My problem with the ingredients list is its vagueness. Saying there are coffee beans is one thing - saying there caffeine is another. I know what caffeine does (not a fish med...)
As more and more jurisdictions crack down on irresponsible antibiotic use, other tested and true meds will also get caught up in the net. That will create openings for mysterious herbal medications for fish - that's a growing business.
I know people who throw pre-1970s US copper pennies into tanks to kill velvet. People use salt in wild ways, all the time. Heat is used on Ich, though I see it as a high health cost, harmful treatment. Then again, I keep rainforest fish that can die above 24-25 degrees.
An issue I've noticed is that many herbal extracts can have the desired effects on paper, but at concentrations we can't manage. Some are proven anti-bacterials but that would kill fish as well at the doses we'd need.
I think we are in a mess. We have to source healthy fish, or they will be afflicted with diseases we can't treat. But we want the cheapest fish we can get. We've never been able to create longterm hobbyist breeding networks to sidestep the farm problem. And we now want to buy our fish online, sight unseen. That last thing leaves us wide open to buying diseases.
Since antibiotics were banned where I am, we haven't lost more fish. Almost no hobbyists bothered to learn how to use them anyway. More experienced aquarists learned to quarantine, and to do regular preventative maintenance. Newer hobbyists often seemed to want alternatives to water changes and care for their fish, and that's counter-productive. So we go in circles, shooting ourselves in the feet.
I bought a batch of cardinals many weeks ago, and today, I moved them to main tank to add to my older group. I QT for at least 2 to 3 months. It's pretty effective.
