bartoli

But why put a fish through the suffering?

TAB

what makes you think they are suffering?

For the most part, most of the fish we see in the hobby are raised, not wild cuaght, 99% of those have never been in anything other then tap water. Drastic PH changes are what is cruel.

bartoli

Acidosis and alkalosis destroy tissues as well as irritate gills and skin.

As to the idea that the actual level of stable pH does not matter much to raised fish, is there any scientific study with physiological evidence?

TAB

I'm sure there is some where, fact is thousands of generations of fish have been raised that way. I would go as far to say its cruel to subject these fish to conditions of thier home waters. Thats not what they are use too. Having worked in the industry( on both the aqua culture and retail side of things) Just about every thing is raised in tap water. On average, its just treated for chlorine, Carbon filters are also common. Anything else is the exception, not the rule. Now some parts of the country have really nasty water, but generally speaking, you don't see large scale aquaculture companys in those areas.


For 90% of the fish we see in the hobby, it just does not matter.

bartoli

Since you are so sure, please tell us one such scientific study. Many breeders would love to see that for it would be a great marketing tool helping them to sell their livestock to a much broader market. A lot of money to be made.

But the fact is... we have a wealth of scientific knowledge on how improper pH level damages fish. Even though many people (including I myself) wish that raised fish would be the exception, there is no scientific evidence to support that wish.

To be compassionate to fishes, I stay away from those that I cannot provide the appropriate pH.

TAB

So I guess, the 10s of million of fish that are bread, raised and thrive in improper PH in this country is just luck?

lets just take guppies as a example, strike that, lets take Poecilia reticulata. You can in the matter of a month, take them from a PH of 6.0 in very soft fresh water and water temps in the low 60s to a ph of 8.4, sg of salt water of 1.025 and temp of 84, Yet they still will reproduce and have no noticable loss of life span. I've done it, I know several other people that have done it.


I know angel breaders not Far from my house that ship thousands of fish a month world wide, and do it all in 7.5 ph water. BTW they also do killies and several other new world cichlid, all of which are recomended in PH lower then 7. Not only do they do it, that promote it on thier website...They are not the only one. I know more then a few discus breaders that only mess with pH when it comes to breading.

Just becuase you don't like the idea or agree with it, does not mean that it is done world wide in the tropical fish industry.

I tell you what, go around to all your local fish stores, ask them what they do to thier water before they do water changes.

bartoli

On the one hand, we have scientific knowledge saying that water pH above or below that of the native fish environment damages fishes.

On the other hand, we have breeders claiming that their fishes are not sensitive to water pH as long as it is stable.

It is also widely acknowledged that many breeders use medication to improve the survival rate of their livestock. Could it be that those medication improve survival rate by suppressing or damping down the physiological response to improper water pH?

As long as fishes are continually being medicated, I guess they can live well with tap water pH. In that case, breeders should attach medication along with fish delivery, not to mention the ethics of continually medicating fish.

drtechno

some species are more adaptable than others.

like for example: guppies can be acclimated to salt water conditions and they successfully breed offspring that is capable of living in those conditions (most live bearers can do this) and some people do this for feeders.

Forgotten Path

I work at PetSmart* and we use UV sterilizers, but that is not a medicine so much as a preventative measure. We also use quICH Cure whenever we receive a shipment, but nothing other than that... Even with just one treatment of the quICH Cure we normally lose our Clown Loaches and Black Ghost Knifefish. There is copper in our system, but we're actually working hard right now to eliminate it, as we are having to keep our snails in breeding nets in our plant tank, and our ghost shrimp always die...




*Not sure you would consider PetSmart a good place to buy fish, LOL.

dwalstad

I would suggest that you add an aquarium water conditioner designed to counteract heavy metals (active ingredient is the powerful metal-chelator EDTA) to tanks with invertebrates and copper-sensitive fish. BTW, I wrote all about metal toxicity and how to counteract it in my book (pp 9-19).

I use Tetra's AquaSafe. Its a "simple solution". There's no excuse for any fish or invertebrate to die of copper toxicity.

As to PetSmart... The fact that PetSmart uses a UV sterilizer speaks volumes. This company is at least making an effort to manage fish disease. In contrast, I've seen several local aquarium stores with dead fish rotting in their tanks, but not at our local PetSmart.

Hope this helps!