buying fish?

ffffrf

thanks for all ur help guys i have 1 question. well i am just wondering were can i get fish that r not sick in my local petstores or any petstores i go to they atleast have 2 dead fish in there tank and like 5 fish that r sick and i know that ick can spread quickly so does anyone know were to get none sick and or dead fish

andysutt

Looks like you have terrible pet stores in your area.

Have you tried the phonebook to get stores in another city close by and try there?

gregpape23

It is good to ask one of the people working there when they get their fish in. Because a lot of the deaths are because of new tank syndrome. I usually buy fish like 4 days after it has arrived at the store. I have no idea on how to avoid the ick.

Tommy Gun

Hey ffffrf,

I agree, you have some pretty bad luck with the stores in your area and would suggest looking for something better. You also have the option of ordering fish from an online store...shipping costs are usually a hurdle with that though.

Like gregpape23 points out, you probably should be asking the stores a lot of questions about the specific fish before you buy them, including how long they have been at the store. Another idea that I have found great success in is either timing visits to my LFS when I am sure they have just received a shipment and buy them before they are taken out of the bag and put in their tanks or find a place that will order fish for you and leave strict directions that you want to pick them up while they are still in the distributor's bag. I know more than half of the LFS in my area will do this for me for free but I would also tell them that you are not paying for them if they are in their tanks when you get there. So far I would say that I have done this at least a dozen times now and in fact, I have ordered some fish even though the store already has them in stock.

Anyways, I really think it would be wrong to not mention the fact that you play a large part as to whether or not the fish you bring home get sick. Obviously you want to pick the best, most healthy looking fish every time, but you also know that doesn't guarantee that they are not sick. Since I have been following along with your threads on the forum pretty well, here is what I have been thinking:

1. There is a good possibility that your fish are getting sick right after you add them is because you are not acclimating them properly. I think you might be able to gain alot from reading this article (or reading it again)...http://www.fishtankforums.com/fishtank/acclimation...and follow the tactics it suggests.
2. Because you have already had more problems in a matter of a couple months than any other individual person I know, I am starting to think that there is something you are doing, or not doing, that is causing your fish to become stressed and hence, more prone to illness/disease/parasites. With that in mind...
   • If I were you, I would start focusing heavily on my water quality by not only testing frequently but also recording those test results so you can compare them all. This should give you some clues as to what is going on that you cannot see otherwise.
   • If you are using any products in your tank....no matter if they are supplements or medications....I would stop using all of them except for any product you might use to remove chlorine.
   • If you are adding any salt to your tank, stop
   • You might need to look at the diet you are providing your fish. For example, you really should be feeding more than one type of food. You also need to make sure that you are feeding the right foods; which would depend on the types of fish you have right now. In fact, even though dropsy is technically a bacterial infection, sometimes people are fooled because the true problem is that the fish is not able to digest the food it is eating.
   • Speaking of food, you also want to make sure you are not over feeding your fish. There are at least two ways in which we can overfeed:
     • Giving your fish more food than they can eat, resulting in a lot of food falling to your substrate. ***You also don't want to add the right amount of food faster than your fish can reach it so instead of adding one big 'pinch', add a few small ones; giving your fish time to eat it all before adding more
     • Allowing your fish to eat too much. Many of the fish we deal with are "opportunistic eaters" - meaning they will eat any and every bit of food that they can find because they cannot be sure when the next meal is going to come. So, you might want to cut down feeding; either to feed only once a day, or feeding smaller amounts. Additionally, you shouldn't be fooled by your fish acting like they are starving since a lot of that is nothing more than a conditioned response. Much like Pavlov's Dog, fish can learn that we are their food source and get excited every time they see a human
   • Speaking of Dropsy and digestion, you might want to look at using a garlic supplement since it can help your fish in quite a few ways...including the prevention of internal infections.

Ok, now the big one....

I think a lot of people would agree with me when I say the "trick" to ich is basically rooted in prevention. For example:

1. One of the reasons a lot of fish get ich shortly after we bring them home is due to the fact that they have just endured a stressful situation and may not be producing enough slime coat which leaves them vulnerable. With that in mind, the key is to minimize that stress:
   • Use solid acclimation tactics for your new fish in order to avoid osmotic shock
   • Keep the lights off over the tank until the next day so that your new fish can feel more secure as they explore their new home (and possible begin setting up a territory)
   • Choose fish that are not going to pick on or bully your other fish
2. Avoid dumping any of the water from your LFS into your tank...just net the fish out once you are done acclimating them....because you do not know what might be tagging along.
3. Provide your fish with the right environment
   • If your fish need places to hide, provide them
   • If your fish need a lot of room to swim, keep things open
   • Provide your fish with a place to run and hide when startled no matter where they are in the tank
   • If your fish are schooling/shoaling types, make sure you have more than one or two
   • If your fish are aggressive toward others of the same species, accommodate that....including situations in which another, very similar looking species are also present (e.g. rainbow sharks and red tail black sharks)
4. Set up and use a second, probably smaller aquarium to act as a quarantine tank and keep all new arrivals in it so that you are not inadvertently adding new problems to a display tank.

And the list can go on and on but I think you can get the gist of what I mean here. Hopefully others can chime in and help support this, but if not, you will have to trust me when I say that a healthy fish is definitely able to protect itself against illness/disease/parasites, but a lot of that is completely up to us.

fishchris

I'm back after a long hiatus.
My tank has been running fine and on occasion, I'de lose a fish here and there. I decided to buy more fish to add to the tank. I had 5 neon tetras, two chinese algae eaters, 1 male guppy, one black molly, one swordtail (male) and three zebra tetras and they all get along perfectly. I bought two angels about the size of a quarter, two rainbow gouramis 1 1/2" long, 4 more tetras, four new guppys and two swords. I also bought a male betta for the tank. I have experience with fish to some degree and acclimated them properly and added them to a tank whos water was newly changed a couple hours prior to their arrival. Within 1 week, of the original fish that were in the tank, the zebra tetras died, the guppy died, one of the neon tetras died and the sword died. Of the new fish, the beta died, the gouramis died, and one of the new neons died. After another week, both angels died and another guppy died. I've tested the water and the pH is perfect, nitrates are a little high but that I figure is because I use an undergravel filter with no charcoal and no live plants. I change the water (30%) everty 2-3 weeks and the ammonia is zero and the hardness of the water is fine. I feed them every other day so as to not over feed and the lights are only on occasionally if I want to really observe the fish. Otherwise, ther tank is lit by the room lights or indirect sunlight during the day. The tank is generally algae free due to the algae eaters and I am at my wits end trying to figure why the fish die EVERY time I buy new. Not just one or two but most of them , old AND new. I even add salt to the tank and Stress Coat to help them acclimate. Any ideas?

Tommy Gun

Welcome back fishchris! I don't really want to hijack ffffrf's thread about where to buy healthy fish, but since post-purchase activities can make us think an LFS is bad....

If you added all of these fish at the same time, then my guess would be that you simply overwhelmed your bioload. I think the evidence of this can be found....

...in this statement as well as the fact that you have lost both old and new fish. For example, if this was an acclimation problem, your established fish should still be ok.

pH is a tricky thing because there really isn't a "perfect" number per say but the key would be to compare seperate test results to see if pH is changing frequently/rapidly.

You wouldn't happen to be dumping the LFS water into your tank, are you?

andysutt

Just curious... is dumping the water from the LFS a bad thing?

fishchris

I might believe the idea of overload. What is it in the bioload that changes? What can I do in the future aside from smaller amounts of fish introduced at one time? And no, I never dump the LFS water into the aquarium. To me, thats like drinking pond water. You don't know whats in it.

RoxiesMom

Each fish you add increases the waste in your tank. This means ammonia. Your current setup, once cycled, is able to respond by adding more bacteria to handle this addition. However, when you add alot of fish - this means ALOT of additional ammonia. It takes time for the bioload to change to deal with the additional ammonia. I find it best to add only a few fish at a time. Keeps my ammonia at 0.

Tommy Gun

IMHO, yes.

I agree with RoxiesMom but would add that the idea here is pretty simple....the number of benificial bacteria in your aquarium can only grow to a point at which there is enough food to sustain them. On top of that, benificial bacteria don't really enjoy extremely rapid reproduction rates so adding fish in small groups - maybe two or three every other week until stocked - not only generates a larger food source for the bacteria but also provides time for the population to grow.
Based upon my observations with reading, hearing, or conversing with other hobbyists, I think one of the things many of us forget to consider is that we need to be planning based upon each fishes' full potential size and not the size they are at the time we buy them. Obviously this is important because larger fish produce larger amounts of wastes (placing more stress on the bioload) and most, if not all of your fish are potentially larger fish. Lastly, IMO you are at a point in which frequent water testing is going to be invaluable as far as turning bioload into something you can actually see with your eyes.