home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- Newsgroups: alt.aquaria
- Path: sparky!uunet!utcsri!torn!spool.mu.edu!agate!ames!sgi!wdl1!wdl30!rpt
- From: rpt@wdl30.wdl.loral.com (Richard P Toren)
- Subject: Do Hospital tanks really work??
- Message-ID: <1992Dec27.173535.8731@wdl.loral.com>
- Sender: news@wdl.loral.com
- Organization: Loral Western Development Labs
- Distribution: na
- Date: Sun, 27 Dec 1992 17:35:35 GMT
- Lines: 35
-
- Gentlemen and Ladies,
- I have some questions about the use of a 'hospital tank'(HT). What
- puzzles me is how they ever are effective?
-
- ASSUME that you notice a couple of fish that appear ill (eg.
- scratching and red gills). You remove them from the community tank to
- a HT for treatment. But it seems to me that the vector that caused
- the ailments is still floating about back in the main tank. If this
- is a bacterial sort of thing, you can't really treat the main tank
- without disrupting the good bacteria. Even if you are successful at
- treating these two fish, won't they be re-infected as soon as they go
- back into the main tank? Sort of like kids giving a cold back and
- forth to each other.
-
- If you have a large number of fish, you can't possibly put them all
- in the HT at once. What is to be done? How do you dis-infect the water
- in the main tank.? Haven't all the fish been infected by the time you
- see some noticeable symtoms? Is it possible to treat the main tank,
- (killing all the bacteria --good and bad) and then attempt to
- re-establish the biologic balance? What would you use as seed to
- start the biologic filtering process.
-
- I am in a quandry... I have been trying to cure some scratching (
- and recently red gills) with 'Quick cure', then qunine, then General
- Cure, and am about to start Furon-2? But this last explicitly states
- that a HT should be used, but I can't put 23 fish in a 5 gallon tank
- safely?
-
- Any experience or guidance would be greatly appreciated. I hate to
- just let them all die, and start over. As my wife says, "After you
- name them, you can't just let them die!"
-
-
- Rip Toren -- the not so relaxed aquariaist (sic)
- rpt@han3206.sso.loral.com
-