Talk:Potassium permanganate

The way this is prescribed for "ick, etc." seems insane. Killing/removing the biological filter to "cure" a stress-related parasite? A little salt goes a long way... As does reducing stress. Huw Powell 03:24, 25 February 2011 (EST)

You can't use salt with a lot of freshwater species (corys etc.) Also it only kills bacteria if you use too much. The article makes it very clear that you shouldn't overdose or you should treat the animal in a seperate tank. In any case I prefer treating Ick with temperature and dosing with a decent aquatic probiotic. But its been 6 years since any of my tanks have had Ich.

I have used pp to treat for other things like growth enhancement, smell remove and snail removal. Like any chemical, overdosing is a bad thing. But with the right amount, it works well. --Quatermass 19:20, 25 February 2011 (EST)
 * I don't even know what ich looks like at home, though I have seen it in pet stores. And you can use salt with almost all f/w species, but not in "curative" doses, just "prophylactic" ones.  IE, keep a clean healthy tank, never worry about ich.  Growth enhancement?  How does that work?  I know this stuff is good for "cleaning" incoming plants.  Removing odor is easiest done with carbon. And anyway, a healthy tank has that delightful "healthy tank" smell that only aqua junkies can love! Huw Powell 02:25, 26 February 2011 (EST)

Salt and pepper
Adding salt as a constant preventative measure is an old fashioned method from the 1970s when the hobby didn't know any better. Now with our advances on how an aquarium works and the use of probiotics. Bacterial and parasites are not the problem they once were. Grant you I've yet to see any decent modern aquarium books which use modern techniques.

Pp increases the growth of red blood cells and promotes healthy faster growth in fry. Which means the fish don't suffer from potential stunted growth during that essential first 3 months of life. It's an old fish trade growth tip. :)

Carbon is well over rated. Most people are unaware it becomes ineffective after 3-4 days and then needs replaced. But sellers of the material don't want the users to realise this and try to tell us to change it monthly! Indeed it is a much desired money maker for filter manufacturers even if today we know it is hardly required :) --Quatermass 04:19, 26 February 2011 (EST)
 * Your attitude is beginning to get on my nerves a bit. A few links to the science you claim to "now understand" so much better would be nice. Huw Powell 22:31, 27 February 2011 (EST)
 * There is little argument that PP is effective for a plant dip. I added a couple of references to scientific studies showing PP's effectiveness in curing Ich and Flukes. Unfortunately since that is its primary use I didn't find any literature referencing using it to promote fry growth.
 * The science of the aquarium hobby is really driven by old wives tails and pearls of wisdom from people who have been doing it longer, salt is one of those pearls. It no-doubt works but more scientific methods have been developed but are sparsely used because salt is cheap and easy. In all honestly you (all aquarists) do whatever works, PP is more of a 'silver bullet' but can easily kill everything in the tank if it is overdosed.
 * As for the carbon, it has its place but is not really necessary for 24/7 use for the reason he stated. Your previous posts show you have some background in chem (I'm an enginneer so forgive me if i mis-speak). As such you probably know that C tends to bond to everything in a tank and like PP and salt has many uses in the tank. I ran a planted tank for a long time and I never ran carbon because it ate my fertilizer. However when a fish would die and I couldn't find it's body, I added carbon to remove the odor but it was only good for about a week. That video I posted on Talk:Activated Carbon shows how higher surface area carbon significantly increases its effectiveness. It also shows how generally ineffective the bulk carbon sticks are.


 * The short is, most of the folk wisdom of the aquarium trade works. Q happens to like the cutting edge science of it and encourages those methods (the most popular being the fishless cycle). We do want to provide people with as much detail on all of the options if we can. We will try to document our claims a little better :) --Brian 08:31, 28 February 2011 (EST)
 * Thanks Brian. Btw, the fishless cycle ain't exactly a new idea.  Add a few drops of ammonia daily, no need for fish pee to feed the bacteria.  I toyed with the idea of cycling my 75g by adding a few drops of my own waste material a couple times a day, but it was more fun to watch some pearl danios and corys cavort.  Good point about AC removing trace elements (etc.) that plants need.  The hard part is we have so few measurement tools for so many things we know matter. Lastly, it may just be his passion affecting his phrasing, but Q seems more religious than scientific to me, sometimes.  And I simply don't understand his references to the 70s.  The Victorian era of fishkeeping was so much more interesting!  We (can I say "we" yet?) should have an article on the history of fishkeeping, that would be fun to work on.  Huw Powell 23:57, 2 March 2011 (EST)
 * We all come from different POVs with respect to fish-keeping, and we all have different amounts of time for editing here. Wikipedia has a huge page related to keeping a neutral point of view but I feel that with so few people here we can keep it civil without such a comprehensive rulebook. I'm not sure what exactly you mean by religious, but I believe most of this information comes from PFK magazine. Like I said before, much of the aquarium keeping knowledge is handed down to new people from more experienced people, because of this we do allow original research. People are bound to disagree with some of it, but it should still be represented unless its clearly wrong or dangerous (really an arbitrary decision). I stopped reading Q and Cat's edits a long time ago because I trust them, but we all should probably move towards using more citations for non-trivial claims. --Brian 10:28, 3 March 2011 (EST)
 * Yes, I know about WP's NPOV policy, and specialized wikis have no need for it in general, since they/we aren't encyclopedias. By "religious" I mean more "passionate about the latest news" than dispassionately scientific, but as I said, it's because he cares.  What is PFK magazine? Huw Powell 23:02, 4 March 2011 (EST)


 * See our PFK page. :) --Quatermass 07:18, 6 March 2011 (EST)
 * We have a pretty comprehensive glossary.
 * Where? And who typed that? Huw Powell 01:38, 13 March 2011 (EST)
 * Q. Its a category, so just throwing applicable articles in there will alphabetize them. Important categories are also added. --Brian 08:24, 14 March 2011 (EDT)
 * What he said. I wish it wasn't so expensive to mail it overseas. --Brian 14:52, 6 March 2011 (EST)

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