Certain Death! Is there an organism, if present in our aquariums, that there is no coming back from?

[Ippyroy]

Okay, I watched their video, and it seems that their test may be able to isolate pathogens in the water column of an aquarium -- but it certainly wouldn't be able to detect encysted parasites or diseases of individual organisms like coral, and nothing in substrate. And I'd be more interested in finding out how my tanks' biota compares with natural reef environments, and not my peers' builds. Still, interesting!

If you cycled the rock for what is it, 72 days, ich is gone for sure. I'd bet most pathogens would be gone. I thought they could test for several pathogens. Ryan had some I thought.

 

[JayinToronto]

Fair criticism.

From your experience is there anything that you are most fearful of? Have you had anything that you couldn't manage which resulted in a total tear down.

 

[JayinToronto]

From the Aquabiomics website:

"The generally healthy tanks we sampled for this study contained very few known pathogens. We screened for 41 different fish pathogens, and found only 2 types, at low levels, in a couple of tanks (0.07% on average). One tank contained Photobacterium damselae, the pathogen responsible for photobacteriosis. Another tank contained Piscirickettsia salmonis, which causes piscirickettsiosis in Salmon and related fish. Neither of these tank’s owners reported symptoms in their fish, so these low levels may be below the thresholds needed for a disease outbreak.

We screened for 9 different coral pathogens, and found no evidence of these in any tanks sampled for this study."

It would be interesting to see what @AquaBiomics thinks with regards to what they can and can't test for.

So far in this thread BJD and Marine Velvet are the two that have come up as being the most devastating.

 

[davidcalgary29]

If you cycled the rock for what is it, 72 days, ich is gone for sure. I'd bet most pathogens would be gone. I thought they could test for several pathogens. Ryan had some I thought.

Well, sure. But then there'd be little point to the test if you're going fallow for that long a time.

I can see trying to use the service if I was struck with a particular disease (not a parasite) with great and general morbidity and an unknown latency period. But, excepting this "disease X", is there anything that they do that we couldn't with a syringe, a filter, and a microscope? At $99/test, it would quickly become more economical to do it yourself. And you could assay your own substrate!

But if they start a service called "How does your tank compare with Paul B's?"
I'd be sold.

 

[Ippyroy]

Well, sure. But then there'd be little point to the test if you're going fallow for that long a time.

I can see trying to use the service if I was struck with a particular disease (not a parasite) with great and general morbidity and an unknown latency period. But, excepting this "disease X", is there anything that they do that we couldn't with a syringe, a filter, and a microscope? At $99/test, it would quickly become more economical to do it yourself. And you could assay your own substrate!

But if they start a service called "How does your tank compare with Paul B's?"
I'd be sold.

The idea is to build a tank with a diverse biome. They test for the micro biodiversity that is almost impossible to add on your own. You can't get it in a bottle. You only get it from Live Rock or from adding lots of corals. They sell rubble rock with all the goodies for like 70 bucks I think. It comes from a clean system and adds all the goodies that Paul B has with 0 of the nasties.

 

[davidcalgary29]

Interesting! You guys in the U.S. will have to test it out for the rest of us.

Someone's going to have to start two builds -- one with this coral rubble -- and one with regular live rock and do a proper test. Until then, I think all of this is anecdotal information. Definitely interesting, but anecdotal. Aquabiomics should provide a complete list of everything for which they're testing. And they could really use a website makeover -- information's all over the place and it's all kind of opaque.

 

[Spare time]

I'd imagine a gorilla would cause havoc if put in a reef tank.

 

[JayinToronto]

Maybe I should be a little more blunt and just ask people what is the worst biological problem they have ever had in their aquarium. Specifically which ones resulted in a complete tear down or start over. Gorillas excluded.

 

[Ippyroy]

If I had a bobbit worm I would honestly burn my entire house down to kill it. Those things give me nightmares.

 

[Ippyroy]

Maybe I should be a little more blunt and just ask people what is the worst biological problem they have ever had in their aquarium. Specifically which ones resulted in a complete tear down or start over. Gorillas excluded.

Seriously, I don't think it's a problem of what would crash a tank as much as it is what can I do to offset it. I have dinos. They will never go away. I now have to work to not shock my tank and not let nutrients bottom out. I think you said you had ich? Ich is now in that tank forever. Same thing, limit stress events as much as possible to limit crisis ich breakouts. There are always new threads about mysterious tank crashes, and even more that we never hear about. It is very common for people to talk about their successes than their failures. How many build threads just stop and the person disappears. We are steadily learning to better diagnose issues, and once we can diagnose successfully, we can then learn to treat it. Dinos is the perfect example.
The other thing that causes many crashes is equipment failures without having backups readily available. Other than my apex and lights, and skimmer, I have a backup of everything. I forgot I need to order a couple of RO filters.
As far as biological issues, marine velvet is the most common one I read and hear about. It spreads quickly and kills most fish which leads to an ammonia spike which leads down a dark road that I hope to never experience.

 

[davidcalgary29]

Fifteen years ago, my 180g broke in the middle of the night. While I saved all of the fish and corals that night, as I moved everything into a spare 60g, I didn't know enough at the time to monitor for ammonia after moving a tank...and awoke two days later to find a stinking, clouded mess filled with dead fish. I was so disheartened that I just sold everything that was left and didn't start another build until last year. Now, if I had a catastrophic illness that wiped out my fish, I'd just stock coral, macro, and inverts and go fallow for two-and-a-half months. I can't imagine a scenario where a biological event would make me break down my builds. I'm doing this for my enjoyment, and if my RSM250 has aiptasia and majanos (inherited), so what? I'm not aiming for an instagramable moment or the tank-of-the-month club.

Then again, I only have seven fish, and they're spread over three tanks.

 

[JayinToronto]

Seriously, I don't think it's a problem of what would crash a tank as much as it is what can I do to offset it. I have dinos. They will never go away. I now have to work to not shock my tank and not let nutrients bottom out. I think you said you had ich? Ich is now in that tank forever. Same thing, limit stress events as much as possible to limit crisis ich breakouts. There are always new threads about mysterious tank crashes, and even more that we never hear about. It is very common for people to talk about their successes than their failures. How many build threads just stop and the person disappears. We are steadily learning to better diagnose issues, and once we can diagnose successfully, we can then learn to treat it. Dinos is the perfect example.
The other thing that causes many crashes is equipment failures without having backups readily available. Other than my apex and lights, and skimmer, I have a backup of everything. I forgot I need to order a couple of RO filters.
As far as biological issues, marine velvet is the most common one I read and hear about. It spreads quickly and kills most fish which leads to an ammonia spike which leads down a dark road that I hope to never experience.

I’ve had problems with ich, dinos, cyano, algae.....
I couldn’t agree with you more on your statement to not shocking the system. I will never make an abrupt change in my system again. The last battle I went through was with dinos due to adding too much rowaphos to my reactor before a vacation. Completely bottomed out my phosphate. Has taken me nearly 2 years to get back to where I feel comfortable spending money on corals again.

 

[Ippyroy]

All of those things are no longer any real area of concern for causing a system crash. I just had a very short but huge dino outbreak because I scrubbed my rocks, sprayed them with H2O2, and dosed flux. 3 day total blackout and all visible signs are gone. I did all of that because I didn't harvest chaeto one time. LARS is probably the one thing that can kill a tank.

 

[Subsea]

Love this.
Let's go into business!
I'm sure the guys at Aquabiomics are already starting this...

Algaebarn took my idea of cultivating seaweed now you guys are going to enhance my cultivated live rock program which incorporated a 20’ by 40’ greenhouse using eight 150G Rubbermade tubs coupled to Big tank at 7000G.

The water gets deep fast. It was a hobby business and I was not a good business person.