Tropical Aquarium Fish

Origins of diseases
The origin of a disease can be external:
- adding in the aquarium a stressed fish during the transport from a country to another, or from a pet shop to home; a disease can occur and it can spread to other aquarium fish too
- adding a disease carrier fish or a sick fish
- adding polluted water from nature
- accidentally adding toxic substances – smoke and others
Of course, you have to be careful in order to avoid all these situations. The diseases can also have internal origins, because of the perturbation of the general equilibrium from the aquarium, which activates the diseases to carrier fish:
- the decrease of the temperature, or temperature shock, sudden variations of temperature in both senses (+ or -), induced by an injury at the heating system
- the decrease of the oxygen level
- over flow of nitrogen substances, caused by an injury to the filtration system of by the big number of fish in the aquarium
- the general quality of the aquarium water
- wounds suffered during a fight or during spawn, or caused by hitting the décor
- bad feeding or incorrect equilibrated feeding
- the presence of plants under decomposing

The prevention of diseases
It’s better to prevent a disease than to heal it, it’s an old saying valiant in aquariums too… Prevention of diseases means a daily observation on the fish and aquarium environment, some knowledge being needed. The best prevention way is maintaining the aquarium equilibrium as better as possible.

Diseases and their treatment
Globally, there are 2 kinds of aquarium fish diseases: infectious diseases and non infectious diseases. The first ones are induced by microorganisms, like bacteria, fungus or viruses carried by aquarium fish. The activation factors are well known: stress, miss alimentation, decrease of the temperature. Some pathogen organisms have a mixed life: a part in the fish body and another part in the aquarium environment.

Non infectious diseases are not induced by pathogen organisms, but by the polluted environment and lack of needed substances, you’ll have to avoid the mixture of medicine or their over administration, because they are useless and in most cases bad for the fish. You’ll have to respect the period of treatment even if the symptoms disappear. Anyway, you’ll have to focus on the fish’s health for its entire life. During the treatment of a disease, the feeding must be equilibrated and it must contain natural elements. After healing, you’ll have to administrate vitamins and minerals in order to make it stronger and improve its general condition.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 30th, 2006 at 1:40 pm and is filed under Uncategorized aquarium fish, Aquariums in general. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response.