Totally agree. Was just saying ammonia doesn't cause disease directly. It certainly increases susceptibility.
Well once again, THERE WAS NO AMMONIA WHEN MY FISH HAD HOLE IN THE HEAD.
What is hole in the head? It's a protozoan.
Where does it come from? Fish poop, where it is everpresent.
How do you treat it? Salt, heat, and most important lots of water changes. Also takes forever to treat it.
So in some general way can you say ammonia etc. worsen problems? Maybe but this is just conjecture like saying keep a warm coat on or you'll catch a chill, and for hole in the head or for sudden death due to hydrogen sulphide these measurements are completely irrelevant. this is like saying your fish are stressed and our medication unstresses it. It's almost meaningless, and I cringe when I see the suggestion to just add prime to the tank as a solution to various problems instead of figuring out what's going on. Again I have to think of my first thread here when I wanted to know how long chloramine takes to dissipate. No one knew, and no one seemed to even care. Now seriously if your hobby is fishkeeping and you've spent years doing it and discussed it to death on the web you don't even have a glimmer of curiosity about it? How can that be, and how can anyone like that put themselves forward as a fish expert?
Further, for a crowded larger tank there is so much beneficial bacteria you will virtually never get ammonia spikes. So once again, no ammonia present, but disease is.
The irrefutable conclusion is that water testing is not always helpful, which is obvious in and of itself anyway. So people really think fishkeeping can be torn down to 4 simple variables of water quality and that's it? That's basically what people disagreeing with me are doing, then they turn around and point to their amazing experience to back this up, but seem to believe my fish are in constant agony and bad health. Since that's not true maybe they just don't know what they are talking about, no matter how much experience they claim to have (and simply parroting back the same 3-4 things a million times on a message board doesn't seem to indicate much knowledge to me to be honest).
And that goes back to the whole premise of this thread. Why is karma doing this? He's trying to learn fishkeeping better, but REALLY learn it not just repeat back the same annoying checklist I hear in every thread. The opposition is talking in generalities and stuff they read on the internet, especially the talk about aggressive fish which is dead wrong.