I've been slowly collecting bitcoins and went all in on ETC half a year ago, lost 80% of my holdings. I know that I will never be able to recover and most probably I have lost my once-in-a-lifetime chance to get rich this way in crypto, but got a good lesson learned 
It is recoverable, but only trade an alt if you are happy to HODL it long term. ETC was and still is a big no. The community supports ETH and that was known before the fork.
I turned 4 BTC into 4BTC within the past month trading PIVX, and I still have 30,000 PIVX. Im HODLing these as I believe in the currency but I nearly sold them for 30Bitcoin s a week ago. I will review my situation when PIVX reaches $3-5 per coin and probably sell half of them. This may take a year or five but as I wait I can grow my PIVX balance by staking or by running 3 masternodes. Last weekend I gained 64PIVX.
Now I am a Bitcoiner and, will always have the majority of coins im Bitcoin but... if you are going for an alt choose one with good fundamentals.