July 23, 2007
Fish Medicine is More Than a Little Fishy
I did the 50% water change yesterday (bringing the salt down to about 2 tablespoons worth for the whole tank) and cleaned off my poor plant so it isn't coated in algae. My fish are still quite active but they are not eating as well as I would like.
I stopped at the fish store to ask for advice about the weird mouth fungus yesterday afternoon. I was a bit annoyed to notice that the tank my fish came out of at the store is currently suffering from an infestation of ick. If I could get rid of the ick a week ago they should be able to do better than that. They absolutely shouldn't be selling fish out of that tank while they're all sick! Gah!
I also noticed that they had bunches of hornwort finally. I cry. I want to put it in my tank so badly, but I can't add any plants or fish until I get these disease issues sorted out. ;_;
I haven't been able to find any fish disease books, so I caved to the guy at the store's suggestion that I buy fish medicine. As far as I can tell fish medicine is black magic snake oil. 90% of the things they had on display claim that they will cure the same six poorly defined ailments. I guess my fish fall under the imprecise umbrella of "cotton mouth" regardless of what their actual disease is. As far as I can tell online this means they might have either a bacterial infection or a fungus.
I think the medicine the guy gave me was anti-fungus (the package isn't super clear), so if the fish don't improve I'll have to start over and dose them with something different that might kill a bacterial infection. I'm going to do some research on the medicine ingredients before I put the first dose in the tank tomorrow, just to make sure it's not going to be super bad or dangerous to the fish and plants.
I wish I had a better resource for advice. I'm getting to the point where I don't trust many of the guys at the fish store. They can't even seem to agree with each other on whether I should do simple things like keep salt in my tank. I disapprove of this unscientific stratagem for dispensing advice.
I was also very disturbed by an off hand comment the guy made yesterday. He said something to the effect of, "Well at some point you're just better off buying new fish." At some point yes, my fish might be too sick and need to be euthanized, but they are not even near that sick right now (and besides, that's like $20 worth of fish! I'm not made of money!). It seems wasteful and cruel not to treat them just because they are sick. I sure as hell wouldn't be buying $20 of fish out of your magical ick tank to replace them!
There's only one major fish store in Madison that I haven't been to. It's down on the south west side, which is more out of the way, but might be worth it if their people were less uneven. I don't know.
Maybe I should just give up on the fish store guys being non-stupid and invest more money and energy into educating myself. There are in theory many good books out there I can learn from. I've already got a really good freshwater species book taught me that I've been running my tank way too hot. Incidentally aquarium store guy, I don't care what you have to say about the fish being acclimated to a temperature that's almost 5 degrees outside their good range, I'm going to believe in the book that has five stars on Amazon over your gypsum selling ass.
As you may notice, I've been getting increasingly upset about all of this weirdness. I want to know who to trust. On the down side, my experience is extremely limited and I need to be more suspect of information I can find on the Internet. On the up side, I obviously have a much more patient and scientific temperament than many of the people I've met through this hobby so far. Googling for aquarium related things I find a never ending stream of impatient, uneducated newbies. Okay, there are plenty of intelligent and experienced people out there too, but even they often can't agree on the best way to handle many common problems.
I did spend some time talking with Alan's parents about fish keeping the last time we were over at their place visiting. They apparently kept a lot more fish than he remembered back when they lived in Kansas City. It was a nice reality check, since they're both smart and observant people. Hopefully I'll get to chat with them about fish more in the future.
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