Need opinions........... Melafix

I picked up Melafix and Pimafix this week. What have you had the most
success with? Using both together or using one at a time,... or alternating
them on different days?

On Apr 14, 4:35*pm, "Reel McKoi" wrote:
I picked up Melafix and Pimafix this week. What have you had the most
success with? Using both together or using one at a time,... or alternating
them on different days?

Not using any of them at all and keeping my monwey in my pocket and
not spending it on snake oil like those two items are. I did a semi
scientific experiiment a few years backwith Melafix and it came in
dead last and it did not contribute nothing but DOC's to my water and
compound the fish problems I was dealing with. You will be ahead using
PP or salt and obtiaing good water chanmages and parameters. I am not
the only one that played with these two items, as some well known foks
in the koi and goldie world also did the same basic experiment and
came to the same conclusions...High priced snake oil . I not only ran
the test one time but did it two times. over a period of 8 weeks per
test period, and each time involved buying 200+ fungal and sick common
comets from Petco and Petsmart......Depending on what the problem is
depends on what is needed, (antibiotics, oxidizers, etc etc) but one
thing is for certainits not Mela or Pima fix's that is needed in any
wqay shape form or fashion. Yes, you'll hear folks swear by it, but
they just lucked out and the so called Fix's had nothing at all to dow
ith the problem being solved as it was other issues that did that
contributed to the cure not the mela or pima crap/.

"ExPat" wrote in message
...
Not using any of them at all and keeping my monwey in my pocket and
not spending it on snake oil like those two items are. I did a semi
scientific experiiment a few years backwith Melafix and it came in
dead last and it did not contribute nothing but DOC's to my water and
compound the fish problems I was dealing with. You will be ahead using
PP or salt and obtiaing good water chanmages and parameters. I am not
the only one that played with these two items, as some well known foks
in the koi and goldie world also did the same basic experiment and
came to the same conclusions...High priced snake oil . I not only ran
the test one time but did it two times. over a period of 8 weeks per
test period, and each time involved buying 200+ fungal and sick common
comets from Petco and Petsmart......Depending on what the problem is
depends on what is needed, (antibiotics, oxidizers, etc etc) but one
thing is for certainits not Mela or Pima fix's that is needed in any
wqay shape form or fashion. Yes, you'll hear folks swear by it, but
they just lucked out and the so called Fix's had nothing at all to dow
ith the problem being solved as it was other issues that did that
contributed to the cure not the mela or pima crap/.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Thanks for your imput. I suspected it might be snake oil. I only tried
Melafix one time before. One of the water-bubble-eye GF outside got really
beat up during spawing and was developing furry "stuff" on places where the
most serious injuries were. I mean her fins were shredded. I brought her in
and used Melafix and it did work (or coincidence maybe?). I could see the
difference in 24 hours. But I don't know if what attacked her ripped fins
was fungal or bacterial. It's very difficult to measure PP for a 10g
hospital tank. I've had mixed results using salt. I never had good results
using those fungal chemicals and as you know, most bacteria are immune to
the antibiotics off the shelves.

Is PP still available online? I thought I read it can no longer be shipped.
I have a stash left for the ponds so I'm all set for next few years.

On Apr 15, 10:43*am, Tynk wrote:
On Apr 15, 9:28 am, ExPat wrote:

Not using any of them at all and keeping my monwey in my pocket *and
not spending it on snake oil like those two items are.

I don't use them on anything either.
I wouldn't call them snake oil, because that would mean they were 100%
benign. They do help a little in the healing process, but it's not a
cure for a disease.
It's not a medication and people makes the mistake of using it as
such. Of course the labeling on the products doesn't help.

OK, here is a breif (as possible) rundown on what I did, not once but
2x. A chemist on a wellknown Koi Forum also gave me some suggestions
on my process but overall stated it could be construed to be viable.

I had to buy sufficieint fish for the experiment all from the same
tank and with same typical maladys. No hard thing to do with stores
like Petco around, and buying 200+ fish with fugal problems and
bacterial infections is not hard to do.

I put up 2, 55 gal drums of clean clear good water for this use. I
used 10 gal; aquariums, and all aquariums were equipped with the same
brands of HOB filters, all were kept in the same fish room in the
barn.

Fish I bought were the typical 10-12 cent feeder comets.........Placed
all comets in one large 115 gal tank with a moveable divider. Divided
these fish among the numerous 10 gal tanks which werew all setup
identically with heater (if needed) no gravel, just bare tank) typical
florescent lights, all on a common timer. Fish in each tank were
treated my one of the followoing methods. 1. Melafix,2. Salt, 3.
Malachite Green, 4. Simple Water Changes, 5.Nothing at all, 6
Antibiotics Regimine., 7 Potassium Permanganate

Every day tanks had at least 25% of their water changed. Water
parameters were monitored daily on all tanks.........Over the period
of 8 weeks or so, I pulled the plug as I could readily see by then
what worked and what did not work. In order of favor as to how they
worked the results were. 1 Potassium Permangante, 2 Malachite Green,
3 Routine regular water changes,4 Antibiotics (triple Sulpha type), 5
Salt, 6 Nothing, 7 Mela fix. Mela fix treated tank had highest amout
of losses and had worst water parameters of any of the tanks, which in
of itself only compounded the problems already stressewd out fish
had. The PP treatment worked the fastest and had most noticeable
results in the shortest time frame and had least amonut of losses.
The other treatments all fell in between the top and bottom in terms
of losses and cures........After test was completed, I moved all fish
to a large tank outside (350 stock tank) and PP them all until I felt
they were cured and ready to be put in one of our other mud ponds
without concern. I used Triple Sulpha antibiotics simply because
there are gram positive as well as gram negative bacteria, and each
takes a different antibiotic. Most hobbyists would not know how to
tell but the sulpha line of antibiotics cover more of a broad range of
problems on the neg and pos sides.

I setabout treating the water used in the various tanks, and out of
all tanks, the tank with Mela Fix required the most amount of PP and
most repeated doses of PP to return the water to a state that would
be suitable to put fish back in without concern for DOC's and other
junk etc.............I came to the conclusion thwe water was at this
point when I could let filter media go wihtout turing nasty for a
period of 1 week. So really what this test showed me was that Mela Fix
adds tons of disolved organics to the water which redeuces oxygen
content. Yes, I used a meter to detect O2 levels in the tanks as
well........and the4 Mela fix tanks had the lowest overall O2 level of
all tanks involved. I will say oane thing in favor of Mela fix, and
that is it made the tank smell better than the other ones did, if that
means anything. I again repeated this test with a fresh batch of
feeders once again and once again the results came out just like they
did originally. At a much later date I did these tests agin using
PIMA fix and it fared no better than Mela did. I am not disputing that
this tyupe of oil does not aide cuts and wounds etc on a dog or human
when applied in the air but added to water and expected to do this is
kind of far flung and absurd. ....and leaves a lot of stuff to be
desired. Its all advertising hype that leads those that are
uniinitiated blindly down the path to part with hard earned money on a
useless product. Those folks that sweara by it in all reality would
have had just as good of luck anyhow as most were doing routine water
changes and adding salt etc in addition to adding Mela Fix,.so I havce
to say as well as some others that it was not the Mela fix that played
a part in the "cure".as much as it was proper water parameters.
Afterall a fish will heal itself within its own means if givien proper
conditions and its not too far gone, they can "fix"
themselves..........Save your money for proper water parameters and a
QT tank and do not spend it on such miracle cures that Mela and Pima
tout themselves as being. So overall I performed this test on 3
different occassions, using the same amount of tanks of comets and
came up with the same results on all three occasions. If there was
any "gain" that Mela or Pima provided, I sure did not see it.....

On Apr 15, 9:51*am, "Reel McKoi" wrote:
"ExPat" wrote in message

...
Not using any of them at all and keeping my monwey in my pocket and
not spending it on snake oil like those two items are. I did a semi
scientific experiiment a few years backwith Melafix and it came in
dead last and it did not contribute nothing but DOC's to my water and
compound the fish problems I was dealing with. You will be ahead using
PP or salt and obtiaing good water chanmages and parameters. I am not
the only one that played with these two items, as some well known foks
in the koi and goldie world also did the same *basic experiment and
came to the same conclusions...High priced snake oil . I not only ran
the test one time but did it two times. over a period of 8 weeks per
test period, and each time involved buying 200+ fungal and sick common
comets from Petco and Petsmart......Depending on what the problem is
depends on what is needed, (antibiotics, oxidizers, etc etc) but one
thing is for certainits not Mela or Pima fix's that is needed in any
wqay shape form or fashion. Yes, you'll hear folks swear by it, but
they just lucked out and the so called Fix's had nothing at all to dow
ith the problem being solved as it was other issues that did that
contributed to the cure not the mela or pima crap/.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Thanks for your imput. I suspected it might be snake oil. I only tried
Melafix one time before. One of the water-bubble-eye GF outside got really
beat up during spawing and was developing furry "stuff" on places where the
most serious injuries were. *I mean her fins were shredded. I brought her in
and used Melafix and it did work (or coincidence maybe?). I could see the
difference in 24 hours. But I don't know if what attacked her ripped fins
was fungal or bacterial. It's very difficult to measure PP for a 10g
hospital tank. I've had mixed results using salt. *I never had good results
using those fungal chemicals and as you know, most bacteria are immune to
the antibiotics off the shelves.

Is PP still available online? *I thought I read it can no longer be shipped.
I have a stash left for the ponds so I'm all set for next few years.

PP is getting harder and harder top buy and have shipped due to all
the dope heads using it in the manufacture of meth. as well as it does
have potential for bomb building........or at least the making of an
incendiary device. (try a spoon full of PP on a handfull of sawdust or
wood chips or even newspaper and add a couple of drops of brake fluid
of glycerin or diesel fuel to it and see what happens) Almost instant
fire erupts) AES (Aquatic Eco Systems) still sells it, but the
hazmat shhipping charges are double what the PP costs. Don;t know if
Doc Eric Johnson still sells it or not. You may luck up and find some
still at Lowes etc in the pond supplies, (forget what they call it but
its not PP ) and in some areas you may still find it in the water
softener departments at big box stores or even Sears. I probably have
150-200 pounds of it yet in 55# pails, and can buy it locally at a
industrial chemical supplier in town. I normally use 60-80 pounds of
it at a time when I use it on our natural ponds....and of course we
always keep a stock solution of it around for use in the fish tanks.
Normaly we make and keep a 1 or 2 gal jug of it made up for quick
use) A stock solution will keep for a year easily if kept out of
sunlight and kept cool. When it gets close to being expired we just
use it to "clean" the preforms outside or dump it into one of the mud
ponds.

"ExPat" wrote in message
...

OK, here is a breif (as possible) rundown on what I did, not once but
2x. A chemist on a wellknown Koi Forum also gave me some suggestions
on my process but overall stated it could be construed to be viable.

Brevity snip!

Very informative. Thanks.

How on earth do they get away with false advertising like that? It reminds
me of those magic pills they sell on TV that melts the fat away, allowing
you to eat all you want............