Devils advocating

[drstardust]

Why are captive fish different?

Good question. IMO captive breeding programs should only sell directly to customers, and some do (such as Poma labs)

 

[MnFish1]

@Lasse

I do not believe in prophylactic treatment of fish. There I said it I have been outed as a heretic in the fish world. As such how did your friend design his holding system and how does he handle in coming fish to keep them healthy? Your answer may shed some light in this darkness.

Here is the real question for the rest of you that think you can create a disease free system with disease free fish. How in the world do you think fish survive in the wild when there are 1 million bacteria per cubic milliter in the ocean and 10 million viruses in that same sample size? Please answer that before you postulate that keeping fish in any other way that is different than the natural system they come from is somehow superior. The pages and pages of dead and dying fish in the treatment section of this R2R forum demand an answer. Until you can answer that talk to the hand.;Stop

I will be up front with you all I personally killed way more fish trying the prophylactic methods you recommend than other methods. And don't start with the you were just lucky. I learned in very short order running laboratories that the only way to survive and thrive in that environment is consistent and repeatable results. Anything else is a waste of time and resources.;Nailbiting

I operated at one time a local wholesale operation and processed hundreds of fish and inverts successfully and some not so succesfully. I have handled shark and rays which are way more difficult to handle than smaller ornamental fish. I depended on the science of repeatable results to keep the fish alive and develop a customer list of aquarium stores. All that said I am still very much a student in this art form we call a hobby. I ask these hard questions for people like @Wildreefs and myself who after using all the must use tools have had the same results. Time to stop casting about for answers and use what will work for the most people most of the time. It is abundantly clear that what is suggested with prophylaxis is not working for the vast majority of hobbiest period.

The hobby will die due to regulation or worse until we learn from nature how the system works and it clearly is not poison and antibiotics that the fish and inverts have never seen in all their lives until we capture them and try to clean them up for our aquarium.

Agreed

 

[drstardust]

@Lowell Lemon
Quarantine will be controversial for as long as this hobby exists. To play devil's advocate (in the spirit of this thread), the people who post on the disease forum are those with problems. People don't usually post "hey, this QT thing is going great! Nothing is wrong at all, just wanted to check in and say yay quarantine!" People post when something is wrong, so there's a bias there. We don't know how many people have a high level of success with quarantine vs don't, though I know there is a solid number who do. We can start a thread with a poll if you're interested.

 

[Wildreefs]

@Lowell Lemon
Quarantine will be controversial for as long as this hobby exists. To play devil's advocate (in the spirit of this thread), the people who post on the disease forum are those with problems. People don't usually post "hey, this QT thing is going great! Nothing is wrong at all, just wanted to check in and say yay quarantine!" People post when something is wrong, so there's a bias there. We don't know how many people have a high level of success with quarantine vs don't, though I know there is a solid number who do. We can start a thread with a poll if you're interested.

That would certainly be of interest to me at least.

I kinda threw a teaser out a while ago asking those who quarantijenand their success rate.

Again bias, the few that responded were pro quarantine, and if i remember correctly, about half the fish made it thru to the display . That was from the pro side of it

 

[drstardust]

That would certainly be of interest to me at least.

I kinda threw a teaser out a while ago asking those who quarantijenand their success rate.

Again bias, the few that responded were pro quarantine, and if i remember correctly, about half the fish made it thru to the display . That was from the pro side of it

That's the other side of it. What sort of success rate should be considered acceptable? 50% is terrible, at least in my opinion. The problem is, lots of factors are at play, from the health of the fish to begin with to the skill of the aquarist. My personal success rate is about 90%, but it would be much lower if I weren't super careful to buy fish that looked and acted very healthy, and weren't OCD with my QT process. Could I beat this success rate if I didn't QT? Maybe, but I doubt it.

 

[Mortie31]

That's the other side of it. What sort of success rate should be considered acceptable? 50% is terrible, at least in my opinion. The problem is, lots of factors are at play, from the health of the fish to begin with to the skill of the aquarist. My personal success rate is about 90%, but it would be much lower if I weren't super careful to buy fish that looked and acted very healthy, and weren't OCD with my QT process. Could I beat this success rate if I didn't QT? Maybe, but I doubt it.

Just out of interest, the 10% that died in quarantine, was it due to the illness they arrived with or were they killed by the quarantine process itself?

 

[Lasse]

Why are captive fish different?

One of the most dangerous diseases present is the one caused by the HIV virus and the subsequent disease AIDS. But people do not die from AIDS but from normal harmless infections. This is because the HIV virus knocks out the normal immune system.

We terrestrial organisms primarily have a learning immune system that recognizes pathogens we have been exposed to before. But we can live in areas where there are or not are specific pathogens - it is difficult for different microorganisms to spread on land without vectors. Therefore, a normally harmless pathogen (for organisms living in that area) can cause great harm if introduced into a new geographical area. Rabies is an example - because of Sweden's and Norway's geographical location, we are free from this dangerous disease. It found in the rest of Europe, even in Denmark. In rest of Europe – the diseases exist, and organisms is adapted to it. If it will be introduced into the Scandinavian countries – it would be a disaster during a short time. Therefore, it is a good idea to protect the borders from this dangerous disease with help of QT as long as we can. But no QT use prophylactic methods for any of these diseases. For me vaccine is not a prophylactic method.

Stress and other factors like malnutrition effect the immune system. The normal explanation for a better health in the rich countries (according to pathogen caused diseases)– better hygiene and so one is not the only reason for this IMO. The better nutrient status is very important too. There are also today clear evidences that we live “too clean” and instead for disease caused by microorganisms – we get other diseases because of lacking tasks for the immune system. Allergies are an example. Cancer has been mentioned too.

It is different in seawater – the pathogens living in seawater can spread very well because water is their normal environment. Fish have a more developed unspecific immune system – adapted to living in water. They have a learning system too, but the unspecific defence system is normal very effective and is often in the frontline of the defence. It is not that way that they have a more “undeveloped” defence system compared with ours. It is only adapted to water and ours to living on land. I´m not against QT – but I´m against prophylactic treatment during the QT period.

That's the other side of it. What sort of success rate should be considered acceptable? 50% is terrible, at least in my opinion. The problem is, lots of factors are at play, from the health of the fish to begin with to the skill of the aquarist. My personal success rate is about 90%, but it would be much lower if I weren't super careful to buy fish that looked and acted very healthy, and weren't OCD with my QT process. Could I beat this success rate if I didn't QT? Maybe, but I doubt it.

Do you know if your success is linked to your carefully selection of fishes or to your QT process? As @Mortie31 asked – do you know if the 10 % death rate is due to bad selection or bad QT process?

@Lowell Lemon I´m comming back to you later on with a description of the system

Sincerely Lasse

 

[Lasse]

@Lowell Lemon Here we goo

My friends system is constructed as two different system. Each system consist of 12 pcs 100 litres tanks and 6 pcs 200 litres tank. Joint sump – total water volume each system – around 2 600 litres. Flow 10 000 litres/hour divided on 18 tanks. After the return pump – there is a huge UV-C – 6 x 55 W – total 330 W or 0.13 W/litre (volume) or 0.033 W/litre (Flow) The chose of UV-C system is – IMO – of huge importance. His UV-C is from TMC – (UK) and it is low-pressure mercury T-8 tubes. IMO - low pressure amalgam tubes works well too. These tubes give an optimum (per watt) amount of the important wavelength (254.6 nm) and (at least the low-pressure mercury/amalgam tubes) give some ozone too. These types of tubes can be combined with H2O2 in order to bee very effective killing machines. In every tank it is an internal foam filter and every tank can be disconnected from the system circulation with a valve. Some tanks have gravel – some is only glass boxes. When new fish arrive – the pH in the whole system (or in fish receiving tanks) is lowered to pH below 7 with help of CO2. The plastic bags (with fish) is temperature adapted and after that opened. Sometimes we start a procedure with slowly mix the bag water with tank water (low pH) – sometimes we just lift the fishes to its tank (with low pH). Have not seen any differences in success between the two ways to adapt the fishes. Because – fish is often transported in salinity of 1.020 – 1.022 – the salinity of the system is around 1.020. Known ich sensitive species is placed in the “clean glass boxes” tanks and other fish is placed in in decorated aquarium. Every aquarium have hiding places. The whole process is done during low light intensity. During the coming days – fish are inspected and with any signs of diseases – the actual tank is taken out of circulation. Because that every tank have an internal biological filter – nothing happens with ammonia in these tanks – nitrification works even if the tank not is connected with the main system. Fish from decorated tanks is moved to the tanks without decoration before medication. He use copper (there is no other alternatives here in Sweden) in order to treat Ich. After a week or two (sometimes three) without any signs od disease – the actual tank is connected to the main circulation again. We have never ever (in at least 15 years) been out for disease spreading between tanks in the systems. The UV-C take care of that. It is rather seldom – even with fish like power blue tang – that any ich show up. With butterflies it is more of a rule with some of them. Butterflies is not so popular here in Sweden because there is few FO tanks here.

This I a short description of the system – I hope you understand how it works

I do not do a normal QT with fish to my own tank but I never introduce (nowadays) a fish direct into the DT. I have newcomers in my fuge for one to two weeks first before introducing into the DT. This have works out well – I have lose one newly imported cardinal during the last 1.5 years in the introducing phase. This way feels safe for me.

But my ideal QT id I would construct that for my home aquaria – what would it be. Basically the same setup as my friend. One DT, one decorated observing tank and one clean glass tank as treatment/observation tank. All three tanks connected to the same sump. Return pump – UV-C of the right construction – diversion to each tank. Ball valve to each tank. The two observation/treatments tanks will have internal biological foam filters. During normal circumstances – no fish to QT – the main flow will go through all tanks. During introducing/first observation – the QT tanks not connected to the main flow – only internal circulation and filtrating – after a week or two – no signs of diseases – opening to the main flow but rather low flow during the first weeks. If you want – you can connect a frag tank/use the decorated tank or/and also QT corals here.

The critical equipment here is the UV-C – it is important to use a well known technique (there is low, medium and high pressure systems) and IMO the low pressure systems is the best. Some medium can work but stay away from all that will be advertises as broad band UV-C. It is only one wavelength that is of interest – 254.6 nm. And if you get 186 nm too (as with low pressure mercury/amalgam tubes) you get a bonus (ozone). And it is not bad with a slight over dimensioned UV-C either and with the ones giving some ozone – you can use H2O2 in order to rise the effect and get some effect in the tanks too.

Sincerely Lasse

 

[drstardust]

Just out of interest, the 10% that died in quarantine, was it due to the illness they arrived with or were they killed by the quarantine process itself?

Do you know if your success is linked to your carefully selection of fishes or to your QT process?

I'd be lying if I could claim to answer this question with complete certainty. However, I would favor arriving with an illness, as they died within a couple of days of the QT process. Some for sure ended up having velvet or uronema, others I have no idea.

Same fore Lasse's question. It's not a question I can answer. It makes me feel better to select an apparently healthy specimen and do a proper QT. Which factor is more important is anyone's guess.

 

[drstardust]

I'd like to add, though, that QT is not just for the health of that individual fish being quarantined. It is also to prevent disease introduction to the rest of my fish. A fish can be resistant to a disease and do fine itself without QT, but then bring the disease to the DT and cause infection in other fish. If a fish died in QT but wasn't going to make it anyway, that's sad, but at least the health of others wasn't jeopardized.

 

[Lowell Lemon]

@Lasse
This is almost exactly how I designed systems for the aquarium stores we helped 20 years ago. The only exception is we separated the inverts and fish in separate systems with trickle filter towers, protein skimmers, mechanical, carbon, filtration and then very large UV-C sterilization. No copper was used in the fish system in all cases. Only some aquarium stores added a treatment room for fish that showed signs of disease. Loss rates across the various stores never exceeded 3% and often 1% of the shipments as reported by the store owners. Previously the store owners had 30% plus loss rates. We used the same type system for freshwater and split the systems for warm water and cold water fish. We designed planted tank holding systems for the live plants or placed them in tanks tied to the fish systems. These stores had a great reputation with their customers for healthy fish.

The majority of shipments to the stores we set up were only in the box for less than 8 hours due to the short flight time from Los Angeles to Seattle. As a result CO2 injection was not used to handle PH levels. Only on transhipments from Asia did our customers set up a system for CO2 injection to match incoming PH levels.


I believe this is a repeatable approach at the hobby level using TMC level equipment. The contact or dwell time for the UV-C is critical to the success of this approach IMHO. I do think after you have a stable community of various fish, coral and filter feeding inverts the UV-C may not be necessary in a mature home system with bio-diversity.

Thanks for the response.

For those of you in the US the Mars system and the DAS systems are often not proprely designed for either the biological, mechanical, carbon, or necessary level of UV-C that Lasse has mentioned. That is why the Petco and Pets mart operations have so many disease problems. The staff is often under trained and this has given UV-C a bad rap. In most cases the units mentioned above are separated every 4, 6, or 8 feet depending on the model. Each section has its own hobby level filtration that is not suited to the levels of fish the tanks are required to hold. Many do not even have sterilizers and when the do the are way undersized for the task.

 

[Lasse]

@Lowell Lemon
My friend use the professional line of TMC:s UV-C reactors but they use the same technique in the hobby line. IMO – these works well but they last around 5 – 8 years because the UV-C will destroy the plastic in the long run.

I suspected that our method – we outlined the principles together – not was unique because it is built on old proven facts. Not any new revolutionary method.

Sincerely Lasse

 

[srad750c]

But you do not know if it had works as well as that if you do not have had the prophylactic treatment - only keep them in observations for 21 days and treated when there was a sign of ich. Only because it works in one way - this says not that it will not work in another way. But if it work for you - just keep on doing it - just be aware that it could be other ways to handle the problem too.

Sincerely Lasse

I think 30 years of results speak for itself, and If you payed attention, I put in quarantine tank before display tank, I just failed to say how long. I only gave you the method that I and all the LFS in my area did things before reefing became popular. At no point did I say it was the only way. And I think I will keep doing it my way.

 

[ngoodermuth]

That would certainly be of interest to me at least.

I kinda threw a teaser out a while ago asking those who quarantijenand their success rate.

Again bias, the few that responded were pro quarantine, and if i remember correctly, about half the fish made it thru to the display . That was from the pro side of it

Actually, I responded to this thread with an extremely honest (completely un-biased) breakdown of my QT success rates. At the time, I rated my success as 60% (I just went back and updated it with my most current numbers for the sake of this response) it’s now 63%.

However, that percentage included 4 deaths that occurred after QT (in my display) as well, and each death was explained in the response. NONE were a direct result of QT.

If the success rate was based on how many fish survived QT and made it to my tank? It would be 21 out of 27 fish. That’s 77.7%, and I tend to purchase many “difficult” and “expert” rated fish...

Honest assessment
https://r.tapatalk.com/shareLink?sh...hreads/Honest-assessment.547993/&share_type=t

 

[MnFish1]

Actually, I responded to this thread with an extremely honest (completely un-biased) breakdown of my QT success rates. At the time, I rated my success as 60% (I just went back and updated it with my most current numbers for the sake of this response) it’s now 63%.

However, that percentage included 4 deaths that occurred after QT (in my display) as well, and each death was explained in the response. NONE were a direct result of QT.

If the success rate was based on how many fish survived QT and made it to my tank? It would be 21 out of 27 fish. That’s 77.7%, and I tend to purchase many “difficult” and “expert” rated fish...

Honest assessment
https://r.tapatalk.com/shareLink?share_fid=1020&share_tid=547993&url=https://www.reef2reef.com/index.php?threads/Honest-assessment.547993/&share_type=t

The question also is - how many of the fish you had that died died from CI. My prediction is that that number is very low. The OP is stating that QT failed - because of some reason and his fish had CI. Another question - is aside from deaths - how many of your QT'd fish developed CI subsequently - whether they died or not (my guess is that is also a low number)?

 

[MnFish1]

I do not do a normal QT with fish to my own tank but I never introduce (nowadays) a fish direct into the DT.

I think I know 'why' (ie stress - and getting the new fish used to the tank parameters without getting badgered by the other fish) - but what bad experiences have you had doing so in the past?

The critical equipment here is the UV-C – it is important to use a well known technique

Why? If its possible to have an 'immune tank' why would this be needed?

 

[Lasse]

I think I know 'why' (ie stress - and getting the new fish used to the tank parameters without getting badgered by the other fish) - but what bad experiences have you had doing so in the past?

I IMO - I lost too many fish because they was not accepted by the old ones and not used of my tank. Now I seldom lose a fish in the introduction phase. However - never have had a disease problem - only fishes that been stressed to death

? If its possible to have an 'immune tank' why would this be needed?

This is a system for recivieng and selling fish and each system consist of 18 aquarias and - if you get a disease in one - you do not want it spread by the water - just treat in the actual aquraium. With the QT for homeaquaria I outlined - it is the same - you want to have control of the water coming in to each tank and it was a suggestion for QT without prophylactic treatment.

Sincerely Lasse

 

[ngoodermuth]

The question also is - how many of the fish you had that died died from CI. My prediction is that that number is very low. The OP is stating that QT failed - because of some reason and his fish had CI. Another question - is aside from deaths - how many of your QT'd fish developed CI subsequently - whether they died or not (my guess is that is also a low number)?

All of my deaths in QT were directly related to either bacterial infections, or refusing to feed/starvation. But, I did have QT failures. There is definitely a learning curve, and I've had to pull fish from my display and re-treat... more than once. Now, I feel like I have a solid procedure down where I shouldn't ever need to do that again... but it did take some trial and error to get where I am now in that aspect. Most of my failures are documented somewhere here on R2R if anyone cared to see where I went wrong and how

For me.... not QT'ing for years before this tank, and restarting tanks over and over after my fish were wiped out by one disease or another (mostly velvet) it just came to a point where I couldn't justify staying in the hobby without making some sort of change. For me, that change was learning to QT (failures and all) and sticking to it.

 

[MnFish1]

I IMO - I lost too many fish because they was not accepted by the old ones and not used of my tank. Now I seldom lose a fish in the introduction phase. However - never have had a disease problem - only fishes that been stressed to death

This is a system for recivieng and selling fish and each system consist of 18 aquarias and - if you get a disease in one - you do not want it spread by the water - just treat in the actual aquraium. With the QT for homeaquaria I outlined - it is the same - you want to have control of the water coming in to each tank and it was a suggestion for QT without prophylactic treatment.

Sincerely Lasse

Thanks

 

[MnFish1]

All of my deaths in QT were directly related to either bacterial infections, or refusing to feed/starvation. But, I did have QT failures. There is definitely a learning curve, and I've had to pull fish from my display and re-treat... more than once. Now, I feel like I have a solid procedure down where I shouldn't ever need to do that again... but it did take some trial and error to get where I am now in that aspect. Most of my failures are documented somewhere here on R2R if anyone cared to see where I went wrong and how

I guess I was getting at 'did you ever have a time where QT (seemed) to not cure CI. ?