Eoghan and Alasdair discuss the current dilemmas in fluid resuscitation in septic patients. Despite many research studies over the past 15 years, many questions still exist: what are the ideal endpoints for volume resuscitation?; what are the best fluids to give?; and when and how to start vasopressors?. Alasdair covers what we know and what we don’t, and how we might get the right answers.