Canadain Fish Keeping vs American Fish Keeping

[FrozenFins]

Hey,

I'm a canadian fish keeper. I have seen lots of interst of people wanting to know what fish keeping is like in other contries around the world. So I thought I would make this thread about Canadain Fish Keeping vs American Fish Keeping. Canada and America are very much the same (same language, same kind of government, somewhat same culture, etc.) But in the fish keeping world, Canada and America are complete strangers. I can understand what fishkeeping is like the USA because, of the fishtubers and most of the fish research papers on google, being american.

The availbility of Medications in Canada

As many of you know the availiblity of fish meds in Canada are extremely limited. As most meds are ilegal, in fear that the meds would end up in public water ways. All though the biggest misconception is we don't have any meds available to the public, well thats wrong. We have some, API Super Ick Cure and other Ick medications, API Melafix, Aquarium Salt, Fritz Maracyn Two, Fritz Mardel Parasheild, And one more "med" that I'm excited about called Supratect, Natrual Fish Healer. This stuff doesn't call itself a fish med, so it doesn't have to respond to health canada, but has been used for:

Parasitic Infections of all kind, including ick

Medicating Food

Reduce Fish Stress.

This stuff has been advertisted by The King of Diy, himself!

Some common meds that I can't find anywhere in Canada:

-Eurthromycin 

-API General Cure

-Ich x

-Fritz Paraclense 

 Legally you are supposed to go to a fish vet, pay an enourmous vet bill, just for them to perscribe a medication that you already knew they needed. Luckily, big box pet stores sell some of the meds as mentioned before.

Buying Fish Online

I haven't been able to find many online fish buisnesses that I trust with my credit card number that ships to Canada. And then when I do, I'll have to pay $50 of shipping fees for normally a $10 fish. Of course theres Aqua Bid, but not everything ships to Canada. AquaHuna is great to, but not when you only want, one or two of the species of fish. And of course Aquarium Co-op that doesn't ship to Canada either (but they don't ship live fish either.)

Xtreme Red Krill Flakes, has been something that I have been dying to try, but I can only find in Amazon.com meaning that I have to pay a bigger shipping fee. 

Dollar per Gallon sale

In america, you guys have a gallon per dollar sale in the fall months. But we don't! lucky, you guys! 

We have PetSmart in Canada and two other big box petstores called, PetLand, and PetValu. But none of them have a gallon per dollar sale. so expanding a fish room can be very expensive!

The one use plastic band - TBD

In Canada, we are baning 6 major one use plastics: 

Checkout bags

 Stir sticks

 Beverage six-pack rings

 Cutlery

 Straws

 Hard to Recycle food containers

I'm wondering if the ban on  Hard to Recycle food containers will intervine with the fish keeping world. Will the fish still come home in the plastic bags, will bettas still be kept in the small little plastic containers (hopefully not)  or will the styrofoam the fish are packed in when shipping fish still be used??

I put TBD on it because we don't know how it will play out. The ban won't be inplay till the end of 2021, all though stores and resturants are slowly adapadting to this new ban.

Cheers!

-James

 

 

[lefty o]

there was a time, we used paper bags, and our plastic straws came in paper wrappers. now our paper straws come in plastic wrappers. think about that one.

[FrozenFins]

6 minutes ago, lefty o said:

there was a time, we used paper bags, and our plastic straws came in paper wrappers. now our paper straws come in plastic wrappers. think about that one.

intersting, our paper straws, still come in paper wrappers.

[Coronal Mass Ejection Carl]

In the US we spend a bunch of money on medications that don't work.