Medicating fish is often portrayed as a simplistic procedure: “Just add the medication to the water, and voila, everything will be better.” Unfortunately, this couldn’t be further from the truth. To be successful at medicating fish, one needs a diagnosis, or at least a general idea of what one is treating. Fish can be infected with a variety of different pathogens, including bacteria, fungi, viruses and parasites. To date, there is no single “one medication treats all” available. In previous articles (FAMA, April and May 2007), I described the different ante-mortem and post-mortem diagnostic methods that could be used to make a diagnosis. In this article, I hope to bring some clarity to the different methods used to treat fish.
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