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Plants versus medication

<<  I've given up on medicating my tank for a fish disease that I/stores
 haven't been able to remedy.  I'd like to remove the remaining fish and
 treat the tank with something very aggressive.  Has anyone experienced
 using something that would really do the trick, whatever the disease is,
 but won't jeopardize my plants too badly.  I don't want to pull up all my
 plants if at all possible, but then again, I don't want them to die either.
 Is this possible???
  >>

I've recently started using a botanical remedy from A.P. called Melafix. They 
claim it works on bacterial and fungal diseases. I can't claim much success 
with it until now. Some time ago, I inadvertently brought in a sick gourami. 
He never ate, and expired a few days after putting in the tank. I tried 
another blue gourami, who was apparently healthy, but after being in the tank 
for a few days, became sick, stopped eating, and died a few days later. Now, 
one of my older gouramis developed what appears to be the same type of thing 
(but who ever knows?). I started treating with the melafix, and while I would 
have pegged him for dead, and even considered euthanizing him, he's starting 
to eat. The problem is, I always wonder whether they don't have something 
analagous to a human flu. It's not terminal, but forced to fend for ourselves 
and fight the masses for food, we couldn't survive, so I hesitate at 
euthanizing. This medication has no effect on the plants in the tank. 

I also used maracyn in a tank for a disease that was killing off neon and 
cardinal tetras, and I couldn't add to the very small group in there, as they 
would die. It seemed to end the plague and I've successfully added, without 
deaths. That disease did not affect any other types of fish in the tank. That 
tank is also planted, and the medication did not affect the plants.

Some diseases are species-specific so it wouldn't necessarily require taking 
all the fish out of the tank. There are many things to take into 
consideration when medicating, or deciding to evacuate.