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after my weekly water change i use both Melafix and Pimafix along with water conditioner as a disease preventative...so far so good. i haven't had any sick fish in a very long time. i don't know if it's just sheer luck, or is the medication actually working. anyone else do this?

I don't do it and haven't had a sick fish for a very long time either...amazingly enough I seem to have a bit extra in my bank account too .

It's my belief that proper maintence of the tank will work alot better than any "preventitives" ...additionally it may make it easier to treat for real problems if whatever your fish do come down with isnt' already resistant to the medication you're trying to use.

Just my $0.02

^_^

Using melafix as a preventative is like using antibacterial soap when washing your hands. If you use the nasty antibacterial crap all the time, you're actually MORE likely to get sick. Your body hasn't had an opportunity to fight off the little bacteria that you normally pick up, so your immune system isn't prepared to fight off the big stuff.

Plus, like Babel said, you're probably making the disease nasties resistant to melafix and pimafix, so you'll have to find something else to cure whatever nasty pops up in your tank. Gary just had an article on this if you want to look it up in the Hospital forum.

~Meow. Thus spoke the cat.~

Yes, I definitely think it's at least a little weird. You shouldn't add too many chemicals to your tank, as stated in the previously aforementioned thread started by Gary Roland. The only things I add to my tank are dechlorinator, and maybe some Melafix if a fish is doing badly. Otherwise, the tank is pretty much natural, (besides my hands being in it) and yours should be that way, too.

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And when he gets to Heaven, to Saint Peter he will tell: "One more Marine reporting, Sir! I've served my time in Hell."

Not having sick fish has nothing to do with luck. Picking out healthy fish to buy, properly acclimating them, providing constant water temperatures that are acceptable, feeding varied foods that exceed the fish's basic nutritional needs, excellent filtration, and proper stocking would seem more likely to produce healthy fish than luck would.

I believe in preventitive MEASURES , but not preventitive medicine.

Use Melafix & Pimafix only when you need them & not as prevention to sick fish. Water changes & good food should keep your fish healthy .

:88)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/corydoras/
Member of the Malta Aquarist Society - 1970.
http://www.maltaaquarist.com

we put in nov aqua and aquari-sol every WC, and we have never had a disease yet in the tank (it has been runnig for 15 years

wow, 15 years, more like... WOW

The Amazon Nut...

you guys did bring up a good point. now that i think about it, i do feed my fish better than i feed myself and always keep on schedule with my water changes....so it all does make a lot of sense.

MelaFix is nothing but crap anyway (i.e. it doesn't work). It doesn't matter if you use it or not.

And I'm speaking from experience here. I have tried using MelaFix on several occasions and it did nothing. I was following the directions properly, and half the time the fish still died.

Seriously... Maracyn Two and Plus are a lot better. They actually work. And, this is for you, Babelfish, Maracyn smells a lot better than Melafix. Don't use them in a preventative manner though.

[span class="edited"][Edited by Cory Addict 2004-08-12 23:27][/span]

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I'm not your neighbor, you Bakersfield trash.

MelaFix is nothing but crap anyway

Well, that depends on what you're using it for, If you're using it to prevent infection & promote the regrowth of torn fins, then it's great stuff. If you're using it to fight an sort of major infection then of course your fish are still gonna die. The stuff is basically the fishy equivilent of Detol.

Melafix is not an antibiotic, it is an antibacterial. It's just tea tree extract. It's not meant to cure the really nasty stuff (though I have personally used it to cure dropsy and other nasties). It is marketed for helping to heal wounds and prevent wound infection, that's all.

I'm so adjective, I verb nouns!

I once had a blind cave fish that I dicovered had a few missing scales when I bought it (it was kept in a tank with serpae and emperor tetras), and I decided to try using MelaFix to try and help the fish. The medicine did nothing. The wound did not go away, and eventually it got infected and the fish died. MelaFix did nothing to help the small injury or the secondary bacterial infection.

That was my latest experience with it, and it happened last year (though I already had a few bad experiences with the stuff before that). After giving it three tries to see it could benefit the fish at all, I gave up. That was when I decided that Melafix was nothing but a waste of money.

Maracyn is an infinitely superior product. It's actually medicine and not just some stupid leaf juice.

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I'm not your neighbor, you Bakersfield trash.