Brew12
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Reef Tank 365
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My Tank Thread
This is the only medication I still have. I probably got it in the early 70s and it is still half full. It is copper 1.25% and formalin 17%. It was made in Yonkers New York and now nothing is made in Yonkers.
I only have it because sometimes I get a fish for free that is so full of parasites that it is almost dead and a store gives it to me before it croaks. I will try to cure it and sometimes I do. But besides that, I don't have any need for medications of any kind.
Ok Paul, now you are telling stories! If fish didn't need medicine, why are there so many pharmacies on the reef? And if the reefs you dove on didn't have a Walgreen's, how did you get your pictures developed?
One thing to keep in mind (Which PaulB reminds us of regularly) is that a new tank cannot possibly have the bacteria needed to keep fish healthy. This is where the quarantine and treatment procedures that people like Humblefish have recommended are vital.
I see it as a "boy in the bubble" situation. You can take a person with a compromised immune system and isolate them from pathogens so they can live safely.
If you take a healthy person and isolate them from all the viruses and bacteria, they will loose their resistance to them. At this point their resistance will be just as weak as the person born with a compromised immune system. This is exactly what happened when Europeans visited the Americas. The native populations hadn't been exposed to the same pathogens that the Europeans were carrying with no noticeable impact and it nearly wiped them out.
This is why I am choosing to follow Humblefish's advice on quarantining. I know my tank is too sterile right now not to. I will continue to do so until I am confident that my tank has a healthy enough bacteria, virus, pathogen content to keep fish healthy naturally.