What to look for when buying aa aquarium fish.

Buying a new fish for your aquarium is very exciting. Going to your local aquarium shop and seeing all the different fish with all the different colours is so much fun. When you pick out that new fish for your aquarium, how do you know that fish is healthy. Your new fish should be disease free which can be deceiving as a fish can look quite normal but still be harboring harmful pathogens. Approximately 60% of aquarium fish carry disease when they arrive at your local aquarium store.

Most pathogens on fish are often latent and pose no problem, until the fish is exposed to environmental stress by handling, bullying or unsuitable water chemistry.

So how do we tell if a fish is truly healthy?

Quite often all the fish in the store may look healthy, even very stunning. Looking for dead fish in the aquarium may not mean that there’s a problem. In a very busy store, some fish may succumb to injuries from the netting of tankmates.

Expecting a fish to clearly exhibit clear signs of disease is not a reliable way of diagnosing a problem. Many times, we have seen fish exhibiting very normal colour and good finnage and no signs on the body, but when a mucus sample is taken for examination under a microscope the number of pathogens is astounding. As we like to call it at Fishtech global is “standing room only”. Many diseases like Ichthybodo and tetrahymena rarely leave external signs in the early stage and fish may not show any symptoms until the fish finally dies.

In the aquarium store the best way to test the fish’s health is to place your hand close to the glass and move your hand around. The fish should react to your hand, either shying away or moving towards your hand expecting food. Most species of fish react to this, very few don’t.

If a fish swims aimlessly in the aquarium not reacting to any movement, you should be very wary of purchasing that fish.  Also asking to see the fish being fed can be a great way to assess a fish’s health. Although in a busy store this may not be practical.

Asking how long the fish has been in the aquarium can be helpful, if the fish has only just arrived ask about the stores quarantine procedure. We found at Fishtech global some stores put the responsibility of quarantine on the hobbyist.

A truly great aquarium store will use the Fishtech global system of quarantine for all their fish. This system is highly successful, very advanced and customized for all aquarium fish species. Using this system before aquarium fish are being offered for sale guarantees healthy fish instore.

This is peace of mind for the hobbyist and increases profits while lowering costs for the aquarium store. Our system allows stores to carry higher stock loads of fish in each aquarium without risk of disease transfer in the aquariums.

Fishtech global is helping aquarium stores and hobbyists have success in Fish keeping.

Subscribe today.