a fish buying lesson for me

[GaryE]

I have been on the hunt for black neon tetras - a common, ordinary, easily available shoaler that I happen to really like. I haven't kept them in the last 20 years, and I don't know why.

Like many people here, I live in a place that isn't a hot spot in the hobby. We have two local stores that have half decent fish, but both overcharge outrageously for fish that don't look great. I buy all my dry goods from them to support local, but I can't bring myself to support the fish price gouge.
I priced online sellers, but with shipping, a starter shoal was still very expensive. I'd like to try to breed the fish, and for that, I need good ones.
This weekend, I travelled four hours to a larger city, and stopped into a couple of fish stores. One of them stood out as it had clean tanks, knowledgeable staff, a good variety of offerings and a simple good atmosphere. There were a lot of customers, and the staff knew a lot of them by name. I got into a conversation with the owner, and was really impressed. I also bought three species of tetras at a fraction of what I would have paid online. I was able to eyeball them, check for any signs of illness, watch them swim and see them interact. They were good, so I will now have a bread and butter fish tank - black neons (Hyphessobrycon herbertaxelrodi), unmodified, natural Pristella tetras (Pristella maxillaris), and Glowlight tetras (Hemigrammus erythrozonus). Common fish are common for a reason - they're really nice and people like them for that.
Because they are farmed fish, quarantine will be 3 months. They're always higher risk than wild caught fish, but these species I wanted have been farm only for decades.

When I buy fish, I consider I am going fishing. Not every spot is a good one. Patience is key to any fishing success. A lot of anglers will travel to good lakes, and fish buyers should consider travelling to good stores. Good fish come to those who wait. Sometimes, you catch nothing. Here, I visit the larger city on a regular basis to see family, and I have found a good, not exactly local store where I can support a business that supports the regional hobby. The fish are good, and importantly, I can observe them. That's priceless to me, as I'm not a trusting fish buyer, and I have seen some awful online fish - the same unhealthy fish you'd get at a box store.

If you aren't too far from civilization (ie, places with good fish!) it's worthwhile to explore a bit, and support local if you can.

 

[Ceez]

I'm curious about the 3 month "farm fish quarantine" vs 1 month WC. Can you explain your reasoning please I'm very interested?

 

[CassCats]

I'm curious about the 3 month "farm fish quarantine" vs 1 month WC. Can you explain your reasoning please I'm very interested?

Fish from farm are bred in cramped overcrowded conditions with various diseases from all over, leaving fish not normally exposed to that disease in its natural habitat exposed. They now carry it and are often seen as "weaker". Example, cardinal tetras are like this. Farm bred ones are notoriously prone to disease and dying, while wild caught are said to be more healthy.

They come with a lot more diseases and because many aquarium diseases developed into super bugs, they're often more difficult to treat than a less developed strain in the wild that hasn't been able to develop a resistance to medication.



An example that happened within my own tanks:

I lost one of my 55 gallon communities because of camallanus worms. I had a pleco pair that would constantly put out fry. More fry than I could deal with because nothing ate them. But the newborn fry did not eat prepared foods, only grazed biofilm. (This is important).

I ended up getting camallanus from a local person who unknowingly had it and it got into 2 tanks. The other tank was treated no problem with it. The other tank didn't deal with plecocalypse.

The rainbowfish tank, nope. I treated with medicated food every week for a whole month. Worms would seem gone. During treatment, baby plecos would not eat the medicated food.

A couple weeks later, BOOM adult fish have the worms again all over the tank.

I would do another dose of fenbendozole. Again, plecos would put out more fry that month.

I treated for an entire year and a half with both fenbendozole and levamisole. I spent way more than I'd have liked getting those medications.

However, the last several doses, the worms in the adult fish were not going away with treatment AT ALL.


The worms in that tank developed resistance to the medications and the baby plecos were nonstop. It was an endless cycle and I had to make a hard decision. If I left the tank, there's always that risk that these resistant worms could infect my other tanks or worse, to other hobbyists and become a really horrible plague here without any hope of treatment. I had to choose to euthanize the entire tank in order to protect others.


Now imagine this situation in the fish farms. Parasites can go unnoticed for a long while, while silently infecting other fish.

You would want to quarantine longer, because you have no idea if the disease they may carry is a drug-resistant one. And this is also why we have a ban in many countries on fish meds (Canada here). And it would cost you significantly less money to euthanize just the new fish over all of your original fish in your other tanks.

I lost over $500 in fish and probably close to same amount in medication cost it's a hard lesson to learn and that would be my experience on why domestic originated fish would warrant a much longer quarantine. A couple weeks isn't enough time to catch something like that in time before it infects your other fish.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

The problem with wild caught fish, and the reason I use 3 months to Q them is that they live in water with a lot of potential diseases/parasites which are not common in our tanks. So, these wild fish have little to no resistance against them. Similarly. the things to which the wild fish are exposed there are often not common in our tanks. So our fish in such tanks have little resistance against what the wild fish may be carrying. Basically, wild v.s. the fish in our tanks are potentially a danger to each other.

Farmed fish are like anything else in life. Some operations are well run and go to great lengths to keep fish healthy. This is moreso the case with pricier fish than with the cheaper ones. So, it become very important that one know from where fish originated. We need to know where the better farming operations are and which ones to avoid.

@CassCats

I consider the medication of choice for treating Camallanus to be Levamisole HCL and not Fenbendazole. Have a read here http://www.inkmkr.com/Fish/CamellanusTreatment.pdf

I have Levamisole HCL sold by the author. I also get my Flubendazole from him. http://www.inkmkr.com/Fish/

 

[CassCats]

The problem with wild caught fish, and the reason I use 3 months to Q them is that they live in water with a lot of potential diseases/parasites which are not common in our tanks. So, these wild fish have little to no resistance against them. Similarly. the things to which the wild fish are exposed there are often not common in our tanks. So our fish in such tanks have little resistance against what the wild fish may be carrying. Basically, wild v.s. the fish in our tanks are potentially a danger to each other.

Farmed fish are like anything else in life. Some operations are well run and go to great lengths to keep fish healthy. This is moreso the case with pricier fish than with the cheaper ones. So, it become very important that one know from where fish originated. We need to know where the better farming operations are and which ones to avoid.

@CassCats

I consider the medication of choice for treating Camallanus to be Levamisole HCL and not Fenbendazole. Have a read here http://www.inkmkr.com/Fish/CamellanusTreatment.pdf

I have Levamisole HCL sold by the author. I also get my Flubendazole from him. http://www.inkmkr.com/Fish/

I treated with BOTH. Fenben stopped working, I switched to levamisole (much much harder to find) and that wasn't working either

 

[Colin_T]

I treated with BOTH. Fenben stopped working, I switched to levamisole (much much harder to find) and that wasn't working either

try flubendazole

 

[Magnum Man]

certainly not questioning anyone as experienced, as the OP, but unless you are the one catching the wild caught fish, aren't they exposed to anything most farmed fish could carry, by the time they go through the importers, wholesalers, and retail tanks... again... if you have a special arrangement on wild caught, but ( I'm going to use Dan's, as an example, as I know he sells very good fish ), but if I'm mail ordering a wild caught fish, I don't know any importers, so I have to rely on a seller... I've seen pictures of a few wholesalers tanks... & you think my tanks are over crowded... I think Dan's, talks about holding & treating of fish, but not all sellers are that way... I would think unless you caught the fish yourself, the risk is similar, & thus the quarantine should be as well...

 

[CassCats]

try flubendazole

Wasn't available at the time, Canada fish medication ban hit the usual stock and it wasn't until this year I located someone with it, too late for that case unfortunately. That one is water soluble so would have been ideal with the pleco fry, but it is what it is now.

 

[MaloK]

Yet another pops anecdote.

"My Father" Painfully demonstrated to me. that drastic measures can save a colony more than once.

Just by saving a good setup for the future and euthanizing all the rest. I'm still crying at night because of this. But he's thought where that "there is no way to hide this" And as a kid that ask questions all the time. He walked me trough the whole process.

At that age, I understood parcels of what was going on.

Patience and study brought me to understand. What he was aiming for, and today (not because he is my father and I admire him) He is been gone for a long time. And that feeling passed on.

Without internet (far from that) and any support I could think of. That guy really pulled rabbits out of his hat.

 

[GaryE]

How we run a fishroom, or a tank, is fundamentally subjective. Hopefully we try to learn from observations. Here are some of mine I work from.

Wild fish: I get mine with few steps. They arrive in the wholesaler's, from whom I get them. Have they had diseases? Occasionally, but ones I saw quickly. Parasites? Fish lice from the Amazon, occasional Ich, and if the fish are Guinean, a weird fast wipeout that never seems to affect fish from anywhere else. Generally though, the fish are hardy, acclimate well and live long lives. Some, however, die rapidly if put in the same tanks as farmed fish. It's a first contact issue.

The farms are often huge companies. Fish from all over the world are kept in close quarters, and exposed to each others' diseases. A lot of fish have Myco infections. I see a lot of unidentifiable bacterial or viral diseases, Camallanus nematodes, etc. It's a simple function of crowding.

The fish are cheaper, and they become cheaper through corner cutting. Some are treated with hormones, or raised in antibiotics. QT is a period of adjustment for them.

They're farmed. Shipped, usually from southeast Asia, across vast distances. Wilds are too. They arrive at wholesalers, and are repackaged for small stores and internet sellers, and off they go again. There are more steps after more contacts.

I lose a lot more new fish when they are farmed than I do with wilds. That's where it's subjective. I have lost tanks of well established wild caughts or home bred fish when I've combined them with healthy looking farmed fish. It has never gone the other way for me. My sample size is small, but I have been seriously keeping fish while knowing their origins for 35 years. So I have a sample size.

I am extra cautious with farmed fish. If I can avoid them, I do. That said, my 3 species at the start of this thread, from June 24, are looking great, and have survived at 100 percent. I am going to put them into my mixed tetra tank with some wilds, because at a certain point, you have to trust your eye. They're healthy looking and growing, both good indicators. Could they carry a virus or bacterial infection? Absolutely. But after 2 months of QT, it isn't as risky.

 

[fishorama]

I'm a firm believer in quarantine for all fish but I have broken my own rule a few times. Fish from breeders or from my plant club members I "know" & trust. My other problem is I no longer have a small QT. As often happens, mine now has resident fish. In a previous house I used to keep a 10g I could set up in 15 minutes for impulse buys. I almost never get new fish anymore That doesn't mean I never see disease but very rarely. I also prefer younger, smaller fish. No telling how old adults may be.

Many loaches (my favs) are still wild caught, but they can often tend to have internal parasites. I treated them with levamisole or flubendazole, the only meds I use "just in case". I also rinse new plants in tap water (how's that for paranoid?).

My most recent disaster acquisitions include camallanus & myco in 2 different species. Of 6 gobies & lost all but 1 to camallanus. The dwarf rainbows I "won" developed myco & had to euthanize all. The gobies were imported wilds (but went through a few middlemen), rainbows probably not. 'Bows are prone to myco so I was glad I knew that, but it was a long, distressing ordeal.

Good shops are hard to find, so you're lucky to find 1 "on the way", GaryE. People think I'm nuts to spend 20+ minutes just watching the fish. But as we both know, we can tell a lot from that. I advise newbies to learn what healthy fish look like & what to watch out for as signs of issues. I like some of the "ordinary" fish too like, black neons & glowlights, old favs...but healthy looking 1s can be hard to find.

 

[GaryE]

It is scary that more and more fish are only available online, as what you don't get to see is a concern. Buying sight unseen is having absolute trust in the seller.

There are sellers I know and trust, and I know there's nothing I'd spot they wouldn't. They wouldn't sell me sick fish through not caring. Some of the online sellers are as bad as box stores though.

The bottom line on QT for me is learning how to spot common diseases and studying the fish can reduce risks by a lot. For that, you need to be able to see the fish. Looking at the fish doesn't eliminate the need to QT, but if you have only one tank, it does increase your chances.