Fish Meds

[Galaxy]

Keeping as standby.

I was wondering whether it is good practice to keep a small supply of medicines at the ready in case of sudden illness in the tank.

I am still new to fish keeping and I must confess I would struggle to spot illness when it first occurs. I have only a few mollies in quite a large tank as I am currently cycling the tank and some have exhibited some strange behaviour as the cycle progresses, but everytime I start to worry that one is sick it seems to perk up again.

Is there a general medication which can treat a host of problems that would be good to keep a small supply of??

 

[sunflower]

Aquarium salt can treat quite alot and stress coat is always handy to have

 

[rvm]

I keep a whitespot treatment, and a bottle of melafix. that covers a pretty wide range of common problems!!

 

[Red]

ABSOLUETLY!

It's Sod's Law of fishkeeping No 1 - If you have medicine close to hand your fish will never need it (and you'll have wasted your money when it goes out of date!) but if you don't your fish will get sick when you can't get to the pet shop for 3 days.

Seriously though, having had a sick fish I had to ask a friend to rush out for some meds while i was at work, after that I went and stocked up and I'm now fully prepared and ready for any nasty surprises.

 

[Galaxy]

I recently purchased Stress Coat to use as a water conditioner as my LFS didn't have any Tap safe (by Interpret) which I had been using before. It says on the bottle of Stress Coat that it is not a fish medication??

As it removes chlorine I assume it (Stress Coat) is ok as a water conditioner?

Everytime I do a partial water change I add approx half a teaspoon of tonic salts for every 2 gallon of water. I was told to do this by the LFS were I bought the tank. Is the the same for all tropical fish or just mollies because they like slightly brackish conditions??

 

[clutterydrawer]

I think it's just mollies, Galaxy. Some other fish can tolerate salt but tehy'd really rather not.

I think Melafix would be a useful standby.