KittyKat, I am very offended by the tone of your words! I am not your little toddler whom you can send back to their rooms, to try the clean up again! We are all deserving of respect here, I have never come across someone as condescending as you have shown to be here! If someone spat in your porridge this morning please don't take it out on me! […] Instead of criticizing someones comments why not add your knowledge to make everyone learn. But no, you choose to make people feel bad about themselves, make yourself look superiour and turn a perfectly civil thread into a war!
I respect you as someone giving advice, which is exactly why I asked you to provide more information. If I did not have any respect for you, I would probably have told you to stop giving out advice that is harmful. No offence, but it is not my fault if you have no basis for your advice other than "someone said…". Again, go back and read again what I wrote: I have not criticised you once so far, I have only asked for your reasoning and for you to back up what you said. You will also see that I have given advice to the person with the problem, which can be summed up as "treat the wound with medication".
So, what else has desinfectant qualities that the dechlorinator takes out of the water?
Please enlighten us stupid wanna be aquarists, which seems to be especially me, what are these free desinfectants called?
This is exactly what I have been asking you, and since you cannot reply, I assume it means that you do not know. You can go and look at any specific water supply report just as well as I can, then look up what it contains and find out what qualities those things have. After you have done that, research how these things affect live fish. As I have already pointed out, you probably want to start with reading about use of chloramine in aquaculture treatments. Next, it would be a good idea to examine some other water reports from areas where water is treated differently and make a decision about how your advice might impact someone whose water had been treated differently. Research is hard and takes a lot of time.
First criticism: you should not expect other people to do your work for you.
I do not treat tap water as a disinfectant and recommend that other people do not either. Two disinfectants that *my* water supply contains (that I know of) are chlorine and chloramine, and enough of those are in my water supply to harm the filter and cause an ammonia spike. It would be stupid of me to try using their disinfectant properties in my tanks.
At least my point in my comment was to help someone with their problem, if my words were chosen wrong, I apologize! You try it in a second language and see how well you do with someone riding on correct terminology, and superiour knowledge! You make me seriously consider not taking part in any discussions on here again!!!!
Second criticism: if you assume or miss things when you read, then maybe you should read twice before replying.
The point is not about terminology, it is about repeating what someone else said and assuming that it is true, just because someone else says it. I would really prefer if you did do your research and thought about the reasons behind what you say while continuing to contribute, but if you do not think about the things that you repeat, then it's probably better that you do not give advice that can potentially be harmful. In this case, if you had given the advice to me and I would have done what you suggested, I would be stuck with an ammonia spike, doing 1000s of litres in water changes every day. Can you see how this would be a problem? Instead of one of my fish having a head wound, I would have 50 odd fish having ammonia poisoning. If anything is superior, it is not my knowledge, but my insistence on trying to make sure that I know what I'm talking about.
Incidentally, I am writing in my second language right now and having worked abroad with non-native English speakers in English, I can conclude that terminology is actually very important to avoid ambiguity.
Do you realise that all you had to do to satisfy my interest was say that the Wikipedia article on chlorine has more details about its disinfectant properties, that you did not know of any studies done about the effect of chlorine on fish and that it would be a good idea for the dude(ette) with the problem to check how their water is treated?
I don't know the exact name of it I will try to identify online later - have to run out now... it's picture is in the first post though, and I had 2 of those... When I woke up in the middle of the night all the fish were alive and seemed ok - When I posted later this morning, I hadn't been in the living room yet and the bloated gourami had died.. The other one looks a little better, but more or less the same.
I also have a giant gourami that is doing well... minus a small scrape on each side right above his lower fin. The tank is 55gal - 4' wide, 1' deep, 18" high. Not heavily planted because of the balas, but I do have plants on the two endss, and low plants in the middle. I think I'm still going to separate the last 2 gouramis tonight to see if bullying is the issue. Agree? Also, I know a giant gourami would outgrow without a doubt, but I took him from a situation where he was in an even smaller tank... but would an 18 gal be ok for a few small gouramis?
That's a lace gourami (
Trichopodus leerii). Is there any chance that the bloat had something to do with unusual food?
Sorry, I was asking after the size of the 18 gallon, not the 55 gallon (+1 what This Old Spouse said about that). As long as you can make them comfortable in that, then it's probably a good idea to try it. Keep in mind that gouramis are generally territorial, which could lead to fighting between the two, so watch them very carefully.
I used to work for a shop that had two adult giant gouramis, they must have been in the 60-70 cm range! If you cannot provide it with a bigger home in the long term, a zoo might take it in.