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This is something I've been meaning to post here for some time, but the recent spate of Panda emergencies has given me added impetus to do so. So, here I am.

On the (thankfully) rare occasions I've had to treat diseases among my fishes, I have found that convalescene is greatly improved if the patients are fed live foods in large quantities during the medication period. I once had to treat my Cardinals for fin rot. Normally, the meds take 7 days minimum to take full effect, and then the fish take something like another 7 days to repair the fin damage. However, because my treatment régime coincided with a big delivery of live food, my Cardinals were given big banquets of Daphnia, Brine Shrimp and Bloodworm during their convalescence.

Result? Meds worked much more quickly. And, the Cardinals were back to normal in 6-7 days. In the past, during my teenage years, when I didn't have access to live food on a regular basis, and any sick fishes were fed mostly on flakes, I would have been looking at a 14 day recovery peiod as a minimum.

I've suggested this to other aquarists in my area, that they try heavy live food feedings during treatment, and they've all come back and said the same thing - convalescence times are considerably reduced. In some cases, halved.

This does NOT mean to say that medication should be discontinued in half the time. Many diseases have resistant spores that then hatch out into free-swimming larval stages (Ich or White Spot being the classic example) and the medication needs to be continued until all the spores have hatched and produced the vulnerable free-swimming larval stages which the medication kills. But, from the standpoint of the fishes, heavy live food banquets during medication speeds their recovery. It boosts their immune systems and gives them the ammunition to fight the battle alongside the medication.

So, if you have sick fishes to treat, feed lots of live food while you're medicating them. They'll recover a LOT faster. And, if you continue feeding live foods on a regular basis, you'll make them more resistant to disease attacks in the first place.

Of course, the inevitable caveat about checking the provenance of your live food should also be issued here. Some disease organisms can be introduced via live foods from sources with a bad provenance. Camallanus nematodes are a classic example: they are digenetic, living inisde Cyclops for part of their life cycle, and gain access to the fishes when the fishes eat the Cyclops. And, most Daphnia ponds also contain their fair share of Cyclops, which are inevitably caught with the Daphnia. This does not detract from the value of live foods as a therapeutic medium and all-round fish conditioner: it just means that due care and attention is required when selecting live foods for your fishes. But, on balance, the benefits - boosted immune systems, better ability to resist disease in the first place, better ability to fight diseases when they strike - outweigh the risks. Take precautions against the risks, and live foods are a vlauable weapon in any aquarist's arsenal of fish maintenance aids.

And with that, I shall leave you all, wishing that you see diseases as little as possible, and that your fishes are suitably equipped to cope when they do strike.



Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

Live tubifex are also good transmitters of nematodes. For that, I like feeding Hikari's Frozen Tubifex since it goes through a triple sterilization process.

I don't have access to live food and don't have any place to cultivate (no more tanks, no more space for tanks or bottles, no more outlets for bubblers, etc. ). I'm maxed out.

Therefore, I like to feed frozen food, which is the next best thing. The habrosus cories went nuts for the frozen, thawed daphnia this morning

If I was going to feed Tubifex live, I'd cultivate them myself. And make sure that they weren't carrying anything by running the cultures through a 'quarantine period' before feeding to the fish. But, I don't have spare containers (or house space!) to do that yet (sigh).

Frozen is almost as good, but somehow, the act of pouncing upon food and then eating it seems to give that extra boost to the fish. Which is probably why, when I feed my Pandas their live Daphnia & Bloodworm banquet in about an your or so (it's 8pm as I type this here in the UK) they'll keep me up all night with another spawning marathon!

Of course, what I'd love to do someday is set up a Daphnia pond in the back garden ...

Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002