A discussion on immunity

[Diesel]

Diesel, I know what you said, I just added some creative license that I have no reason to add. These things pop into my head and I can't get them out.

HA, Paul.
Sometimes that happens to me too and I get lost in transition.
I just wanted to see more of your comments as it makes most of our hobbyist their day.
What will this be without you and that's why we want it all if not most documented.
When I'm 65 and that's not far off I want to be reading the book either Hardcover or E "The days out of Paul B's life........ I just sit there and it's staring at me"

 

[Paul B]

Well it's not a book about Paul Bs life but some of that is in there. Maybe someday I will write a book about my life just so when I am senile I can read it and remember what I did all these years. I forgot most of it already.

OK. Maybe I won't. I will only write the parts about Supermodels because that will be the most interesting. I did help build the New York Playboy Club and their office, and I was the foreman for the building of Penthouse Magazine's office. Of course working a few Victoria Secret photo shoots at the Plaza Hotel was interesting even though I never looked at the models.
I was once in Manhattan and one of those tourist busses stopped in front of me. As I looked, the most beautiful girl I have ever seen stood up on top. Then another one, then another. It was a bus load of Miss Universe contestants all decked out. I took the rest of the day off and stayed right there in front of the GM building. Someone had to keep an eye on them to make sure no one stole one of them.

 

[Diesel]

LOL, talking about models, I remember that when I was living in Amsterdam a small exciting town somewhere in Holland (Europe) I mean a long time ago that is.
I was employed but the Amsterdam Fire Dept.......... oh boy what a time! Any way, we had a fire in a bar where some supermodels work and do all kinds of magical tricks with a yellow fruit of some kind, I believe they called it the Banana Bar.
Still as of today a favorite attraction to residents and tourist.
We rescued all of them as the building was a total loss, you know old buildings in Downtown Amsterdam, most of them are older than the USA, I mean a lot older.
As we rescued the girls out of the burning building and gather them by the Officer on Duty for that evening and they had nowhere to go for the moment, that same officer made a wise decision for once to bus them over to our fire house for the night where they could spend the night in the gym.
When we all settled down and had our usual after fire coffee meeting we heard two of the girls saying that they never ever had seen a dance pole that big............... of course they were talking about our four floors high sliding pole.
These memories never will be lost or forgotten.
Of course they liked my Salt water tank too what was residing at the dinner/kitchen room.
No corals just some fish, of course we talking late 80's here.
Sometimes I just wonder if that tank is still there..............

 

[soubhik]

Hey PaulB I have a intelligent question is it safe to feed earthworms to marine fish ?
I am planning to start a marine setup with in 6 months and I started a vermiculture don't know it will be useful or not

 

[soubhik]

Oohh and as always love your posts

 

[Paul B]

Hey PaulB I have a intelligent question is it safe to feed earthworms to marine fish ?
I am planning to start a marine setup with in 6 months and I started a vermiculture don't know it will be useful or not

A better question would be is it safe for the earthworms to be fed to fish. And, "No", earthworms hate that. But the fish will love it and it is safe and a good idea. Especially if you raise the worms in a clean place and don't take them from your yard where you put insecticide on everything. Even anemones eat and love earthworms. They live a while in salt water, like 5 minutes and other fish like groupers, lionfish, eels, triggers etc. eat them. I am not a worm nutritionalist but I did feed them to my fish quite often years ago when I could dig them up easily. Also if you get to many worms, you could buy a duck billed platypus as that is what they eat.

 

[Paul B]

Getting back to immunity and diseases we can save a lot of money by buying sick fish. I do it all the time. I recently bought a copperband butterfly for five bucks that was covered in parasites. many of the rest of them in the tank already died and the store owner knew the rest would not last the night. If I had room, I would have taken all of them. I put that fish in a small tank with copper/formalin and quinicrine hydrochloride and added a diatom filter. (I think I may have invented that combination of drugs many years ago) That combination of drugs will clear a fish of "visable" parasites in a day. The diatom filter will prevent "most" but not all of the parasites from re-infecting the fish. In a few days that $5.00 copperband was as good as new and I put it in my reef. My older copperband was not amused so I was able to catch the little guy, let his ripped fins heal and I gave him away.
If a fish is laying on the bottom, gasping, I would not buy it although it may be able to be saved. If I got the fish for free I would take it. I am surprised so much ink is wasted on parasites when they are so easy to kill. Even copper alone will work but if the fish is in really bad shape, it may not kill the parasites before the parasites kill the fish.
I realize people are saying "Yeah but velvet is worse than ich". Yes it is, (especially crushed velvet) but it is also cured the same way. All parasites are crustaceans and all crustaceans are killed with the combination of drugs I mentioned. The quinicrine is a malaria drug and malaria is a parasite. I probably took it every day when I was in Viet Nam. I am not sure if it was the exact drug, but I didn't get malaria and I was in the jungle the entire year, never coming out and I never saw a road, roof, wall or electricity that year. Just rain, and when
it wasn't raining, it was raining harder. Once a mosquito was chasing me and I could tell by the expression on his face that he wanted to bring me home and either feed me to his kids or mate with me. The only thing that saved me is that his "antlers" got stuck between two trees. Yes, that is how big he was, he had antlers.

I caught a scorpion once, actually I held it down with the butt of my M-16. I cut the top off of a beer can. (we sometimes had hot 3.2 beer which is more like warm, iodine lased water with almost no alcohol in it, we had to get it from the air force) His elbows were hanging over the top of the can (true story) He was not in a good mood and was looking at me with firey eyes that said, when I get out of here, you and your friends are history. I knew it too so I couldn't let him go. Someone (who was petrified of the thing) said to step on it. Like yeah. Our boots were good but not that good. I shot it with a my 45. The first shot just wounded him and made him madder. Then I shot him with my M-16, twice. The second shot did it, but he lived long enough to put a curse on me. To this day, I still look for scorpions under my bed.
This is actually where that scorpion incident took place. This was a clearing on the Cambodian border.

This is what that place looked like from the air. It was a scorpion paradise.

 

[TJ's Reef]

AWESOME write-up as usual Paul, been OFF Social Media and the Reef Forums for past while getting some "Honey Do's" completed and some quality fishing in so was nice to see a respected and familiar friend/face post some quality and thought provoking words to read. Being of near parallel beliefs to most topics on Reefkeeping 'Healthy' Fish by design by us in keeping a high bio-diversity closed system and feeding natural whole foods especially live or at least fresh is IMHO as well a KEY to my 33+ years of mostly successful Reefkeeping. I missed my most recent opportunity to collect live plankton/krill off our beach this past weekend as forgot to bring my net. There was literally cubic tons just off our beach being actively fed upon by Pink Salmon, Herring, Candlefish, Jellyfish and many Sea Birds. Some Whales as well but I was not on the beach at the time of presence.

Sorry we could not figure out a three-way Skype conversation earlier today, maybe next time/week before publication of the Podcast.

Cheers, Todd

 

[Paul B]

Hi Todd. I am not that SKYPE savvy so was absolutely no help what so ever. The talk was fun but there was so much more information we couldn't get to and nothing at all of Supermodels. Maybe next time.

Collecting some of those whales would have been fun, but I am not sure any of your fish could have eaten them.

 

[mcarroll]

[...]I put that fish in a small tank with copper/formalin and quinicrine hydrochloride and added a diatom filter.[...]

It appears that (e.g.) Quality Marine uses ozone+copper as their preferred solution. I assume that's the "state of the art" for holding facilities and probably takes careful montoring....but do you happen to know in a treatment situation like you're describing if O3+Cu would work as well as the triple-medicine? Or even an educated opinion...I suppose it's not likely you've used O3+Cu.

 

[Humblefish]

It appears that (e.g.) Quality Marine uses ozone+copper as their preferred solution. I assume that's the "state of the art" for holding facilities and probably takes careful montoring....but do you happen to know in a treatment situation like you're describing if O3+Cu would work as well as the triple-medicine? Or even an educated opinion...I suppose it's not likely you've used O3+Cu.

Do they use ozone+copper in conjunction? @Randy Holmes-Farley would know better than I, but I found these two quotes from him on the subject:

Ozone may remove or alter organics bound to the copper, so could impact things like cupramine, making them more or less effective. It won't impact ordinary copper ions in seawater that are not bound to organics.

Ozone may well rip into any organics chelating the copper. To the extent that happens and what the chelating organic is, the copper may become more or less toxic, and probably a bit less soluble.

And also from Boomer:

His copper treatment will be about useless with with carbon which will pull it out of the water. If he continues to do this and keep copper at normal levels he could load the carbon up to much with copper which could get released and kill everything. You should never use Ozone in QT tanks where fish are being treated with anything.

If he is using ozone with the though it is killing things, i.e., bacteria, parasites, etc., he is incorrect. The levels are not high enough. Yes, ozone can kill things if using something like a ozone tower or ozone reactor tailored for this but there are none in this hobby. Some public aquariums do use them, like Minnesota Zoological Gardens or the New Jersey State Aquarium

 

[soubhik]

paul can you give any alternative suggestion to quinicrine hydrochloride, its banned in our country ,more over what dosage u recommend.

 

[Paul B]

I have been using Ozone in my tank since before they came out with an ozonizer. I built my first one from a neon transformer. Ozone is not needed in a quarantine tank as I doubt it will kill parasites anyway. I have amphipods living in my skimmer with the ozone. I guess it burns their eyes but not much of anything else. You are not supposed to put oxone in the tank anyway, it just runs in a skimmer. I don't know what it would do to the copper.
Soubhik, there are a number of malaria medications available but even here in the US you would need a prescription for them. I think India has more cases of Malaria than the US so you may have an easy time finding an alternative solution. Alternatives are Pyrimethamine about 7 mg/gal or Chloroquine or prinaquine. But I have only used quinicrine hydrochloride so I have no idea how the others work.

 

[mcarroll]

Interesting.

You know...this says UV, not Ozone. :mad:

From QM's FAQ:

"Due to the inevitable stress from the transportation process, certain species are more likely to be susceptible to different diseases. To combat this we use a very high level of Ultraviolet Sterilization as well as a trace level of copper on our system. This combination is very efficient in effectively reducing the amount of bacteria and protozoan infections. We also take special care to isolate species sensitive to copper medication by housing them in separate untreated systems."​

I dunno what made me conflate UV and ozone. (UV can make ozone, but I don't think that's it. This was more of a "duh".) I have no idea what it takes to manage this treatment either, so it may be completely inappropriate for a home user anyway.

And, so, nevermind.

 

[Paul B]

The copper pennies we used to add to our tanks in the 70s to cure parasites also worked well but now pennies are probably made out of 8 track tape players so not much copper in them any more. We knew that if the fish was laying on the bottom obviously dying, we added to many pennies and if it was doing the same thing but also covered in parasites, we didn't add enough pennies. Now keeping fish is simple and we don't even need pennies. Parasites can be cured in a day. But they should never bother your fish because of all the words I already posted here. Actually I just write this on my screen in crayon and an out of work Supermodel comes over later and types it under the words as she erases off the crayon. Then I give her lunch by spraying some chicken soup in her face.
I rarely go on disease threads anymore because I don't think fish should ever get sick, like never. It is a simple thing. But maybe not because of all the disease threads which predominate on these forums. Especially the forums where they don't believe immunity exists, or big foot for that matter. If immunity didn't exist, there would be no fish in the oceans, just Loch Ness Monsters because we all know they are immune.

 

[Diesel]

Now ppl know where the Quote "this hobby is a money pit" comes from

Exactly........... we used to dump pennies in the tank

All fish died............ should have listen better and used pennies instead!

 

[Paul B]

Pennies were the key. Fish also shouldn't die. If they do, give them CPR.
I just came back from boating. All day Friday, then diner Friday night, then all day Saturday, they diner Saturday night, then all day today. Then I put gas in the thing. Now I am broke so my fish have to eat cake for a few days.

 

[Paul B]

I may as well put this here as it does pertain to immunity a little.

http://www.saltwatersmarts.com/fish-biology-lesson-3230/

 

[melypr1985]

I really enjoy reading the articles and posts you write. They are always entertaining and informative! Thanks PaulB for being on this forum and letting me enjoy your sense of humor while I learn.

 

[Paul B]

Thank you Melypr (if that is your real name) There is no room in this serious and austere hobby for humor. We should look at our tanks with a scowl just so the fish realize we are doing our best and would never fool around and do things Wily Nilly.
(What exactly does Willy Nilly mean anyway?)
Here is an article about enjoying this hobby. Oh wait! I also wrote this

http://www.saltwatersmarts.com/relax-have-fun-its-a-hobby-5280/