Is that fish really healthy?
Whenever you visit your local aquarium shop and you look for that special fish you want to add to your aquarium, is that fish healthy? The fish may show no physical signs of any problem, but they can carry many protozoans and latent diseases such as Ichthybodo, tetrahymena and various bacterial diseases. Latent diseases are diseases present on the fish and the fish may look healthy, but when we do a scraping of the fish’s mucus and view it under the microscope, we often find many parasites.
Catching and transporting the fish can lower the fish’s immunity and cause the fish to succumb to some of these diseases. The fish fight off the pathogens with the bio-flora in the fish’s mucus, when the fish is placed under stress the fish can no longer fight off infection.
The fish can look healthy with no physical signs of disease but may exhibit a shy demeanour and the biggest clue that, fish is struggling to cope is they never react to your hand against the glass. Sometimes the fish can be slow to react and or no reaction at all. Any fish that swims aimlessly around the aquarium is not well. Put your hand close to the glass and the fish should move away in fright or come towards your hand looking for food.
One fish not well in a school of fish may not suggest all fish have a problem, but the risk is high as parasites can transfer from fish to fish via contact. Latent diseases may never harm a fish but inhibit the fish from eating or breeding. Latent diseases can be present on a fish for the entirety of the fish’s life. Other scenarios, the fish may refuse to eat and hide which may cause other fish to bully that fish and eventually cause death.
For peace of mind your local aquarium shop needs to subscribe to the Fishtech global system of quarantine. This system eliminates chronic and latent diseases on fish, so they never present a problem for the hobbyist. An interesting note, the bacteria that exists in the bio flora on a fish is the bacteria that flourishes once the fish dies. Those bacteria are the same bacteria that cause most bacterial infections on fish. That is why it is very important to remove deceased fish from the aquarium as quickly as possible before fish come into contact with them.
Fishtech global systems can guarantee healthier fish, and more disease resistant fish when shipping and handling on their journey to your aquarium.
Encourage your local aquarium shop to subscribe to our system.