"miskairal" wrote in message
...
Because there are too many idiots out there who do one of the following
a) Don't continue the course long enough and cause drug resistance
b) Don't use the correct strength and cause drug resistance
c) Dump water in our creeks etc and cause nature problems
d) Put it in the food of animals that are going to be slaughtered for
human consumption
...to name a few.

And all of us that have come home on International Flights know how staunch
Australian quarantine restirictions are. These are all very good reasons.

It's clear to me now that medicated food isn't the only answer. Prevention
is definately better than cure, to start with, but even so if cure is called
for because prevention failed, it's seemingly quite possible to treat the
water column and all inhabitants. If Flex and bacteria live on substrate and
in filters etc., then it makes more sense to treat globally than
specifically.

As a few people have already pointed out - treating the fish only is part of
the answer but not the whole.

I read on a betta site last night that C.f. actually does have some highly
resistant strains now, something like the super-bug in hospitals that no
anti-biotic can beat.

There is always the option too of breaking the tank down - completely
disinfecting and steralizing it and starting again, which in itself isn't
such a bad thing. At least you get a second chance to get your aquascaping
and things you got wrong first time around, right


Now if it were in medicated food, how would you get the correct dosage to
the fish? If the fish is sick, it probably is not eating enough (if at
all) and therefore you would be exposing those bacteria to an antibiotic
but not in the strength to kill it or all of them. The survivors are the
ones who are resistant to that antibiotic. If those fish being treated
were from a fish farm then those bacteria that are resistant could enter
the human food chain and the time is already here when many human bacteria
are now resistant to most, if not all, antibiotics.

I treated my tank with tri-sulphur and the two XXXXfix fluids today and I
had a bit of a brainstorm about mediacted food - instead of flakes, pellets
or bloodworms - they got fed sinking wafers in a DIY feeder which prevents
it from settling on the substrate (an inverted plastic lid with a sucker
attached - half way down the water column which acts as a platform). As the
food absorbs the water it takes up the meds and you have a sort of crude
medicated feed. I figured it wouldn't hurt them because it's also getting
into their blood via respiration through the gill membranes.

I get annoyed that I can't get antibiotics for fish until I start to think
of what could happen. In the long run I don't suppose it will help Aust.
b/c the countries that allow free use of antibiotics will bring in their
resistant bugs here anyway.

This is why our quarantine is so full on - Australia prides itself on it's
freedom from o/s problems like this. BSE is a good example of this policy in
action.

I just heard it is forecast to get to 36 here tomorrow - it's autumn isn't
it?

It is indeed, but over the last decade at least I've noticed the seasons
moving to slightly later into the year. There are also the El Ninio and La
Nina effects we have influencing the weather here ;(

Oz

--
My Aquatic web Blog is at http://members.optusnet.com.au/ivan.smith