Baby yellow tang with gaping red gills on one side

[brandon429]

i merely take the data in droves, and present it in a way I think will help more fish keepers retain fish. Even though I reef out of a fishbowl, I feel the stats relayed about daily activity here warrant action. You're taking preemptive preps here which are inline with every sticky the forum has to offer if you qt and fallow. skipping tank preps was only a sheen of protection, this way is the best the hobby has to offer.

its not that you are upsetting your tank to redo it correctly, its that nobody has data saying you have a high chance of success if you hold current course. there's no doser from a bottle, no feed system that will overcome basic tank preps these non quarantined fish now require

full disclosure: hop into any thread Paul runs, its 1000000000% no quarantine nobody needs any aspect of it.

he has 160 page threads of his own tank doing great.


but if you ask me, a data collector, this forum is right.
if better means existed than fallow and qt, they'd be stickied and a man who runs a zoo would be using them at the six million dollar zoo.

 

[Jay Hemdal]

Jay I have a question for you, hope this will help my new cycling friends based on your approximations


When folks build reefs and input fish from multiple sources without any preps at all, literally just adding them into the tank after acclimation, what % of the time does that turn out bad/fish losses say within the next 6-8 mos


would you for example expect fish losses in 80% of these arrangments, or less/more? I know it can't be pinpointed, but the rate of help posts per day in this forum suggests some form of predictability in skipping preps found in stickies here.


For example, when we turn out 15 more cycled reefs today across the forums, is it accurate if I tell my cycled new tank owners (just itching for those first two clowns) that their risk of zero disease prep + losses in the next six months is low, medium, high? Ive been telling them they're high, incredibly high risk, from skipping disease preps even if things seem normal in a two month old reef.

If i need to back that down to low risk in order to be accurate then I'll do just that. It seems that to skip the disease preps found in the links at the top, the stickies, and to not factor the first ten pages of posts here is literally asking for future fish loss, fast.

Jay I have a question for you, hope this will help my new cycling friends based on your approximations


When folks build reefs and input fish from multiple sources without any preps at all, literally just adding them into the tank after acclimation, what % of the time does that turn out bad/fish losses say within the next 6-8 mos


would you for example expect fish losses in 80% of these arrangments, or less/more? I know it can't be pinpointed, but the rate of help posts per day in this forum suggests some form of predictability in skipping preps found in stickies here.


For example, when we turn out 15 more cycled reefs today across the forums, is it accurate if I tell my cycled new tank owners (just itching for those first two clowns) that their risk of zero disease prep + losses in the next six months is low, medium, high? Ive been telling them they're high, incredibly high risk, from skipping disease preps even if things seem normal in a two month old reef.

If i need to back that down to low risk in order to be accurate then I'll do just that. It seems that to skip the disease preps found in the links at the top, the stickies, and to not factor the first ten pages of posts here is literally asking for future fish loss, fast.

Whoa - we went from a congenital defect in a YT to mortality rate statistics (grin).

I've tried looking at thread outcomes here to try and tease out success/failure rate, but wasn't able to get any meaningful data. The trouble is - if 99% of the people dump their fish in and yet have no issues, I'll never hear from them, and then have no way to compare those numbers to the people having trouble.

I have run mortality rate data on incoming shipments - three major batches of fish (100+ each) since 1985. That data shows that fish from Indonesia and the Philippines have terrible mortality rates - upwards of 50 to 65% in the first 40 days. Fish from more sustainable areas ran 1 to 15% over the same time frame. I suspect cyanide collection and poor holding/shipping practices.

Jay




Remember - the mortality rate of ALL of our fish is 100% - given enough time!

 

[brandon429]

Miami what is your plan here after a day's thought

hold course

or prep tank/curious


check this out

Can snails bring in ich?

I quarantined all my fish, but today I saw my mccoskers flasher wrasse has white spots like ich. I recently brought in some more snails into my tank, could they have brought it in?

www.reef2reef.com

 

[Zionas]

Ouch….. which families of fish from Indonesia and the Philippines, in your experience, have especially high mortality rates? Any particular species or genuses?

 

[Miami Reef]

Miami what is your plan here after a day's thought

hold course

or prep tank/curious


check this out

Can snails bring in ich?

I quarantined all my fish, but today I saw my mccoskers flasher wrasse has white spots like ich. I recently brought in some more snails into my tank, could they have brought it in?

www.reef2reef.com

I’m keeping it as it is. My fish look really healthy

 

[brandon429]

curious what you'd recommend to others if they were to approach the same big tank setup, we do lots of cycles on large tanks and when to add fish is always the hot item.

do you recommend to start with the preps in the ideal approach

 

[Jay Hemdal]

Ouch….. which families of fish from Indonesia and the Philippines, in your experience, have especially high mortality rates? Any particular species or genuses?

They were common pet store fish; green chromis, small centropyge angels, wrasses etc. I did not track it by species, just by the whole batch compared against controls from other areas like Hawaii and Sri Lanka.
Jay

 

[Zionas]

Has there been much improvement over the years? It’s for this reason I’m avoiding Centropyge from these two countries and sticking to ones like the Flameback. Are large angels and butterflies usually a problem too?

 

[Jay Hemdal]

Has there been much improvement over the years? It’s for this reason I’m avoiding Centropyge from these two countries and sticking to ones like the Flameback. Are large angels and butterflies usually a problem too?

I’m cautious about making generalizations based on that data. I need to add that the last batch I studied was over 10 years ago, and the current trend is the quality of fish from the Philippines has been improving.
Jay

 

[Miami Reef]

Update: yellow tang didn’t make it.

I had a feeling it wouldn’t because it was spending most of its time in a corner.

 

[sksouthpaw]

all the rage lately is people buy only from sources that quarantine for them

if you count merely the first 13 threads on this forum about 8 or 9 have disease from new tanks, roughly 66% just by that rough sample. new tanks always have the highest incidence of disease here, whatever disease or parasite is at hand. the clowns alone seem to be associated with other diseases beyond ich for example, i read about brook and velvet as strong associations for those. its all a ratio and numbers game. UV is awesome, but since its not part of any of the stickies here we cant roll with that as a proven method, and certainly not well enough to recommend that to anyone as disease-affecting. its merely something the grapevine said.

Actually BRS has a great informational video on this. If improperly set up without the incorrect flow rate, a UV sterilizer (from what I remember of the video) will NOT help control the population of the given pathogen. You also need a reputable UV sterilizer as many of the cheaper “hobby grade” ones wont do anything. Additionally you have to set your expectations realistically. It wont eradicate a pathogen or parasite but it can help control the population.

 

[brandon429]

i like uv for invasion control

algae, cyano, dinos

brs is a sales machine they don’t run fish disease work threads or forums, because they can’t, bottled dosers don’t work so their methods are absent here from stickies.

The reason uv isn’t a sticky here is because it’s too variable to be as reliable as qt and fallow.

 

[brandon429]

In my opinion this disease loss here represents the truth in outcome we can expect from foregoing the prep stickies here

Tank Nuked! All Fish Dead

I just want to say sorry for your loss, I unfortunately know how it feels. I had the same thing happen to me when my tank was around 1 year old. All of my fish died within 2 hours and I never found out what caused it. I did the same thing you did and posted about it on R2R and eliminated the...

www.reef2reef.com

of course most disagree with me, after all they’re not posting in the disease forum so disease is the last possibility. What I posted there isn’t mean, we can click the Ops thread history to see they contemplated qt and fallow preps in February but decided not to.

 

[sksouthpaw]

all the rage lately is people buy only from sources that quarantine for them

if you count merely the first 13 threads on this forum about 8 or 9 have disease from new tanks, roughly 66% just by that rough sample. new tanks always have the highest incidence of disease here, whatever disease or parasite is at hand. the clowns alone seem to be associated with other diseases beyond ich for example, i read about brook and velvet as strong associations for those. its all a ratio and numbers game. UV is awesome, but since its not part of any of the stickies here we cant roll with that as a proven method, and certainly not well enough to recommend that to anyone as disease-affecting. its merely something the grapevine said.

Also I feel there is a very high potential source of bias here from a research point of view. I dont think you can accurately calculate incidence of a given disease properly in a forum like this. First off, 13 posts really is an inadequate sample size. Additionally, Im not saying that you are wrong, but there are sources of bias. For example I think it reasonable that for the most part newer tank owners who post with diseases that need help with ID are potentially more likely to be a newer reefer with less experience on proper identification/diagnosis and treatment. However for the more advanced aquarist, (that isn't there first rodeo) are likely somewhat versed in disease identification and management techniques, thus when they present, may have been more likely to have already attempted Hospital tank treatment with treatment failure. So in theory are likely to see less posts as some plausibly may have effectively treated their disease without posting. Again, not saying you are wrong by any means, and may very likely be correct in your assessment. Im just scrutinizing how I would if I was assessing any research article for validity and potential sources of error/bias.

 

[brandon429]

Of course it’s roughshod

wasnt meant to be scientific


out of curiosity for pattern though, I’ll monitor the next ten help posts for the trending, we will get ten more today, for sure


will they be new tanks or old established tanks prepping for disease loss, I bet they’re new tanks and if that pattern doesn’t matter in the end we can disregard it. But if it holds for months as the trend, or can be found on any single page we click here, perhaps new tank owners should make a different choice set.

 

[sksouthpaw]

i like uv for invasion control

algae, cyano, dinos

brs is a sales machine they don’t run fish disease work threads or forums, because they can’t, bottled dosers don’t work so their methods are absent here from stickies.

The reason uv isn’t a sticky here is because it’s too variable to be as reliable as qt and fallow.

I agree and disagree. Obviously they are trying to sell a product. But if they simply just want to sell product they could easily just claim that UV cures most if not all of fish diseases, rather than explain how to correctly calibrate your machine for your intended purpose (dino control vs parasitic population control)

 

[sksouthpaw]

Of course it’s roughshod

wasnt meant to be scientific


out of curiosity for pattern though, I’ll monitor the next ten help posts for the trending, we will get ten more today, for sure


will they be new tanks or old established tanks prepping for disease loss, I bet they’re new tanks and if that pattern doesn’t matter in the end we can disregard it. But if it holds for months as the trend, or can be found on any single page we click here, perhaps new tank owners should make a different choice set.

I like it! Again, I agree that you are probably dead on with your assessment