Crash course in poop

[gwand]

I need a crash course in fish poop. What are the normal shapes, colors and length? Is it normal for the poop to look like thin links of sausage? What is meant by stringy poop? Is it normal for the poop to be stuck to the butt as the fish swims around the tank? Thanks for your wisdom.

 

[GaryE]

Okay, confess. You're asking because you're going to a party and you want something to talk about that will fascinate and impress everybody...

Unfortunately, Poop Rules are all immediately broken, like wind. What a herbivore produces will be very different from an insectivore, etc. I watch if the poop changes but the diet hasn't. I also look for clear and stringy waste, and the sausage link type. Generally, I don't know what they mean, so I have to watch for secondary symptoms. Often they come and go, with no developments, no wasting fish, etc.

Stringy waste looks like an empty sausage skin trailing the fish.

If this is looking like an old text by Galen, he was probably have been very good at spotting fish poop.

Over the past ten years or so, I dealt with threadworms once (from breeder raised fish), Camallanus once (store bought) and white gutworms that died unnamed a couple of times in wilds.

Anytime you want to photograph a group of platys or swords, you are guaranteed at least one will be dragging a three foot long poop, dark coloured and healthy, just as the one you want the shot of poses perfectly, in ideal focus.

 

[Colin_T]

Bunch of weirdos on this forum.
You need that book "Everybody Poops" by Sum Long Brown Thing

Coloured poop that comes out and drops off straight away is normal. The colour is from the food the fish has eaten. If they eat food that is green, their poop is normally green. If the food is brown, then the poop is normally brown. A lot of commercial fish flake and pellet foods have dye in them and this can cause fish poop to change colour.
Normal colours for fish poop are brown, black, red and green.

If a fish eats lots of plant matter their poop should be green.

White poop is bad. It can mean the fish has an internal bacterial or protozoan infection, or intestinal worms. The following link tells you how to differentiate between these 3 problems.

What to do if your fish has Stringy White Poop.

Fish do a stringy white poop for several reasons. 1) Internal Bacterial Infections causes the fish to stop eating, swell up like a balloon, breath heavily at the surface or near a filter outlet, do stringy white poop, and die within 24-48 hours of showing these symptoms. This cannot normally be...

www.fishforums.net

Stringy white poop is white poop that hangs off the fish's butt for a while and doesn't drop off straight away.

Your all a bunch of weirdos talking about fish poop and butts.

 

[gwand]

Bunch of weirdos on this forum.
You need that book "Everybody Poops" by Sum Long Brown Thing

Coloured poop that comes out and drops off straight away is normal. The colour is from the food the fish has eaten. If they eat food that is green, their poop is normally green. If the food is brown, then the poop is normally brown. A lot of commercial fish flake and pellet foods have dye in them and this can cause fish poop to change colour.
Normal colours for fish poop are brown, black, red and green.

If a fish eats lots of plant matter their poop should be green.

White poop is bad. It can mean the fish has an internal bacterial or protozoan infection, or intestinal worms. The following link tells you how to differentiate between these 3 problems.

What to do if your fish has Stringy White Poop.

Fish do a stringy white poop for several reasons. 1) Internal Bacterial Infections causes the fish to stop eating, swell up like a balloon, breath heavily at the surface or near a filter outlet, do stringy white poop, and die within 24-48 hours of showing these symptoms. This cannot normally be...

www.fishforums.net

Stringy white poop is white poop that hangs off the fish's butt for a while and doesn't drop off straight away.

Your all a bunch of weirdos talking about fish poop and butts.

Thanks that was helpful. When’s the exam?

 

[Colin_T]

Next week

 

[AdoraBelle Dearheart]

Poop! There's actually a medical chart for what different poop types mean in humans - poop can tell you a lot about what's going on with someone's health! Although no need to take it to a Gillian McKeith level obsession linkie to who this poop nutter is, since this is a refererence I think only Brits over a certain age will get...!

But the Bristol Stool Chart is used all over the place in hospitals, nursing and residential homes, etc. I worked in nursing homes for several years in my twenties, and each commode washing room had a poster of the Bristol Stool Chart, so we could make a note in the person's care file if there was anything of note or unusual. I won't put an image of it here, because it's human poop, even if only in diagram form, but anyone can look it up or download a PDF.

But, that's human poop, so not much help here, sorry! I've only noticed problems with fish poop when my store bought livebearers came with worms, and when I had my first tank, whiteish gravel, and got two nerite snails. They feasted on the bogwood and algae, and produced way more poop than any of the fish did! I'm a rare one that isn't a fan of nerite snails, as appealing looking as some of them are! Those things are poop machines. Then at least one of them laid those sticky, super hard to remove and unsightly bright white eggs everywhere, and I decided no more nerites for me!

 

[Colin_T]

Doc Doc, I haven't pooped in a year. What's wrong with me.
Doc says "your dead"