Originally Posted by
brewmaster15
Please keep in mind.. When a medication is added to a tank, that medication is absorbed and processed by the fishes organs... IF this is done to a an adult fish...The fishes organs are better able to deal with the level of medication in the tank. It has larger surface areas in key organs like the liver... a small fish/has relatively smaller surface area and is also rapidly growing which itself means a higher rate of metabolism... Medications can be very harsh on small fish...even safe ones.
Often times people forget that Fish are far more similar to us than different biologically. If you have ever had children, Theres a reason why there are Children's Doses for medications....its called toxicity. Now before anyone jumps in and says "well I have dosed XXX medication to fry and have seen no issues...stop. That means nothing unless you have somehow anticipated the problem and split the group into a control and treated group. Use medications cautiously with small fry..we don't know what the effect will be....its not been researched. In fact, we don't know what it is for adults...we just have subjective data based on terrestrial mammal dosing for most meds we dump into the tanks.
Also not saying cut the dose...as that makes no sense if done subjectively. What I am saying is medication should be the last resort...and when you use expect some adverse effects....These could be from indirect ammonia nitriate spikes, to loss or impaired appetite, to labored breathing and shedding the intestinal lining from stress...could also be chemical poisoning.
HTH,
al