Things I noticed

[Angry_Platy]

At the LFS today, buying my new platies I noticed some weird looking platies. They looked kinda hump back. And they didn't look well (they were in a different tank). They also had kinda sunken in bellies.....

When I mean hump back, I mean like, really bent....and swimming weird. I felt bad for them. They also had clamped fins.

NEXT....there were tiger barbs....1/2 the tiger barbs were vertical in the water...like head down.....periodically they would dart to the bottom then return to the vertical position. Is this swim bladder?

Man I hope my fish never get stuff like that. But I am curious....

 

[Ben]

did you put the platys in the quarintine?

and i heard it was normal for tigerbarbs to do that but i might be wrong

DD

 

[the caretaker]

Did you tell the Lfs owner they were like that. Sounds like a bit of a dodgy shop if he has more than one tank with fish doing that.

 

[DannyBoy17]

The Tigers do that after eating a lot, as for the platys...only God knows

 

[keeper-of-fish]

I think its from inbreeding

 

[Fishy411]

that happened to
y Male Mickey Mouse Platy

 

[yvez9]

i went to a crappy lfs once
they had a goldfish tank.

Most of them were upside down, floating, on the bottom... they didn't look good. But there was a price tag and a description on the tank.

We asked the guy and he said it was normal for fish to do that because he had juste received them.

Now fish I have received from shipping, even for 5 days in a half litre bag with little air looked better than that.

Plus, they were already on the sales floor, ready to be sent to someone's home... I ain't going there again

 

[TorPeteO]

Sounds like tuberculosis in those bent-backed platys...so sad.

Today I went to the LFS that I thought was reliable, and they had a whole bunch of new fish in. There were a dozen or so hatchetfish, and probably twenty rasboras, in a tank infested with ich, and there were probably 4 hatchets and 10 rasboras dead, floating at the top or sunken on the bottom. I'm sure they just hadn't gotten a chance to clean it out, but I'd think that would be one of the first things you would want to do, if not for the fish, then to look good to customers.

(On a side note, I went there to get pest snails to feed my puffers. I thought they'd give me them for free, but they wanted $1.99 for three of them! I was baffled!)

 

[Inchworm]

Hi Angry_Platy

TB was my thought too, when I read your post. Please keep your new fish in quarantine for a little longer than usual to be on the safe side. If a disease is present in one tank, it can be spread throughout the shop, even if symptoms are not showing on all fish yet. It's better to be safe than sorry.

As for having sick fish in their tanks at all, most lfs do not have the tank space to store fish for a quarantine period. When they come in a delivery, the are usually acclimatized and put right into the display tanks. If any treatment is given, it is given there; if fish are lost, they die where all can see.

It really depends on the dedication of the stores' sales help to clean and dispose of the dead and dying fish. In any store they have so much more work to do that that unpleasant chore might get put off. This doesn't make it right, but if they are physically working in another department, there is only so much they can do.

Now a small, independent store is a different matter. They are usually better, it seems to me. At least, if they have had a bad batch come in, they are not as likely to sell them without treating them first, or at the very least, giving you a warning that there might be a problem.

In the end, it all comes down to how much you know about recognizing symptoms and just how much of a chance you want to take with your purchases.

 

[Gill]

I Always Believed that Vertical Swimming in Tiger Barbs was an Indicator of High Ammonia Levels or was that Nitrates

 

[Sorrell]

Vertical tiger barbs are normal, they do that quite often and they tend to do so in schools so it may appear that something is wrong with them, but in most cases they are fine.

I would guess TB on most fish, but since they were platies I'm going to say inbreeding/poor genes. Bent, crooked, or humped spine is a pretty common deformity in livebearers when the line has become to contained.

 

[Inchworm]

...I would guess TB on most fish, but since they were platies I'm going to say inbreeding/poor genes. Bent, crooked, or humped spine is a pretty common deformity in livebearers when the line has become to contained.

It could be that too, but why sell them? I would think a lfs could return or get credit for a genetically malformed fish. And, it could happen to egg layers too.

BTW, wasn't it you (or was it cation?) who had TB in her tanks? Whatever happened to your infected fish? Did you rid yourself of this horrid problem?

 

[OohFeeshy]

I saw some mutated guppies at a lfs once... Definately inbreeding, they were groos but I did feel sorry for them...