Mr. Saltwater Tank

Terrible Advice Tuesdays (T.A.Tues): The Real Reason Why Your Saltwater Fish Get Sick


Terrible Advice Tuesdays: A slime coat enhancing product should be added before you scrape your tank’s glass. The slime coat product will help prevent the fish from getting sick from the stress of the algae scraper or razor blade.

The rest of the story: (I’m trying to stop laughing long enough to write a response…) Fish might get startled or scared from you scraping your tank’s glass. This fact is definitely true. However, that doesn’t mean they’ll get sick from it, or that you need to add slime coat enhancing products just because you are scraping down your tank.

If your fish get scared, they’ll go hide until you are done scraping. In time they’ll likely get used to you scraping down your tank’s glass and follow the algae scraper around to eat whatever comes flying off!

Forget the slime coat enhancing product when you scrape the glass. Just scrape and move on with life!

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Comments for this article (11)

  • Nicolas says:

    Hahaha. That can’t be real. Did someone really suggest that?

    My Tangs love it when I scrape the tank. My angels all hide. The tangs love the quick algae meal.

  • dave says:

    i agree with nick. while my fox face hides my blenny chases me around eating up the coralline along the way.

  • Andrew says:

    That couldn’t be further from the truth. When I’m cleaning my glass my clowns attack my hand in search for food, my cleaner shrimp runs up and down my arm and my mandarin just hums around as if I wasn’t there.

  • Barbara says:

    I love the stories of what the fish will do. My Picasso Trigger has enhanced a hole in one of the live rock and wedges himself in there while I work, he sleeps there too.

  • Beth says:

    Andrew, I was going to post something similar to you. I have fish and of course my cleaner shrimp that follow me around and nibble on my arm while I do the work inside my tank. The cleaner shrimp runs up and down my arm and cleans my fingernails when I let it. And the clowns…well they’re just mean spirited about the whole thing attacking me (they can be rough). I love when Mark posts this kind of thing, not only does the post crack me up but all the comments crack me up too. Thanks Mark 🙂

  • Matt says:

    Yeah baby… lets throw in some extra slime… afterwards we’ll grab some popcorn, watch Ghostbusters and then compare notes on most pointless slime use…

    No prizes for guessing the winner ahead of time folks 😉

  • Nate says:

    Not to mention it’ll make your protein skimmer go nuts

  • Melody Miller says:

    I guess you might need slime coat products if you were scraping algae off your fish. Maybe you missunderstood this advice! HeHe!

  • Adam Devor says:

    Where do you find this stuff?? And what right do these people think they have offering such nonsense (yet comical) “advice”???

  • I love to watch my clown fish sleep on a bed of giant mushrooms. Lays down like a blanket. Shrimp Cleaning your arm. People Slime coat they call that sweat… Lol

  • they call that sweat…that’s funny Dee!

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