any new fish, plant, shrimp or snail goes into the quarantine tank for a month and if they are free of disease after that time, you add those fish to the main display tank.
About the only diseases you treat prophylactically are intestinal worms and gill flukes. The medications used to treat intestinal worms are quite safe and some of the medications treat worms and gill flukes. Intestinal worms and gill flukes are extremely common in aquarium fish and generally don't show any symptoms until the parasites are well established. Treating all new fish for worms and gill flukes while the fish are in quarantine is something I did and is recommended even if the fish appear healthy. Treating for other diseases should only occur if you see other types of diseases on the fish.
What do you use to pretreat columnaris?Well let's not forget columnaris, one of the more common and potentially deadly bacterial diseases that can come in with fish. So why not treat for that.