free fish from walmart :)
- Thread starter livebearerfreak
- Start date
They probably would have died anyway, but salt and heat isn't a cure-all. It's good for Ich, but not if the fish has a bacterial infection, which is quite common in these fish. When you take meat from the fridge and leave it in warm air for a few hours the bacteria explodes.
Not saying that's what your fish had, but diagnosing the problem before taking any action will give it the best chance.
Not saying that's what your fish had, but diagnosing the problem before taking any action will give it the best chance.
Sadly, me. I live in a small town. We have Walmart, one feed store that carries fish, and a pet store (that you couldn't pay me to buy fish from!). Walmart and the feed store carry different kinds of fish, so depending on what you want, you may have to buy at Walmart or pay the huge shipping fees to buy online...and hope they'll ship to Arizona in June.
So...yes, sometimes, I buy Walmart fish.
Back in the day I would never have considered the risk of buying fish online. Nowadays, I find myself buying more and more fish online instead. I even live in the tri-state area where there's an abundance of pet stores and a diverse array of fish.
Raising the temperature on a tank of sick fish has nothing to do with sick fish in general. When the temperature is raised for ick, for example; it is due to how the heat affects the life cycle of the ick parasite specifically. Most other illness treatments that require raised heat, are also based on speeding up the life cycle of parasites. If the illness isn't parasitic, heat isn't likely to help, unless otherwise noted on medication instructions (though you won't use those, so it's a moot point).
Unfortunately, when it comes to fungal infections and many other illnesses, higher temperatures can make them worse. So by raising the temp, you're likely harming the fish with the mouth fungus.
While I agree that it's certainly important not to misdiagnose a fish illness and mistakenly treat with a medication that does more harm than good to a tank of fish that don't need it, some fish illnesses require chemical treatments whether you like adding chemicals to your tank or not. Ask anyone here who's tried to treat callamanus worms without Levamisole Hydrochloride or Fenbendazole based medications!
For the fish you claimed had ick, this isn't a super important point, as the salt & heat method does often work by itself. However, you mentioned putting all 4 fish in the same 10g tank, yet all 4 fish weren't suffering from the same illness. This means that if their conditions are contagious, you took 4 fish each suffering from a single illness, and gave them each a second illness to start their "healing process" with.
If I were you, I'd spend more time diagnosing the illnesses properly, then treat them accordingly. If you're not willing to do that, "rescuing" fish isn't likely to take place.
I'm going to stop now, and just say, "good luck".
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ill just leave the tank sit dry for a few days, that should work, dont have bleach and rather not use it (to paranoid )
3rd fish died, last one does have ich, and nothing else, just sits in one spt and breaths fast/moves its fins fast... hoping this one pulls through! i think its a male elec blue ahli too!
