Should I Order Antibiotics On-line

I will point out straight away this is aimed at my UK audience, most of it applies to people all over the world, but the legal stuff refers to UK laws.

It seems easy, and the right thing to do for your fish. Pop on to your choice of international selling site, search up your choice of antibiotic and hey presto a few days later an antibiotic suitable for treating your fish arrive at your door. I means what’s the harm?

Antibiotic resistance

I remember listening to an interview. The man being interviewed was telling a story about his time as a doctor fresh out of university. A patient had come in with an infected spot on her face. Despite aggressive treatment over the next few days eventually, the infection spread and took her life.

On the way out of the room, he was stopped by a drug rep, selling a new antibiotic. He agreed to try it as there was a patient presenting with the same infection. A few days later that patient walked out of the hospital.

As pathogens adapt to these antibiotics we are rapidly sliding back into the pre-antibiotic days. I remember sitting with a college student sobbing as she’d been told that an illness that until recently was completely treatable, wasn’t responding to any of the antibiotics that her doctor had tried up to that point. That morning she’d been told that this disease she’d caught might be with her for life, and her life might even be cut short because of it. A Hail Mary combination of antibiotics finally got her infection under control. But for me, it was a real moment of understanding as to how serious things were becoming.

How does antibiotic resistance occur?

Imagine all the individual bacteria, they’re all slightly different, some have ways to pump toxins out of their system faster, and some have thicker cell membranes to stop the toxins from getting in there in the first place. Your immune system is doing its best to take them all down, but the bacteria reproduce by splitting in half, doubling the population every generation.

You take a dose of antibiotics, and that wipes out some of the bacteria, but generally, it takes out the weaker ones first, the next generation are all stronger. The next dose of antibiotics takes out a load again, again the weaker ones. Now they’re even stronger.

This is why you will often feel better after a day or two of antibiotics. The bacterial load has been reduced, but it’s not gone, and those that are left are the best ones, those are the ones that if you let them come back will have a whole load of tricks up their sleeve to defeat the antibiotics. If you carry on taking the antibiotics they will eventually be killed off.

Antibiotics in fish tanks

There are bacteria in any fish tank, and not just the ones that you want in your filter, there will be bacteria on every surface, in the water, and in your fish health. Just like us, there is a microbiome in the fish. We know of a huge range of diseases and disorders in humans that are caused by an unhealthy microbiome, and it’s very likely that fish have the same issues.

By treating with antibiotics you are wiping out all these bacteria. Despite marketing, there are no antibiotics that only treat the unwanted bacteria, at least some others will be casualties. This will allow the fast-acting and growing bacteria to take over. E.coli is a great example of this. Often you’ll find labs only test for e.coli in water because if that’s not there, nothing else will have had a chance to take over.

What are you treating?

There are a lot of diseases that impact our fish, and not all will respond to antibiotics. Mycobacterium marinum, also known as fish keepers/aquarists granuloma, is difficult to treat as most antibiotics have little effect. Again this is a disease that can be caught by humans.

Risking your health.

Let’s say your fish show signs of something, and you treat it with antibiotics, what about the zoonotic pathogens that might be present in your tank? What about the small doses of antibiotics you might get when putting your hands in the tank? Are you sure you’re not helping some bacteria in your tank to develop antibiotic resistance? What if you catch the disease yourself?

Studies have shown that overuse of antibiotics in the aquarium trade might be selecting for antibiotic-resistant zoonotic pathogens. That means stuff that you can catch and is not easily treatable.

It’s illegal

Antibiotics are tightly regulated in the UK, and there are calls for more regulations. If you want some, head to your vet, there are fishy vets in the UK. Or arm yourself with enough information and have a chat with your own vet. They will have to examine the fish in question and then may give you a prescription.

OATA recently clarified the position, that it is a criminal offence to obtain antibiotics without a prescription in the UK.

The risk of fakes

If someone is happy to break the law to ship you the antibiotics, then they’re not going to be above a little adulteration or downright faking things. Recently there have been several high-profile cases of supplements and similar being sold online that have been fake and have harmed or killed the pets they were purchased for. Several years ago there was a fake dechlorinator being imported to the UK that was causing complete tank wipeouts.