If you know me, you know I’m one of the biggest skeptics when it comes to AI. I’ve been burned by it more times than I can count. Most of the time, it actually slows me down. I spend more time correcting it than I would just solving the problem myself.
But this is one of the few times where it actually helped me. And honestly, it might have saved my fish.
Backstory
I recently got a saltwater dog-faced puffer fish and named him Snoop. These fish aren’t cheap. Around here, a mid-sized one runs anywhere from $165 to $400.
They’re also scaleless, which makes them a lot more sensitive than most fish. You can’t treat them the same way. Medications like copper, which are commonly used in saltwater tanks, can kill them. So yeah, not exactly a beginner-friendly pet.
When Everything Went Wrong
One morning I woke up and Snoop was covered in white spots. It looked like it had snowed on him. I immediately drove to a couple aquarium shops. They all told me the same thing. Ich.
If you’ve ever had a fish tank, you’ve either dealt with ich or you will at some point. It’s one of the most common parasites out there.
The standard treatment is simple in theory. Move the fish to a quarantine tank, raise the temperature to around 83 to 85 degrees, and treat with medication. Usually copper. Except I couldn’t use copper because of the puffer.
So I grabbed alternative medications and raised the temperature like I was supposed to and then things got worse!!
Snoop started struggling to breathe. He was clearly in distress. Warmer water holds less oxygen, so I added more aeration to the tank, thinking that would help, but it didn’t.
Trying to Figure It Out
At this point, I felt completely helpless. I started going down the YouTube rabbit hole and found a video of a doctor walking through fish diseases under a microscope.
That gave me an idea. I ordered a microscope and had it overnighted. The next day, I took a sample from Snoop and looked at it myself. I had pictures and videos.
I also had no idea what I was looking at and I decided to upload everything into Gemini.
At first, it gave me the usual response about not providing medical advice and told me to consult a professional. I told it to just analyze the picture anyway.
It said this wasn’t ich. It was pointing to two different diseases. One that gets mistaken for ich all the time. Both deadly! And the treatment?! The exact opposite! As a matter of fact I was most likely killing Snoop!!
There was a nice message posted in bold I started to die inside read:
Caution Maintain standard temperatures do not raise it, as Uronema thrives in heat. Fish with this disease have a high mortality rate.
Epistylis (Commonly confused with Ich): These spots often appear on the eyes, look “fuzzy” or raised, and are irregular in size. Epistylis thrives in warm water, so raising the temperature can make it worse.
Instead of raising the temperature, I needed to lower it. Higher temperatures actually make this worse.
Now I had to decide whether to trust AI or keep going with what I had been told by all these aquarium specialists.
I went back to researching and found more videos confirming the same thing. The symptoms matched perfectly.
Red gills, white spots on the eyes, and Difficulty breathing. Rapid decline when temperatures go up.
So I started the process of slowly dropping the temp, ran to the store to grab antibiotics.
When I got home, I did a 90% water change, gave Snoop a bath, and started treatment.
Within two days, he was a completely different fish!!! Picture on the left is Snoop. Look at that cute face and tail.
What I Took Away From This
This whole experience changed how I look at AI, at least a little.
I still don’t trust it blindly. And I don’t think you should either, especially when something’s life is on the line.
But as a second opinion? As a tool to help you see something you might have missed? It can be incredibly useful.
I can easily see how this applies to other fields too. Imagine a doctor using AI as a second set of eyes. It could help. But I can also see how it could create hesitation or doubt in high-pressure situations.
For me, it came down to doing the extra work. Verifying. Cross-checking. Not just taking the answer and running with it.
Also, I’m very glad I bought that microscope.
And I’m not sure I’ll ever look at sushi the same way again.
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