Shold you treat wild caught fish for parasites and fungus? And pic of my first tank since I was a kid.

One thing I have noticed, not terribly scientific but effective...

If you sample a stream to any degree, you should get a good feel for how healthy it is by the condition of the fish you find.

In the streams in KY that I prowl around, it is rare to see a sick fish. When I do find one, I usually find several, and that's a good indication that something is wrong with the stream. In one creek, out of 20-30 greenside darters I netted, four of them had white spots.

Empty the catch bucket and go somewhere else. That particular stream was later found to have untreated sewage being dumped into it.

1 teaspoon of table salt or kosher salt is about 6 grams, so 1 teasp/gallon (my collecting bucket strength) is only about 1.6 grams per liter (or ppt). The strength at which Uland's madtoms got "resentful" (SG 1.005) is around 7 grams/liter or 4 teaspoons of salt per gallon. So i think 1 teasp/gal is probably safe for pretty much any freshwater fish, and seems to help (IMO) reduce that initial susceptibility to infection that plagues us in low conductivity Atlantic slope streams. If you're worried about the effect of salt on lowering dissolved oxygen, it's trivial at that low concentration. (Of course gently aerating the bucket is always a good idea, with or without salt).

Gerald,

I agree on the fish from Atlantic slope being prone to infection. Every fish that I bring in is treated with 5ppt salinty (1.004sg) and usually formalin at 0.1 ml/gal (be sure to have plenty of air flowing since formalin can take it out). Salt is held constant for the quarantine period and formalin is added every other day for 3 treatments. Other treatments are used as needed. Over the years I have found about 10% of the fish that I bring back will come down with bacterial/fungal infections if left untreated within a week and this will spread to other tank mates. Fish are treated as soon as they get in a quarantine and held there for at least 30 days. This is ok to use on all fish, I would be careful to go above these dosage rates on scaleless fish though.


If your water is very soft as here in SC, make sure your alkalinity does not drop very low. My tanks are around 20-25, when they drop to 10-15 the pH drops quickly, and the ammonia goes up very fast. All of this is stress to the fish and will help to induce disease problems.

David