Do fish have immunity?

[Paul B]

I think that would kill most people.

 

[Paul B]

Well I think this will be a test of my theory and my tank. My good "friend" is getting out of the hobby and he just came over with a bucket of fish and corals that I kind of had to take. He told me he had a "small" blue angelfish that I had to take with the corals because he didn't know what to do with it.

I opened the bag and found this.

This is a horribly sick tang. I am not sure what it has but it doesn't look good. I, of course threw it into my tank and it immediately started eating.

He also gave me this angelfish which while beautiful is way to big for my tank. Both fish are way to big for my tank but what am I to do? He is a good friend and likes bigger fish.

This will be a test to see if my method can cure that tang but it doesn't look to good.

 

[AydenLincoln]

Well I think this will be a test of my theory and my tank. My good "friend" is getting out of the hobby and he just came over with a bucket of fish and corals that I kind of had to take. He told me he had a "small" blue angelfish that I had to take with the corals because he didn't know what to do with it.

I opened the bag and found this.

This is a horribly sick tang. I am not sure what it has but it doesn't look good. I, of course threw it into my tank and it immediately started eating.

He also gave me this angelfish which while beautiful is way to big for my tank. Both fish are way to big for my tank but what am I to do? He is a good friend and likes bigger fish.

This will be a test to see if my method can cure that tang but it doesn't look to good.

Hmmm interesting and ironic lol. Good luck!

 

[Sharkbait19]

The tang has some pretty bad HLLE (head and lateral line erosion).
Good care is #1 for healing it up. Carbon is related to its onset, but there are a number of causes. It’s not something that spreads to other fish though.

 

[atoll]

Tang looks in a bad way not just head lateral line erosion but the dorsal fin has much missing. The HLLE on the face looks pretty severe. If you can get some sea weed for it to eat that may help and even painting iodine on the areas. Good luck with it, it's a challenge indeed but no test for your tank Paul. I wouldn't say your tank conditions weren't good enough if it doesn't recover.

 

[Paul B]

LOL. he certainly has more than HLLE going on unless he had it so long that it not only destroyed his epidermis, but also the underlying structures along with most of his dorsal fin. This is a stark contrast to the fish in my tank which are always in pristine condition.

He is looking for algae but I don't have any and don't use nori so if he doesn't start eating live worms and clams, he isn't going to fare to well and I am sure I can't give him to anyone even if I could catch him.

My guessing diagnoses of this fish is that he will heal but always be scarred and never look good. It is what it is.

I normally only like much smaller, more interesting fish so I can't get any now as long as I have these two giants.

But the angel is beautiful.

 

[atoll]

The angel looks like a juvenile Koran angel Paul. If so and am 95% certain it is it's going to get quite big.

 

[Paul B]

Atoll yes I know what it is. I doubt it will get bigger in my tank. I hope not anyway or he has to go one way or another. My friend said he has had him for years.

 

[mindme]

This is true. Have you ever been to mexico? Many of the living conditions are horrible. I took a class about the food production in Mexico and I have travelled all over the place. Mexico City is in a dry lake bed. There is no fresh water there so it is brought in. It's about 10,000' high

There are many farms below there and the sewage from Mexico travels down the mountain in troughs to fertilize the crops below. I won't let my family eat anything from there as their produce is loaded with human waste.

I could find nothing real to the claim that raw sewage is used to fertilize crops in Mexico. Citation needed.

As you mentioned, if we go there, we get sick. My wife and I ended up in the hospital, I didn't see any Mexicans there in the hospital with dysentery but dozens of Americans.

I lived a year in the jungle of Viet Nam. Every day I had to take an anti malaria pill or I was almost guaranteed to get malaria which is a parasite similar to ich.

The Vietnamese people also lived in the jungle and they had no pills but they looked mighty healthy to me and I never heard of one of them with malaria even though their living conditions could basically be described as mud.

They ate rats, birds, snakes etc and they were fine. They were used to it and their disgusting, but natural food seemed to keep them healthy as I ate sterile 30 year old C Rations and anti malaria pills.

This is 100% false. Malaria has killed hundreds of thousands of people in Vietnam alone over the years. It's only been in the past 15 years or so that they've started to get it under control, and there are still tens of thousands of cases and some deaths. You didn't see them..because they were dead or sick.

I think you are trying to make a war of the worlds type argument where your immune system is stronger the more it's exposed and deals with stuff. And that is true to a degree. But it's certainly not magic.

Anyway, enough of that. Fish are vastly different from mammals in their immunity. Mammals depend on antibodies inside the animal to prevent infection but the infection has to enter the creature to make it sick.

True fish are totally different and have the majority of their immunity on their living skin so the infection does not have to enter the body to be repelled or killed.

The slime on the skin is there for that purpose and the stronger the infection is, the more antibodies there will be on the skin. It is the fishes main line of defence.

This seems accurate.

As for scientific studies, they go on a few months or until the funding runs out. My tank and a few others have lasted decades longer than any scientific study which means that they can be almost classified as a scientific study.

This is nonsense. Scientific studies have a purpose so of course they end when it's over.

If a Human, even one lived to 150 years old, a scientific fact would be that Humans can live that long.
If even one tank runs disease free for over 50 years with no quarantine, no medication, no diseases then that tank is a scientific fact and I think we should study the value of that rather than saying it can't be done and coming up with all sorts of reasons why this isn't true.

Your tank has no scientific value, sorry. This is your ego speaking.

Please don't mention luck or Russian Roulette as I have been hearing that for 45 years.

You know, I've been seeing your posts and stuff for years now. I've never seen someone who is able to keep adding so many fish to their tanks while experiencing no deaths. Your tank should probably look like an train in India by now.

My friend Humblefish is coming here in a few weeks and I told him to bring any fish he likes with the disease of his choice to put in my tank with no fanfare. I also told him while he is here we will go to a LFS and he can pick out any fish he likes, in any condition and put it in my tank. (as long as I want that fish, no sharks, barracuda, lionfish etc.

If he does that, I am absolutely sure many people on these forums will come up with some silly excuse why my fish didn't all die and I am also sure I will hear that Russian thing.

Maybe wait for the results before celebrating.

It is simple scientific evidence. Fish evolved with pathogens since way before Nancy Pelosi was born and are perfectly capable of protecting themselves from parasites and everything else, except hooks.

There is nothing you've posted so far that is scientific evidence. The problem with ich and velvet is not that fish don't have a way to deal with them, it's that our systems are closed and the amount of ich and velvet they get is much higher than out in the ocean as they are constantly exposed to high numbers of the parasite. The parasites are much more diluted in the ocean and a fish is less likely to get the parasite, and in such low numbers has a much easier time to deal with it. This is why I have a UV light to deal with ich, as I reduce the amount of parasites in the water, which helps their immune systems deal with it.

I have some 30 year old fish that are still spawning and doing fine.

What species?

I realize the scenario that eventually if there are enough parasites available the fish will succumb. That is true.
While in Viet Nam in a particularly nasty firefight there was so many bullets and shrapnel flying near and at me that there was little chance for me to evade all of them and come out alive. I did get hit with quite a few things but obviously lived although that may have been closer Russian Roulette.

Not sure why you think bringing up vietnam somehow dismisses the fact you acknowledged in your first sentence. It does not.

In an "immune" tank such as I have the parasite load can never get to epidemic proportions because of the fish slime. The parasites can't multiply because the fish won't let them. It's like a reverse catch 22.

I doubt this is true. It only takes 1 of the parasite to turn into 100s. The amount of slime coat no doubt plays a good role in this, however if you added a fish that doesn't have heavy slime coat, then it would multiply. I've had ich in my tank for the past year, 3 of my tangs show signs at different levels. My naso tang I've never seen have a dot, itch or anything. That doesn't mean my tank is immune, it means I have fish that have different degrees of slime coat. Not surprisingly, my blue tang is the one who gets it the worst.

Does anyone here really believe I can keep a tank for 5 decades with no quarantine or anything else and add numerous fish from a dozen LFSs and the sea constantly and never once, not even once have a communicable disease in there?

I do not believe you. How do you keep adding so many fish if they never die?

I have been posting since way before fish forums were invented and I have never posted about an ich or velvet attack. Google me to find out.

Appeal to be an authority, nothing of substance.

If your fish get sick, it is because of what you did and not the fishes fault. Fish come out of the sea already immune but when we then poison them with copper or some other chemical and put them in an artificial situation like a bare quarantine tank and feed them artificial, sterile food, they can't help but get sick.

A fishes immunity is probably 95% affected by it's stress level. I recently posted an article about that. Yes, a scientific article. I will look for it.

The entire first paragraph is false.

If a fish is immune, it's built it up over time. Babies don't come out with a fully developed immune system.

At any rate, when it comes to ich I have yet to see any immunity built up. My fish have been in a tank exposed to it for 1.5 years so far and....they all have the exact same immunity to ich as they did the day they entered the tank. Again, the Naso never has anything, and the blue tang will always display dots.

Yet you claim they should have immunity. So how long? Let me guess, it's a sign that my fish are stressed right? Because of what? I think the Naso should be the most stressed off all my fish, and yet he shows it the least. He was the last tang I added, 2 of the other tangs generally picked on him for awhile. He's way more adjusted now and has started to take his role as "boss" of the tank, but I had to put mirrors in the tank to keep the sailfin and mimic tangs off him at first. Yet I have never seen a single dot on him.

Meanwhile the blue has to be the least stressed out fish and yet the one who gets it most. None of the other tangs pick on him at all, and he has the best/most hiding places. He's super friendly and likes to tag along with the others etc. I see no signs of stress.

So 95% stress? I doubt it. Natural slime coat...that is what matters. But I'll play along, how long until I can expect to see immunity in my fish?

I feel it is our job to keep the tank conditions as close to the sea conditions as we can with in reason.

You can feel how you want, it doesn't mean the things you claim are actually happening.

Of course we can't add nuclear submarines, continents, meteorites or the vast amount of water. But we can assure that the same pathogens that are in all our fish in the sea are still in them in the tank.

That small amount of pathogens in a tank will keep the fish immune just as vaccinations keep us safe.

If that were not the case why do we let them put vaccines in us which is just weakened diseases?

You have to be vaccinated against specific things. You can get immunity from weaker things, but you don't know if you are getting the weaker thing unless it is specifically introduced before the stronger version. For example, cowpox being used to treat smallpox only works because people were given the cowpox before the smallpox.

I hope there are parasites in my tank because if they ever all die out, my fish will also eventually die.

This is nonsense.

We also need to wonder why there are no, old healthy, unquarantined or medicated tanks. Old is not a few years, it's long enough where all the inhabitants die of old age as that is the only true test of total success.

You mean other than the largest aquariums in the world? You're just making crazy claims here.

 

[Paul B]

You didn't look far enough. I found one article in 30 seconds. As I sdaid I took a long class on this and watched videos on it and interviews with the farmers.

In Mexico, fears a new plant will kill wastewater farming

For more than 100 years, most of what gets flushed down Mexico City's toilets has resurfaced two hours to the north in the rivers and reservoirs of the rural Mezquital Valley.

www.foxnews.com

In Mexico, fears a new plant will kill wastewater farming

For more than 100 years, most of what gets flushed down Mexico City's toilets has resurfaced two hours to the north in the rivers and reservoirs of the rural Mezquital Valley.

www.foxnews.com

TEPATEPEC, Mexico – For more than 100 years, most of what gets flushed down Mexico City's toilets has resurfaced two hours to the north in the rivers and reservoirs of the rural Mezquital Valley. A massive new water treatment plant is about to change this.

But rather than welcoming the prospect of cleaner water, angry farmers are demanding the government honor an 1895 presidential decree granting them the right to the capital's untreated sewage, which they see as fertilizer-rich, if foul, irrigation water.

It's a standoff that pits public health concerns — not just for valley residents but for the Mexicans elsewhere who eat the crops — against fears that family farms will go under if they lose access to the raw sewage after the $530 million Atotonilco plant in Hidalgo state, billed as the largest of its kind in Latin America, goes online.

This is 100% false. Malaria has killed hundreds of thousands of people in Vietnam alone over the years.

Of course people die there of malaria, but for the most part, they do not. Many of the people live in tripple canopy jungle as I did for a year. The mosquitoes are so thick there that you rarely see a time when you are not covered in them. We Americans get infected right away if we don't take the pills. If it were not for immunity all of them would be dead. But I saw very many really healthy looking ones.
But we can civilly disagree.

I think you are trying to make a war of the worlds type argument where your immune system is stronger the more it's exposed and deals with stuff. And that is true to a degree. But it's certainly not magic.

I feel this is true with fish.

This is nonsense. Scientific studies have a purpose so of course they end when it's over.

They end when funding runs out. There are very few, if any studies that go on for 50 years. They studied Covid for a few months until they came out with a vaccine. Many vaccines they have no idea how they work. My wife has MS and takes an injection to slow down the progression. They have no idea how, of if it works.

Burgess and that other guy studied ich in the 70s and 80s until the funding ran out and i still disagree with their findings. It does no good to study a parasite life cycle if there are much better ways to render the parasite benign.

My own tank and a few others prove that.

What species?

Fireclowns.

These guys. The larger one is about 30 and the other one is a few years younger.



This copperband lived about 10 years.



As did this mandarin who spawned constantly.



Also about 10 years for these Watchmans.



This is one of them as a baby



I posted many times her tending her eggs over the years as all healthy paired fish spawn constantly. If they don't they are not healthy.

Here is a yellow clown gobi with her eggs. They spawn every few weeks.

Not sure why you think bringing up vietnam somehow dismisses the fact you acknowledged in your first sentence. It does not.

I don't know. Just a thing that pops into my head occasionally.

I do not believe you. How do you keep adding so many fish if they never die?

I don't remember saying my fish never die. I would have an awful lot of fish in the 60+ years I have been keeping fish.
I am pretty sure I said "Communicable disease". Like ich, velvet, etc.

They certainly die from jumping out (my biggest loss) old age and other afflictions that are not courageous. I started a thread on this forum almost when the forum was invented and it went on for many years where I posted the fish I bought and when they died.

Here is that Watchman Gobi dying of old age which I posted. He was about 10



This is what happened to my 10 year old Copperband. It is on You Tube if you want to see it and I posted it here and on all forums. He died of a neurological disease, not ich or velvet etc.

Your tank should probably look like an train in India by now.

LOL,I like that.

I doubt this is true. It only takes 1 of the parasite to turn into 100s.

If that were true, my 51 year old tank would not exist. But then again, you don't believe it does.

Your tank has no scientific value, sorry. This is your ego speaking.

Actually, it does. I do have a big ego though, I will admit that. It comes from having a very old, healthy tank that has been on these forums since they invented them and in paper magazines before that.

Here is my tank many years ago, way before they invented cell phone camera's so it was on film. If you look close you can see all the way to the left my fireclown. I still got him and his mate. You can come here to meet him. Humblefish will visit soon and he can verify it.
How many fireclowns have you seen? I rarely see them

There is nothing you've posted so far that is scientific evidence.

That is true. On this thread I have not posted any scientific evidence and I probably won't. I have posted scientific studies many times on these forums over many years. But I have nothing to prove and no need to show anything. People that now me on forums for decades know my theories and have read my scientific links many times. No need to do it every time someone doubts me. I have many pictures over many years showing my fish spawning and going through their entire life span. Do you?

Maybe wait for the results before celebrating.

I just added this fish an hour ago that someone gave me.

At any rate, when it comes to ich I have yet to see any immunity built up. My fish have been in a tank exposed to it for 1.5 years so far and....they all have the exact same immunity to ich as they did the day they entered the tank. Again, the Naso never has anything, and the blue tang will always display dots.

1.5 years is about the same time frame as a 2 year old child. The only true test of a fish if he dies of old age, anything less is a failure. As I said, we can keep our fish alive a long time with drugs, UV light, Ozone and other artificial things just like we can keep cancer patients alive with no immunity through artificial means. But not for long.

Appeal to be an authority, nothing of substance.

I agree. But again, I have nothing to prove.

 

[ReefGeezer]

I remember seeing PaulB's tank and the fish he mentions above on another forum long before I came to R2R. Hey @PaulB - Do you still have the "Hammer" coral? While I don't always agree with his philosophy, I respect it... and love his posts.

 

[Paul B]

As for baby fish coming out with full immunity. They certainly do. They have the same immunity as their Mothers. I did post the scientific study on that before but I have no need to find it now. I think I also put it in my book someplace.

As for it being nonsense that I have parasites in my tank. Then I must be really lucky. Maybe I am.

Mindme, this conversation has been fun and I have been dealing with the same questions and doubts for decades. Almost since this hobby started in the US in 1971 when I started. None of those people are in it any more but I am still here.

As I keep saying, I have nothing to prove. If you feel quarantine and medication is the way to go, do that.

Have a great day.

Oh by the way,the largest aquariums in the world don't count because we are talking about home aquariums here.
I am a volunteer here at one of the large ones.

 

[Paul B]

Hello ReefGeezer. I do have hammer corals but I think I broke that one up in small pieces.


I am having a big hard coral problem lately (which I posted Mindme. )
There is a photosynthic sponge that I added years ago and it is taking over the tank. Whenever I cut it it kills some of my hard corals. The soft corals don't seem to mind but it makes the others shrink due to the sponge toxins. I have something in the works that may solve this, but I have an awful lot of sponge.

 

[mindme]

You didn't look far enough. I found one article in 30 seconds. As I sdaid I took a long class on this and watched videos on it and interviews with the farmers.

In Mexico, fears a new plant will kill wastewater farming

For more than 100 years, most of what gets flushed down Mexico City's toilets has resurfaced two hours to the north in the rivers and reservoirs of the rural Mezquital Valley.

www.foxnews.com

In Mexico, fears a new plant will kill wastewater farming

For more than 100 years, most of what gets flushed down Mexico City's toilets has resurfaced two hours to the north in the rivers and reservoirs of the rural Mezquital Valley.

www.foxnews.com

TEPATEPEC, Mexico – For more than 100 years, most of what gets flushed down Mexico City's toilets has resurfaced two hours to the north in the rivers and reservoirs of the rural Mezquital Valley. A massive new water treatment plant is about to change this.

But rather than welcoming the prospect of cleaner water, angry farmers are demanding the government honor an 1895 presidential decree granting them the right to the capital's untreated sewage, which they see as fertilizer-rich, if foul, irrigation water.

It's a standoff that pits public health concerns — not just for valley residents but for the Mexicans elsewhere who eat the crops — against fears that family farms will go under if they lose access to the raw sewage after the $530 million Atotonilco plant in Hidalgo state, billed as the largest of its kind in Latin America, goes online.

Interesting, but not really what you said. It's not the entire country of Mexico and they aren't putting raw sewage on the crops exactly. It's sewage that goes into the water that is being used.

I also do not want to eat that, but it's no where near as extreme as you made it sound.

Of course people die there of malaria, but for the most part, they do not. Many of the people live in tripple canopy jungle as I did for a year. The mosquitoes are so thick there that you rarely see a time when you are not covered in them. We Americans get infected right away if we don't take the pills. If it were not for immunity all of them would be dead. But I saw very many really healthy looking ones.
But we can civilly disagree.

There is no real immunity. If there was immunity to it, then it wouldn't be a problem today. World wide there are millions of deaths every year from it still. Most deaths happen in children under the age of 5, and mostly in Africa where they lack treatment - you know, the medications that you say are bad for fish. For some reason, just living in it isn't saving them.

At best people who get and survive it multiple times may develop a "semi-immune" state, but even those people still get infected and they just carry the parasites without symptoms.

They are still trying to develop a vaccine for it.

They end when funding runs out. There are very few, if any studies that go on for 50 years. They studied Covid for a few months until they came out with a vaccine. Many vaccines they have no idea how they work. My wife has MS and takes an injection to slow down the progression. They have no idea how, of if it works.

Burgess and that other guy studied ich in the 70s and 80s until the funding ran out and i still disagree with their findings. It does no good to study a parasite life cycle if there are much better ways to render the parasite benign.

My own tank and a few others prove that.

They end when the purpose of the study is done. There is no reason to keep things going after a study is over.

As for covid, it's a coronavirus and those type of virus have been around for decades. The common cold is a coronavirus, and they have been working on forms of that "vaccination" for years. It's starting to look like the virus was man made in a lab after all, but it's hard to get a straight answer these days.

I don't remember saying my fish never die. I would have an awful lot of fish in the 60+ years I have been keeping fish.
I am pretty sure I said "Communicable disease". Like ich, velvet, etc.

They certainly die from jumping out (my biggest loss) old age and other afflictions that are not courageous. I started a thread on this forum almost when the forum was invented and it went on for many years where I posted the fish I bought and when they died.

Here is that Watchman Gobi dying of old age which I posted. He was about 10

All I know is I constantly see posts of yours where you are adding new fish while pretending your tank is a miracle healing tank. I think you've added as many fish in the past 2 years as I have total in my 180g.

And all this preaching you do and you don't even put a lid on your tank? Seriously?

That is true. On this thread I have not posted any scientific evidence and I probably won't. I have posted scientific studies many times on these forums over many years. But I have nothing to prove and no need to show anything. People that now me on forums for decades know my theories and have read my scientific links many times. No need to do it every time someone doubts me. I have many pictures over many years showing my fish spawning and going through their entire life span. Do you?

Well, I can't say anything about the scientific studies if I don't see them. However I often times see people posting links to studies that don't really support what they claim.

And I don't care about appeal to authority fallacies which is the rest of your paragraph. But yeah, I have clownfish who spawn. I don't know if the others would, as I don't have any other pairs. I'm not sure what that is supposed to prove however.

1.5 years is about the same time frame as a 2 year old child. The only true test of a fish if he dies of old age, anything less is a failure. As I said, we can keep our fish alive a long time with drugs, UV light, Ozone and other artificial things just like we can keep cancer patients alive with no immunity through artificial means. But not for long.

And this is what you do every time someone presses you. Belittle them, then say you have nothing to prove blah blah blah. Besides, you said you lose most fish because you don't put a lid on your tank and they jump out, not old age.

You know how many fish I've lost in the past 1.5 years? None, because I put that artificial lid on it because I'm not the fish tank amish mafia.

I agree. But again, I have nothing to prove.

You have everything to prove until you can't prove it, then you claim this and belittle people. If you have nothing to prove, then stop making the claims. Because when you make claims, then you need to prove them.

 

[bnord]

Atoll, i didn't make all that up, I wish I could. I went to a 6 hour class by immunologists put on by neurologists. It was a few weeks ago and I loved it and thought it was very informative.

Most of us here as aquarists naturally feel that if you eliminate disease organisms, you and your fish will be safe and that sounds correct. It is not, just the opposite.

Hospitals being mostly clean and sterile is the most common place to contract a disease because the normal flora is destroyed and only the disease organisms are left.

In nature the diseases and good bacteria keep each other in check.
Many people can't or won't believe this and will continually quarantine and medicate their fish will keep disease forums as the back bone of these forums.

IMO I feel we should embrace nature and the natural immunity of the fish rather than artificially keeping fish seemingly healthy through medications. Of course fish can live like that but the only sign of true success is if the fish only die of old age so if you only keep a tank for maybe 10 years, it should not be called a success because those fish did not have the opportunity to live out their entire lifespan.

My fish do and I am sure yours do. I just feel bad for the people who don't realize this and keep losing fish to disease unnecessarily.

Just my opinion of course as I am not the God of fish. Just a bald, retired electrician and an hour ago, me and my wife tested positive for Covid so I think I will go and eat worms.

Appreciate your position and it broadly founded on both good science and astute observation.

I too am balding and should be retired, but am a vet immunologist/parasitologist and have spent 38 years making vaccines for all species (including fish) for 3 major global companies and now a start up of my own

With all that I know one needs to start with general statements then burrow down into the facts of the exceptions

Parasites and their relationships with their host are fascinating and as complex and intricate as you can imagine. However, I rarely get the attention of a guest at a cocktail party to convince her of that.

There is a species of Sarcocystis (in the family tree of Cryptocaryon) that exists only in lynx and snowshoe hares. It causes no disease in the lynx, where the sexual stage takes place and passes in the feces, and when picked up by grazing by the hare attacks the diaphragm and the muscles in the eye of the hare to ensure that the infected hares are the first to be eaten, and complete the life cycle.

There is another on another branch of the tree - Isospora suis that only affects pigs and goes directly from infected to uninfected pigs, causes 2-5 days of the squirts, passing on to the next pig. Infected pigs develop an immunity that largely prevents reinfection for life. Or at least a transient infection that keeps the parasite in circulation.

These are just 2 of the volumes that support the diversity of life cycles and these lifecycles of parasites (just talking about protozoans right now and ignoring metazoans (flukes and such) and virus and bacteria run the gamut and have locked in to maintain themselves consistent with the environment they have evolved in.

Here is where I get concerned with the broad stroke of always or never QT.

Amylodinium and Cryptocaryon did not evolve in a closed system loop of recirculating constant temp water. They evolved their relationships with their hosts in massive quantities of constantly changing water columns which would never allow concentrations of the infective stages to reach what they can in our tanks even with UV/diatom/WC support.

We do not even know if as an example some of these parasites evolved in certain parts of the oceans and therefore better balance was achieved in Madagascar compared to the Keys. We do know that some species are inherently resistant (Morays and I think I have read lion fish), and powdery tangs are exceptionally susceptible.

So whereas Ich does seem to "find its way to a balance in a stable system" I remain skeptical that velvet can and will do the same. Not to forget the bell shaped curve of what a health and stable system is and where you or I may be on the curve compared to a cautious and well intentioned and caring beginner may be.

So to wrap up MY longest post, it is good value for the fish/owner/hobby to attempt a reasonable level of discretion and control in their early years in screening for and treating disease before entry into their tanks.

I also happen to believe that velvet has not yet worked out its' environmental and host strain balance for the home aquarium, and the vast number of genera and species that it can now, thanks to us, come in contact with.

I, therefore, will always QT a new entry into my display is there is even a remote chance it is carrying velvet with it.

Of course that's just my opinion and I could be wrong. D Miller

 

[mindme]

As for baby fish coming out with full immunity. They certainly do. They have the same immunity as their Mothers. I did post the scientific study on that before but I have no need to find it now. I think I also put it in my book someplace.

As for it being nonsense that I have parasites in my tank. Then I must be really lucky. Maybe I am.

Mindme, this conversation has been fun and I have been dealing with the same questions and doubts for decades. Almost since this hobby started in the US in 1971 when I started. None of those people are in it any more but I am still here.

As I keep saying, I have nothing to prove. If you feel quarantine and medication is the way to go, do that.

Have a great day.

Oh by the way,the largest aquariums in the world don't count because we are talking about home aquariums here.
I am a volunteer here at one of the large ones.

The simple fact of the matter is if this was true, these parasites would not exist. It takes time and exposure for immune systems to fully develop. Which is why there are millions of kids below the age of 5 killed by malaria every single year.

And that's even if there is real immunity for these parasites, and I'm not seeing where there is. If so, how many years should I expect before I stop seeing dots on my blue tang? How long does it take for this fish, which was born with all the immunity of it's mother, to even get to the point of being semi-immune and no longer showing symptoms?

And I don't really care if you think you have anything to prove. Is this supposed to make me stop debunking your claims? Because I'm going to keep this up.

 

[Paul B]

LOL, as I said I have been dealing with this for decades. You can keep it up as long as You like. I find it fun.

 

[Paul B]

Do you still have the "Hammer" coral?

Oh, I think you mean "this" hammer

Yes, I used it today.

 

[HuduVudu]

In an "immune" tank such as I have the parasite load can never get to epidemic proportions because of the fish slime. The parasites can't multiply because the fish won't let them. It's like a reverse catch 22.

It isn't just the fish that are a part of this downward load. It is other creatures that will feed on this parasites.

This is why I think people get caught up on the mature part.

Parasites have predators too.

 

[Paul B]

Hudu, I agree and there is also a long thread about that. parasites are affected by bacteria and viruses so if we kill one of those things, we screw up the natural system.


I have been doing this to long and am getting to old to argue about all this stuff and I feel I have some good ideas. Of course many people have good Ideas and we should hear about them. So about 6 years ago, instead of arguing every time someone disagrees with me I decided to put up some money and time and publish a book, which I did. It is available on Amazon and all the reviews are 5 stars.
It's under all my posts and they allow me to put it there because it all goes to charity.

Fortunately, no one has to read the book especially if they think I am nuts, senile or just a big liar.

They can ignore my book and thousands or millions of people have. Of course thousands have read it and seem to like it as I have never had one bad review.

I am sure some people hate it but don't want to hurt my feelings.

But I didn't feel I should make any money on the ideas in the book so I give more than 100% of the profits to Multiple Sclorosis research in my wife's name and I published all of the receipts on this very forum.

I think more people should publish their ideas here and in written literature just for fun.

Have a great day.