Customer Reviews

Aquarium Pharmaceuticals 85D Stress Coat Fish and Tap Water Conditioner, 1 Gallon Jug

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This conditoner is the best ever. The aqarium remains clean and the fish thrive. I made the mistake of buying STRESS COAT+. Notice the +, this is because it includes an ammonia remover that through my aquarium off balance. I have mostly freshwater tetras and catfish. I found them gasping for air and soon developed small amounts of red algae. Keep in mind, I have maintained the aqaurium the same way with the same products for years. The ammonia remover must contain a phosphate that also removes the CO2 and oxygen from the water. This causes many fish to die and the red algae growth.

yes, it's an added expense, but stress coat is very nice to have on hand for anytime you have a less than perfect situation in your tank; adding new fish, setting up a new tank, cleaning the old one or maybe the water quality got a tad bit too dirty before you changed it, or maybe your fish got sick/ stress coat just helps to ease the stress on the fish. be nice to your fish, use tress coat.

I've been using this product for both my pond fish and aquarium fish on a regular basis. Doing partial water changes seems to be less stressful for the fish when using this product. But then, of course, I'm not a fish, so I am just guessing.

At least, I've never had a problem with partial or complete water changes or topping off either the aquarium or the pond due to evaporation. It helps with their slime coat and after using it, I do water tests for ammonia, nitrates, nitrites, etc., and the chlorine always shows negative. I buy this stuff by the gallon as it's much cheaper that way.

It's also recommended for use after handling or netting the fish or for any stressful situations. So far, all of our fish are doing great and growing like weeds.

I plan to continue to use it.

I live where the water is so soft there's almost no minerals in it at all. Maintaining a Ph of 7.0 was difficult but possible, but my snails had the white pitting and my guppy had fin rot that he contracted during the time when I was totally new to fish keeping and didn't understand how important it is to snails and guppies to keep the Ph at or above 7.0.

I had finally got the situation under control. My guppy's fins were regenerating and my snails had new shell growth that was healthy.

Then I made the grave mistake of trying this product. Aloe vera? So what. Looked like a stupid gimmick. Since when do fish need aloe vera? Do we need to pull them out of the tank and rub moisturizing cream on them too? How about some Lubriderm?

Anyway, shortly after switching to this product my Ph crashed to 6.0. My guppy's fins started rotting and got worse than ever, and the healthy growth on my snails that survived me climbing the learning curve last Summer now have white calcified shell damage. I don't even recognize the two I named just a few months ago!

I was doing emergency water changes morning and evening just to keep the Ph at about 6.4. (My tap water is totally soft, but comes out of the tap at PH of about 7.2). My hands got raw and cracked because I was washing my hands so much after working with the tank so much.

I asked myself what had changed when this started, and the only thing I came up with was switching to this aloe vera stress coat. Then I looked up aloe vera juice on the Internet and found it has a Ph of 3.5 to 5.0 depending on where I looked. Wow, I thought, maybe putting something with Ph that low in the tank could throw the whole Ph down quite a bit.

I bought some Tetra brand stress coat and did a few more water changes (some cracks in hands bleeding now, maybe MY hands could use some aloe vera!!) and soon the Ph climbed back up to 6.8.

I did two emergency salt dips for the guppy, whose fin rot had begun on his body too. It looks like the rot has been halted. The damage has been done to my snails. Maybe once I get this under control I'll have time to just stare at the tank a while and figure out who is who again through all the shell damage.

So, thanks API for putting my fish and snails through hell. Brilliant idea mixing a super low Ph substance in with water conditioner. Did you test this thoroughly before you put it into production? Anyway, I could rant further but I think it's time to rub some Vaseline moisture lotion on my cloud fish. They really need to chill out.

This stuff works great, and the gallon is perfect so you don't have to keep returning to the store to get more.

Good deal on a great product. This is much cheaper than you will find in a local pet supply store.