article: Sick Fish Treatment

Sick Fish Treatment

Sick fish in the water garden will need your attention. With out the water gardener’s attention and treatment, sick fish generally are going to die. You spend a good bit on stocking your fish, time in planning your water garden and you have created the water garden that is going to be an ultimate experience in relaxation. Therefore, it only makes sense that you spend a little time every year check out your fish, treating your fish if needed, and carefully watching the fish in your garden as they interact and live in this balanced environment all to protect your investment and the future of your water garden. I am going to discuss briefly about methods of disposing of sick fish, quarantines and other areas of treatment of sick fish in this article.


No matter how hard you try, and how often you are checking your fish for disease or infections, sometimes fish were meant to die and you can’t save them from what medically is wrong with them. A few times you will find that the cost of the treatments for your fish are more expensive than what the particular type of fish is worth. Because you need to also think about the suffering that the fish is going through, you may have to use euthanasia methods on some of your diseased fish to put them out of their misery. No matter how long you are going to be a fish keeper, or how long you have been a fish keeper, putting a fish out of its misery is never an easy decision but one that all fish keepers are faced with at one time or another.

A few most common methods of helping fish out of their misery is to put them in a bag and wait for them to die. This is a little faster than leaving them on the embankment and letting them die but neither of these methods seem very easy at all. Putting a fish in quarantine and not feeding it is another method but still this can be very slow. Over medicating the fish is sometimes the easiest and fastest method of putting a fish out of its misery but you must do this while it is quarantine so you don’t harm the other fish as well.

Your dead fish can be placed in the woods for other animals to feed on, or you can bury it in the ground. Some people will burn the remains of their fish or simply put them out with the garbage. It really depends on the size of the fish, your local laws, and your ability to dispose of the fish without feeling ‘bad’ about how the fish is disposed of.

When you are treating fish that are sick, you also need to beware that you need to change the filters for the water garden or the quarantine area so you fish are not continual battling the same disease that is not being filtered out of the water. You also need to read the directions on the medication that you are feeding to the fish when treating them, as some medications can pass through certain filters like charcoal, while others cannot. Most all filters should be disconnected when you are treating sick fish in the water where a filtration system is usually turned on.

While thinking about the medications that you put in the water to treat sick fish, you also need to be aware that generally the UV filtration system is going to neutralize any antibiotics that you put in the water as well. Treating fish while you are running a filtering system or a UV system is going to make your medical antibiotic treatments useless in saving your fish.

One of the best times of the day to treat your fish with any type of medication that you must put in the water is the early cool morning hours. This cool morning temperature is going to resemble the most calmest times of the days when the oxygen levels are high and the fish is under the least amounts of stress, allowing the medication to work properly. When the high temperatures of a sunny day warm the water, the fish must struggle to use just as much oxygen as they did in the early morning hours, which means that they possibly could ingest more medication than what they really need for treatment.

Continued work with your water garden, with the same types of fish over the years, and learning about the various types of diseases that your fish are more prone to getting – will ensure that you are as prepared as possible to fight off disease and infection for your fish.