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hi guys,what do u guys think of buying fish cheeper cause they are sick,there was a texas at my lfs today,he did look good,but he had some sort of pink growth,growing on different parts of him,it looked like coly flower that we eat but pink in colour,the add said,male texas cichlid,dirt cheep,with undiagonosed sickness,ask at counter,ive never bought sick fish and i dont condone it,i just wanted to hear what you guys think of this.i rekon that you are behind the 8 ball,b4 he is even taken out of his tank,and the trip home ,could just be enuff to finish a already sick fish off

It is never a good idea to knowingly buy an ill fish, no matter how cheap it is. That one cheap fish could wipe out the rest of your other (potentially expensive) stock.

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I'm not your neighbor, you Bakersfield trash.

well that is a good point,even if you had a qt tank,to put the sick fish in,like i said you are lessing your chances of that fish surviving,i wont even buy a fish thats not swimming around active,or searching for food,i always take the better looking fish,or the active ones.but i think for some people,even if the fish dies,its justafiable because it was cheep,to me thats a sad way to look at it,but some people are that way inclined.

If i know I can fix it I might, like finrot on feeders, or if I had absolutely positively no other fish it could contaminate, but otherwise its not worth it

For animals, the entire universe has been neatly divided into things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) run away from, and (d) rocks. - Terry Pratchett

yeah i aggree,avoid them.

I've never knowingly bought a sick fish, without a QT tank going its just too risky, but I do tend to "rescue" fish from the LFS - the most recent example being a single little threadfin rainbow that was looking sooo lonely in the store tank all by himself.

I felt so sorry for him I had to bring him home to join our school of threadfins.

GT

Never be afraid to try something new. Remember that a lone amateur built the Ark. A large group of professionals built the Titanic.

I dont buy sick fish, but Ive taken them for nothing plenty of times, since the shop usually wont bother to save them. It depends how good you are with diagnosis and treatment, for me sometimes its worth it. I dont include sick fish into community anyway. Ive taken damaged and sick fish before. I woulnt pay for them though.

Try pointing out the sick fish and saying if youre only gonna bin it, than you might as well give it to me, its only gonna die anyway and make the other fish sick.

You should never buy sick fish because it encourages stockists not to look after their fish, but I see nothing wrong in acquiring a few for nothing, and treating them and saving them if you can talk the LFS into it.

Dont get too disappointed if you fail though, and never mix them with other fish until completely cured of all ailments. Ive talked a few shops into letting me have subdominant juvenile cichlids for nothing, in circumstances where the other fish are persecuting them, and the shop has nowhere else to put them, removed from the situation they were in , they often do very well.Take the stress of being in a petshop away, its amazing how many fish can recover.

I would generally not advise acquiring a sick fish unless you know what is actually making it ill though. A few diseases of fish you dont even want near your home. It really depends on your knowledge of meds and diseases. If youre not up to scratch, dont try it. Im an ex-animal rescuer, I have the tankspace , experience,time , and a ready stock of meds. I can visually identify most diseases, and when im looking at the tank setup other fish etc, I can work out whats wrong, certainly enough to know if a save is worth the effort, or if the disease is too far progressed or of a nature that is not easily treated.If you must do it, choose wisely, and know your limits. You dont want to give your own fish a plague.under these circumstances , quarantine is an absolute must, and that includes all the equipment like gravel cleaners, and you will need to watch your personal handwashing hygiene too.


I have seperate equipment for sick fish, and a cycled quarantine tank running.Unless you have equivalent equipment , dont do it. Even if the illness is easily controlled, it is not fair to keep exposing healthy community fish to repeated treatments for the sake of sick newcomers.

My personal motto has always been save what you can, but ultimately that has to be balanced against what is practical, safe, and doesnt encourage bad trading practices.

If you can quarantine, you can house a sick fish, but I don't think I'd ever pay for a sick fish.

I've bought fish from a somewhat suspicious LCPS before, but the cories were dirt cheap and seemed active. I tried to convince them to give me the one sick fish of the lot but the employee was all like "well, we have a seven day guarantee, if it dies you can come back." No, I'm not paying for a fish with septicemia, especially when I was living almost an hour away at the time.

I'm known as the rescuer of lonely cories at my fav LFS and will almost always pick up the one or two cories left in a tank. I've also been Given a betta whose fins were absolutely shredded. I offered to bring him home, heal him up and bring him back, but my fav LFS guy just gave him to me. Shredded fins are easy to fix and the mangled betta turned out to be a lovely guy once healed up.

Spartan, a few days after procuring him, fins already showing some regrowth:



His fins were never perfect... there weren't as flowing as they should have been, and you could tell he had been injured, but he wound up living a full life, and his coloring was simply gorgeous.



So, do I advocate buying sick fish? No, not really. There have been times when I've been tempted, but let's face it, if I buy a fish from a place where they allow sick fish to spread disease through their tanks, it's only going to allow them to think it's okay and that someone will buy the fish, anyway.

The case of Spartan was pretty unique and I didn't put any money into it; I used what meds I already had and a spare tank that was hanging around. Sometimes a little TLC is all they need.

~Meow. Thus spoke the cat.~

yeah,i dont rekon theres anything wrong with rescuing a fish,or getting them back to normall for a mate,ive done that countless times,plus having a qt up and running,it does help,but as i said above,id never pay for themto me it dosent even out.