Marketing or Luck

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
You look at your fish and you personally think they look great. That may no be the case.
Just because they LOOK ok, does not mean they are in the best of health.
Just because they appear to be "happy" doesn't mean you haven't shortened their lifespan.
Just because the particular species and individuals you have seem to be pretty tough doesn't mean other fishkeepers will have the same success.

And really the same goes for people that do proper maintenance. If you don't have the ability to look at your fish and know when something is wrong before it gets out of hand, and if you don't have the ability to care for fish in ways other than just doing water changes you may not have any success in this hobby at all.

All that's been proven so far as that there are other facets of fishkeeping than just doing water changes and testing your water. That doesn't mean the former should just be ignored.

Everyone has the ability to participate in this hobby no matter what their methods and ideals are, but your view of your own fish is always going to be subjective.

The bottom line is you can rely strictly on instinct and observation, which often bites people in the ass when it comes to this hobby, or you can rely on instinct, observation and scientific methods (such as water testing).
I chose to rely on the latter. If someone chooses to ignore that themselves it's at their own risk.

There is often some uncalled for hostility here, but there are also a lot of people that try to dispute facts (things that have been scientifcally proven) with opinion, and I think that really sets some people off.
It's not like water test kits are a gimmick that just suddenly showed up in the fish hobby...
Water test kits have been used for many years in many fields, INCLUDING wild waterways, where observation of native wildlife is used along with that to guage enviromental problems. The same goes for your aquarium. You test your water and observe the fish to prevent, fix or guage problems.
Not like that kind of thing is simply opinion or a gimmick meant to make the aquarium industry money. I mean...you don't even HAVE to buy kits specifically made for aquarium use, it's just the most convenient thing to do.
 
I subscribe to the 'keep it simple' syle of fish keeping.

I dont regularly test my tanks, I cycle with fish (but precycle or clone the filters), I do lots and big water changes (50% week). I dont even use water conditioner, but I know where our tap water comes from and how it's treated. (No chloramine) I dont even posess any fish medicines. :screwy:

Now I have a basic understanding of the chemisty involved in keeping fish, but to me the most important thing seems to be keeping clean well filtered water in the tank. The only fish I have lost last year where a couple of tiger barbs that mysteriously died, I increased the water changes in that tank (I had been a bit slack) and no more losses.

I still have the first pleco I bought 3 years ago ( it's had 3 tank upgrades since then) and have adopted several other big ones.

Now if you want to have success when your are pushing the limits with monster fish I agree you have get a bit more scientific. Many of you guys have single fish that put more bioload on a tank than all the fish in my five tanks combined. What I can get away with with smaller fish and lighter tank stocking as different.

What the original poster talked about, where people just buy a tank, and add some fish DOES work. They are doing a cycle with fish, even if they dont know it. Setting up a 55gal tank and dropping a few tiger barbs in it wont crash and burn like the doom merchants keep telling us. The tank will cycle, the fish will survive, the owner will add a few more next week - no problem.

Now you sure cant do that with an adult Oscar in the same tank. A fish like that would dump enough ammonia to make the tank toxic in 24 hours. So in that situation you have to get smarter and get the tank pre-cycled and have much better filtration.

2 very different situations.

Cheers

Ian
 
You're doing that with a good understanding of everything. You also seem to be lightly stocked, which is pretty much how most oldschool fishkeepers did it. Throw a few fish in, let it cycle, keep the stocking light and do periodic water changes.

IMO, when you try to use that mentality on a more heavily stocked tank there is a lot less room for error. I don't test much at all, but I absolutely refuse to just HOPE my water will remain perfect forever without testing.
I honestly think most of the people that test daily are nuts. There's not even much reason for that unless you are set up in a way with such heavy stocking and the type of equipment that could mean your parameters quickly change. Most people, even some of us that think we're stocked heavily, shouldn't require that.

I also cycle with fish (though I haven't truely cycled in a long time because I have so much extra media), which I've gotten flack for, but there's just some species that are not really sensitive especially if you keep the ammonia pretty low. It's not like I'd put them in that enviroment permanently but it's not cruel to me to use them for cycling. People will take that how they will.

We all have our own techniques and opinions, I just don't agree with dismissing test kits and stuff like that as gimmicks. They DO come in handy and the science behind testing periodically is sound.
What kind of maintenance we do and how effective it is will be largely dependent on species.
I caught some pygmy sunfish I had out of a swamp and the ammonia in there was .25, and this is their natural enviroment. No way would these fish be all that stressed in an unfiltered tank as long as water changes were done adequately.
You really do have to take the species into account though, because some species actually aren't all that sensitive to ammonia, but are super sensitive to nitrites and vice versa. Those type of fish really would not be good cycle fish since partway through the cycle they're going to be under heavy stress.

You can't debate that high nitrates have to have some kind of long term effect on growth and longevity though. If you take a fish like discus, which is one of the more sensitive examples, you see some very visible problems, and quickly, when they are exposed to very high nitrates, especially during the growth period.

Obviously there's no one answer for every single species. The big problems come in when people assume their techniques translate to all species. If my goldfish survive adverse conditions that doesn't mean something like a discus is going to.
That's part of the reason I mostly keep stuff that's really hardy. I DON'T want to waste my time worrying about them dying just because I was late on a water change or I didn't test soon enough.
 
I think its hard to tell people their methods do not or should not work. I choose to do 3 water changes a week, test my water, stay on top of things etc. I am very instinctual with it also. I usually know when somethings wrong.

I personally cannot subscribe to the old school methods because I do not like wild cards. I really appreciate my fish and I don't buy them with the thought of losing them. I can honestly say that in the last 3 years I have not lost any fish to disease or things of that nature.
 
Once a tank is stable I rarely test it.I stock fairly lightly and do regular weekly large waterchanges.Almost never use any additives or chemicals.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
MonsterFishKeepers.com
Top Bottom