How I eliminated marine ich as a problem in my display tank

Saltees

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I was overwhelmed for a moment that ICH has been eliminated! But on second look, it meant that ICH no longer poses a problem for you. I felt such a relief for you!

I think I’m the thread that @Jay Hemdal was mentioning that failed pretty badly and had 3/4 of my livestock gone.

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/3...asites-in-a-mixed-reef-tank-132g-500l.939729/

I would like to reference your success story over my doom and gloom thread.

I like your full disclosure at OP that it’s ICH management to a point that it eliminates ICH ability to take further lives.

I do hope for those that intent to go H2O2 dosing are not emboldened by the successes of others but also be warned of the shortfalls. Don’t be foolhardy, but acknowledge it’s limitations.
 

Jay Hemdal

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I was overwhelmed for a moment that ICH has been eliminated! But on second look, it meant that ICH no longer poses a problem for you. I felt such a relief for you!

I think I’m the thread that @Jay Hemdal was mentioning that failed pretty badly and had 3/4 of my livestock gone.

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/3...asites-in-a-mixed-reef-tank-132g-500l.939729/

I would like to reference your success story over my doom and gloom thread.

I like your full disclosure at OP that it’s ICH management to a point that it eliminates ICH ability to take further lives.

I do hope for those that intent to go H2O2 dosing are not emboldened by the successes of others but also be warned of the shortfalls. Don’t be foolhardy, but acknowledge it’s limitations.

I think the difference in these two cases is that in this one, H2O2 is used as one component of ich management and in your case, it was used as a treatment. The difference is subtle, but ich has a "tipping point" where the number of tomites/theronts in the water gets high enough that they themselves are a stressor. At that point management fails and treatment must be started. It has something to do with the geometric progression of the reproduction rate of Cryptocaryon - a typical explosive population growth curve. Once you get on the high side of the curve, management doesn't work any longer. I'm not sure of the exact point, but once you've seen fish loss, you are well past that. I generally advise people to move into treatment mode if they see trophonts on most of the fish, or more than 30 trophonts on any one fish.

Because ich management relies on a variety of techniques, it is not possible to say which ones are helpful and which are not. Some things like good water flow sweeping the bottom of the tank combined with mechanical filtration to remove tomonts may not even be thought of. Another management technique is to run your skimmer for very wet collection (that remove tomites/theronts as well).Peroxide may also be one, but I want to wait for more research (as other oxidizers like ozone and sodium chlorite have failed in the past).

Jay
 

BirdFish5000

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I've had absolutely endless problems with cyano, various algaes, diatoms, etc ever since I did the HF style h2o2 dosing for ich treatment. I'm convinced it has a serious detrimental affect on the system's biome, and likely more trouble than it is worth.
 

robby2782

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First of all, I have not CURED ich. There is no medication or other way to 100% eliminate ich in a display tank with corals and inverts in it. No medications that claim to “cure ich” or feeding your fish garlic are going to eliminate it.

My tank is 240 gallons, 72x26x30 in. My stocking list at the moment includes:
-1 Red Sea Sailfin Tang
-1 Tomini Tang
-1 Yellow x Scopas Hybrid Tang
-1 Baby Blue Hippo Tang
-1 Yellow Pyramid Butterfly
-1 One Spot Foxface
-3 Bimaculatus Anthias
-2 Ocellaris Clownfish
-2 Banggai Cardinals
-1 Melanarus Wrasse
-1 Marble Wrasse
-1 Yelloe Watchman Goby
-1 Diamond Goby

Fish in QT (Being added the 14th of November):
-1 Dusky Wrasse
-1 Orchid Dottyback
-1 Baby Mata Tang

Fish in the next round of QT:
-1 Schooling Bannerfish (H. Diphreutes)
-2 Yellow Tangs
-1 Purple Tang

The tank turns a year old in a couple weeks and I have been actively managing ich for about 8 months. I buy only quarantined fish from one of my lfs and then quarantine them myself for 6 weeks, then they go into observation for another 2 weeks. While in observation I do water changes with tank water so I can hopefully expose them to the ich, however I only started doing this about 2 months ago. I believe Ich got into my display via a coral frag or invert as I do not put inverts through a 76 day quarantine like I should’ve from the beginning. I first noticed ich on my marble wrasse, I saw 2 possibly 3 white spots and it began to rub on the sand every few days. I freaked out but did not remove it from the tank. All of the tangs were unaffected. I put in place an 80 Watt UV running on a 200 gph pump. This not only I believe helped eliminate a large portion of free swimmers but also improved my water clarity, so it was a win-win. I began to feed vitamin soaked frozen food once a day and still do this. I feed a mix of mysis, brine, lrs, formula one, and others and mix it up every day. I soak all frozen food in vitachem, selcon, garlic power, and aminomega. I also feed a sheet of nori everyday split up into 2 feedings on a clip. Once I added the baby blue hippo tang and pyramid butterfly I noticed spots forming on a few of the fish, all of the fish continued to eat aggressively at this time. I looked into hydrogen peroxide dosing. I was mostly interested in following this thread here: https://humble.fish/community/index.php?threads/peroxide-h2o2-dosing-for-parasites-in-reef-tank.725/

I began dosing 100mLs a day through a doser and slowly worked my way up to the 1mL per 5 gallons over about a month. I am now dosing 240mLs a day, or over 1mL per gallon. I have seen absolutely no coral losses or fish losses doing this. The only negative effect I saw was my ORP drop from 360-370 to around 300 when i first began dosing. Now the orp is back to around 330-350 on a regular basis and no longer drops off. I do believe hydrogen peroxide dosing made a difference in the ich management. Now I do not see any spots or flashing on any of the fish other than my marble wrasse occasionally rubbing on the sand maybe once a week. All of my fish are fat and I can’t see a single spot in the tank, although I know ich is still present. Whenever I add fish out of my quarantine system, I ensure they are eating extremely well before I add them to the display. The new fish will almost 100% have some spots on them for about a week or up to two weeks after adding them to the display. After that time, the spots disappear and the fish do great. I do not worry about ich anymore as I once thought of it as the end of my reef tank, but now I see it as more of a hassle. When dealing with ich in a reef tank, fish stress is absolutely the biggest issue. Hence why I cannot stress enough to NOT remove all of your fish and treat them in copper. As it in my experience has only resulted in me loosing a large portion of my fish. Thanks for reading and I hope something in here was helpful!
Just finished the full cycle of Jessica's recommended dosage and treatment, and I will not hesitate to use this method again after not losing a single fish or coral from this in my display. I relied on the numerous end users that followed the instructions correctly who were able to demonstrate through DNA samples that this was more than just an anecdotal success story. I wouldn't have been willing to losing my expensive fish that includes a "Yurple" Tang, Wrought Iron Butterfly, and Polyzona Tang, along with all my acropora colonies I've had for several years otherwise. I believe the daily dosing a bacteria, use of UV sterilizer, and EFFECTIVELY running quality carbon are critical to the success of this method.

With this said, I recently purchased a purple tang, rhomboid wrasse, and Johnson wrasse, and decided to set up a quarantine tank since the "conditioned" fish I purchased with the intent to add direct to my display is what I just got finished dealing with, and I killed all 3 fish raising the copper to 2.0 with copper power too fast. I've used this type of copper for years, but the point I'm making is the deaths of these 3 fish isn't the copper's fault, it's mine.
 

Jay Hemdal

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Just finished the full cycle of Jessica's recommended dosage and treatment, and I will not hesitate to use this method again after not losing a single fish or coral from this in my display. I relied on the numerous end users that followed the instructions correctly who were able to demonstrate through DNA samples that this was more than just an anecdotal success story. I wouldn't have been willing to losing my expensive fish that includes a "Yurple" Tang, Wrought Iron Butterfly, and Polyzona Tang, along with all my acropora colonies I've had for several years otherwise. I believe the daily dosing a bacteria, use of UV sterilizer, and EFFECTIVELY running quality carbon are critical to the success of this method.

With this said, I recently purchased a purple tang, rhomboid wrasse, and Johnson wrasse, and decided to set up a quarantine tank since the "conditioned" fish I purchased with the intent to add direct to my display is what I just got finished dealing with, and I killed all 3 fish raising the copper to 2.0 with copper power too fast. I've used this type of copper for years, but the point I'm making is the deaths of these 3 fish isn't the copper's fault, it's mine.
I do think you need to look more carefully at the cause and effect of the three wrasses dying. 2.0 ppm isn’t even a full dose for copper power. Raising copper too fast is something that is an issue with ionic copper, but not the amine-complexed ones. The reason that this is important is the number of people actually losing fish due to raising copper too slowly when treating acute cases of protozoan infection.

Jay
 

Gregg @ ADP

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Here is how I deal with ich…

I don’t do anything about it. No quarantine. No fallow. No dry rock. No curing of live rock. No dipping. No meds.

Ich and other parasites are typical parts of a reef ecosystem. As such, most fish have a natural immune response to the parasites if a) they are healthy and unstressed, and b) they have frequent exposure to the parasites.

I set up a reef tank with uncured live rock. I then add some fish right away. There is typically a small crypto outbreak for the first 2 weeks. Knowing it’s coming, I typically start with fish that are fairly resistant to it. After a couple of weeks, the system settles in, the outbreak dies off, and that’s pretty much that.

It’s not uncommon to see a fish or two that have one or two spots on them. But it never progresses beyond that. Even when I dump new fish in.

Ain’t nature somethin’?
 

Jay Hemdal

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Here is how I deal with ich…

I don’t do anything about it. No quarantine. No fallow. No dry rock. No curing of live rock. No dipping. No meds.

Ich and other parasites are typical parts of a reef ecosystem. As such, most fish have a natural immune response to the parasites if a) they are healthy and unstressed, and b) they have frequent exposure to the parasites.

I set up a reef tank with uncured live rock. I then add some fish right away. There is typically a small crypto outbreak for the first 2 weeks. Knowing it’s coming, I typically start with fish that are fairly resistant to it. After a couple of weeks, the system settles in, the outbreak dies off, and that’s pretty much that.

It’s not uncommon to see a fish or two that have one or two spots on them. But it never progresses beyond that. Even when I dump new fish in.

Ain’t nature somethin’?
Glad that worked for you, but fostering that advice would be doing a disservice to the typical aquarist here who will most certainly lose their fish to ich if they don’t treat properly. New aquariums combined with typical LFS quality fish are a risky combination when it comes to fish diseases.
People tend to follow the easiest advice (thus the prevalence of “reef safe” medications that don’t work being used so often). To tell them they don’t need to do anything about ich is a recipe for disaster.

Jay
 

Gregg @ ADP

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Glad that worked for you, but fostering that advice would be doing a disservice to the typical aquarist here who will most certainly lose their fish to ich if they don’t treat properly. New aquariums combined with typical LFS quality fish are a risky combination when it comes to fish diseases.
People tend to follow the easiest advice (thus the prevalence of “reef safe” medications that don’t work being used so often). To tell them they don’t need to do anything about ich is a recipe for disaster.

Jay
How do we know that?

Obviously, I wouldn’t offer that as advice for most people to follow, which is why I didn’t say ‘Here’s what you should do. But other perspectives and experiences should be examined. Not to mention, a lot of people are going to the end of the Earth and back trying to prevent parasites from getting into their tanks…but the practices still get in, and because there is no exposure, the fish have a harder time fighting them off and they can overwhelm a fish or community of fish.

We treat our reef ecosystems like they’re a NICU, and more often than not, it backfires.

In ecology, there are no good guys or bad guys. Just players in the game, and parasites are a player in the game. How many people are running their reefs as true ecosystems? Do we really know how much of a correlation there is between overall health of a fish as a function of the state of the system they exist in, and resistance to parasites? I have a pretty good idea, because I have been doing this for decades on countless tanks. I’ve also read plenty of research on fish immune response to parasites. That said, I’ve never actually tested it, so it still has an anecdotal weight to it. But it might be something worth examining more closely.

I have a native river aquarium in my classroom that I spent a ridiculous amount of time creating so that it would be as natural as possible. I also collected everything from a local river, right down to the sand, gravel, mud, plants…everything. Almost every fish I collected and added had at least one…sometimes 2 or 3…types of parasite on them. And some bacterial infections. None were overwhelmed, but the parasites and infections were there. I didn’t treat the fish or the tank for anything. Just set up the best habitat that I could.

Not only did I not lose any of the fish, but 2 months later, those fish are flawless. So what’s happening? Am I just the luckiest guy on Earth? Or is there a lot more to uncover here and we just need to start to ask more questions, consider more possibilities, and run more investigations?
 

Saltees

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Glad that it worked for you under the circumstances.

I do reckon if nature has her way, she too would frown on cramping fishes and corals from different locality into little glass boxes and then pray. There is nothing natural about reefing.

Unless otherwise, an ecosystem like yours can be expertly executed, I would choose the lesser evil...QT.
 
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Jay Hemdal

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How do we know that?

Obviously, I wouldn’t offer that as advice for most people to follow, which is why I didn’t say ‘Here’s what you should do. But other perspectives and experiences should be examined. Not to mention, a lot of people are going to the end of the Earth and back trying to prevent parasites from getting into their tanks…but the practices still get in, and because there is no exposure, the fish have a harder time fighting them off and they can overwhelm a fish or community of fish.

We treat our reef ecosystems like they’re a NICU, and more often than not, it backfires.

In ecology, there are no good guys or bad guys. Just players in the game, and parasites are a player in the game. How many people are running their reefs as true ecosystems? Do we really know how much of a correlation there is between overall health of a fish as a function of the state of the system they exist in, and resistance to parasites? I have a pretty good idea, because I have been doing this for decades on countless tanks. I’ve also read plenty of research on fish immune response to parasites. That said, I’ve never actually tested it, so it still has an anecdotal weight to it. But it might be something worth examining more closely.

I have a native river aquarium in my classroom that I spent a ridiculous amount of time creating so that it would be as natural as possible. I also collected everything from a local river, right down to the sand, gravel, mud, plants…everything. Almost every fish I collected and added had at least one…sometimes 2 or 3…types of parasite on them. And some bacterial infections. None were overwhelmed, but the parasites and infections were there. I didn’t treat the fish or the tank for anything. Just set up the best habitat that I could.

Not only did I not lose any of the fish, but 2 months later, those fish are flawless. So what’s happening? Am I just the luckiest guy on Earth? Or is there a lot more to uncover here and we just need to start to ask more questions, consider more possibilities, and run more investigations?

Yes - you’ve been very lucky!

I need to ensure that the best information, applicable to the majority of aquarists is presented here. Saying that intervention isn’t needed for ich infections is not something I want people to experiment with. There is a whole technique called “ich management” that delves into non-medication techniques for managing ich. However even that is a complicated reactive, not passive process.

I do understand that it is not in a parasite’s best interest to kill its host, but the small volumes of our aquariums increase the propagule pressure by many orders of magnitude. I once ran a rough estimate of metazoan biomass in the ocean and it came out to be about one 3” clownfish in a 20,000 gallon tank. Our tanks are much more crowded and reinfection is at a much greater rate.

Jay
 

Gregg @ ADP

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Yes - you’ve been very lucky!

I need to ensure that the best information, applicable to the majority of aquarists is presented here. Saying that intervention isn’t needed for ich infections is not something I want people to experiment with. There is a whole technique called “ich management” that delves into non-medication techniques for managing ich. However even that is a complicated reactive, not passive process.

I do understand that it is not in a parasite’s best interest to kill its host, but the small volumes of our aquariums increase the propagule pressure by many orders of magnitude. I once ran a rough estimate of metazoan biomass in the ocean and it came out to be about one 3” clownfish in a 20,000 gallon tank. Our tanks are much more crowded and reinfection is at a much greater rate.

Jay
There’s no luck. If there is one thing I’ve found to be true in life, it’s that it is really, really difficult to replicate luck. Especially many times.

Density of any given parasite in a system is not all that relevant. When the fish are healthy, nourished, and unstressed, and they have frequent exposure to different parasites, then an immediate and effective immune response is initiated. Even to external parasites.

If fish can effectively prevent an infestation, and the parasite can’t effectively reproduce, then what naturally happens to parasite density over time?

If you’ve developed an immunity to a respiratory virus through exposure, for example, an infected person could walk up to you and cough their cooties directly into your lungs and you won’t get sick. If you avoid any kind of exposure to the virus and even just a handful get in, you’re probably going to get sick. It isn’t really much different with fish and parasites.

Again, I’m not telling people to do things the way I do. I’m always very reluctant to post advice on this forum, for the reasons you expressed in your first reply.

But we do need to be looking at these things and asking these questions and trying different approaches. I know I am.
 

mfollen

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When most fish first enters one’s tank theyre in a vulnerable state after being shipped across the world and exposed to different systems. They’re not fat and healthy and their immune system is weak.

Healthy fish can fight off ich. But velvet is a different monster, and flukes can do some damage if they attach to a vulnerable location.
 

Jay Hemdal

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There’s no luck. If there is one thing I’ve found to be true in life, it’s that it is really, really difficult to replicate luck. Especially many times.

Density of any given parasite in a system is not all that relevant. When the fish are healthy, nourished, and unstressed, and they have frequent exposure to different parasites, then an immediate and effective immune response is initiated. Even to external parasites.

If fish can effectively prevent an infestation, and the parasite can’t effectively reproduce, then what naturally happens to parasite density over time?

If you’ve developed an immunity to a respiratory virus through exposure, for example, an infected person could walk up to you and cough their cooties directly into your lungs and you won’t get sick. If you avoid any kind of exposure to the virus and even just a handful get in, you’re probably going to get sick. It isn’t really much different with fish and parasites.

Again, I’m not telling people to do things the way I do. I’m always very reluctant to post advice on this forum, for the reasons you expressed in your first reply.

But we do need to be looking at these things and asking these questions and trying different approaches. I know I am.

You need to differentiate between natural immunity and acquired immunity. Natural immunity stems from fish being in good, healthy condition. Newly acquired fish are deficient in that regard due to travelling through the supply chain. Acquired immunity is only conferred if the fish is exposed to, and survives the infection (often multiple times). Epizootics of protozoans in aquariums rarely leave any survivors. Finally, "immunity" is almost never 100% For protozoans and metazoans, it is usually only partially effective....so essentially immune fish take longer to die from an epizootic, but they can more easily survive sub-clinical infections.

The problem is that as I said, propagule pressure comes into play. That is when the disease propagule themselves are a stressor. In aquariums, that pressure is so great as to often overwhelm any natural or acquired immunity the fish might have. Acquired immunity is also of limited duration (for ich, research has shown it is about 6 months).

Edit: I thought I'd add a real world example: I had a large naturalistic river exhibit with 400 Midas cichlids in it. These fish were second generation fish, born in that exhibit. A friend of mine, a curator at another aquarium asked me to send him some, which I did. A few months later he called me, pretty upset. He was losing fish due to gill flukes. I told him that must have been due to some biosecurity failure on his end, as we had not lost any of our fish. He remained unconvinced, so I had my staff veterinarian run a biopsy on some of our fish....yep, they had gill flukes. After many years, these fish had failed to develop full immunity to the flukes, and moving them lowered their natural immunity, causing an acute infection. I use this example to show how immunity doesn't always work in captivity. We treated both our respective populations with praziquantel and eliminated the disease.

Jay
 
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Gregg @ ADP

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You need to differentiate between natural immunity and acquired immunity. Natural immunity stems from fish being in good, healthy condition. Newly acquired fish are deficient in that regard due to travelling through the supply chain. Acquired immunity is only conferred if the fish is exposed to, and survives the infection (often multiple times). Epizootics of protozoans in aquariums rarely leave any survivors. Finally, "immunity" is almost never 100% For protozoans and metazoans, it is usually only partially effective....so essentially immune fish take longer to die from an epizootic, but they can more easily survive sub-clinical infections.

The problem is that as I said, propagule pressure comes into play. That is when the disease propagule themselves are a stressor. In aquariums, that pressure is so great as to often overwhelm any natural or acquired immunity the fish might have. Acquired immunity is also of limited duration (for ich, research has shown its about 6 months).


Jay
Couple of things:

Your angle applies to aquaculture. Virtually all of the research literature out there on this topic pertains to AC. That’s an entirely different playing field, because the fish pop densities and environment are so different.

A natural captive reef environment…ie one that incorporates all of the players in the game rather than working to exclude so many…offers many things that help keep those numbers in check. When we bring in various parasites, we also should be bringing in things that eat those parasites. Everything is food for something. When we dry-rock, QT, medicate, etc, we are creating an extremely low-diversity ecosystem, and lack much of that consumer level. I’ve never really bothered to check, but I would bet the corals themselves could take out a lot of propagules.

So really what I see happening in this topic is that there is one accepted methodology for managing parasites, and speculation about what would happen if such controls were not in place. Way back in the early years, I would do a fair number of fish-only systems…you know, the really lame fake coral or dead coral skeleton doctor’s office fish-only systems. When I finally started my own company, I decided I would only do a fish-only if it was w/live rock, because i don’t like anything about them. One of the main things I dislike about them is how hard it was to control the parasites. In a reef tank. It was a never-ending battle, and many fish were lost to it.

I’m not advising people here not to do whatever management protocols make them feel comfortable. I’m just here saying that I abandoned all of those controls decades ago. And it has been successful. Not on one or two tanks in my home, but in I don’t even know how many systems (hundreds, probably). I’m currently collaborating with a zoo CEO on designing a new public aquarium, and this topic is one of our central : how much do those things matter? Do we even need to do them?

I would take the most crypto or oodinium covered fish that this board could give me, and I will take it and drop it into any tank I do without a second thought. No dips, no QT/medication, nothing. I’ll drop it straight in out of the bucket, and won’t spend one second worrying about the outcome. Am I just that lucky?

Again, not advising. Just relaying 30 years of experience on hundreds of thousands of gallons of reef systems and thousands of fish and offering an alternative perspective that might be worth exploring.
 

Gregg @ ADP

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To elaborate:

From the point I abandoned all QT, sterilizers, meds, fish-only systems, curing live rock, etc…so ~ 20-22 years ago…an estimation the breakdown of my fish mortality looks like this:

1) Inter/con specific interactions (including predation): ~80%

2) Under/malnutrition: ~5%

3) natural mortality (aka old age): ~5%

4) accidental (system failure, jumping out, etc): ~5%

5) disease/injury/‘just didn’t make the transition to captivity’: ~5% (of that 5%, maybe 20-25% were ‘treatable’ external parasites)

To paraphrase Jay-Z, I got 99 problems, but ich ain’t one.
 

livinlifeinBKK

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I do reckon if nature has her way, she too would frown on cramping fishes and corals from different locality into little glass boxes and then pray. There is nothing natural about reefing
"nature" would be indifferent to it unless you're turning nature into a human that forms opinions based on experience, logic, and emotions. If nature could speak it seems to me it would be for survival of the fittest with indifference towards what lived and what died. Nature has no opinion.
 

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Couple of things:

Your angle applies to aquaculture. Virtually all of the research literature out there on this topic pertains to AC. That’s an entirely different playing field, because the fish pop densities and environment are so different.

A natural captive reef environment…ie one that incorporates all of the players in the game rather than working to exclude so many…offers many things that help keep those numbers in check. When we bring in various parasites, we also should be bringing in things that eat those parasites. Everything is food for something. When we dry-rock, QT, medicate, etc, we are creating an extremely low-diversity ecosystem, and lack much of that consumer level. I’ve never really bothered to check, but I would bet the corals themselves could take out a lot of propagules.

So really what I see happening in this topic is that there is one accepted methodology for managing parasites, and speculation about what would happen if such controls were not in place. Way back in the early years, I would do a fair number of fish-only systems…you know, the really lame fake coral or dead coral skeleton doctor’s office fish-only systems. When I finally started my own company, I decided I would only do a fish-only if it was w/live rock, because i don’t like anything about them. One of the main things I dislike about them is how hard it was to control the parasites. In a reef tank. It was a never-ending battle, and many fish were lost to it.

I’m not advising people here not to do whatever management protocols make them feel comfortable. I’m just here saying that I abandoned all of those controls decades ago. And it has been successful. Not on one or two tanks in my home, but in I don’t even know how many systems (hundreds, probably). I’m currently collaborating with a zoo CEO on designing a new public aquarium, and this topic is one of our central : how much do those things matter? Do we even need to do them?

I would take the most crypto or oodinium covered fish that this board could give me, and I will take it and drop it into any tank I do without a second thought. No dips, no QT/medication, nothing. I’ll drop it straight in out of the bucket, and won’t spend one second worrying about the outcome. Am I just that lucky?

Again, not advising. Just relaying 30 years of experience on hundreds of thousands of gallons of reef systems and thousands of fish and offering an alternative perspective that might be worth exploring.


While I understand that you wrote the following to try and make a point, this statement flies in the face of my 35+ years as a public aquarium curator, 15 years in the pet industry, and every single book in my reference library:

"I would take the most crypto or oodinium covered fish that this board could give me, and I will take it and drop it into any tank I do without a second thought. No dips, no QT/medication, nothing. I’ll drop it straight in out of the bucket, and won’t spend one second worrying about the outcome. Am I just that lucky?"

So - let's just leave it at that, I do not see how I can bring you back from that extreme of a statement. I would just strongly urge everyone NOT to try something like this.


Jay
 

ca1ore

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I believe the quote “All tanks have ich” is completely false, but most tanks will eventually add it. Managing ich for me isn’t much more than feeding well and keeping stress relatively low.

I generally don’t bother to weigh in on these kinds of threads anymore because the same points get made over and over again. Of course all tanks don’t have ich, though I’d guess that the vast majority do. I always used to say there are two kinds of tanks. Those where the owner knows he/she has ich and those that have ich and the owner doesn’t realize it. Certain fish are hyper sensitive, but most are not and can build up resistance ….. that has been my experience at least. Think your tank is ich free? Add a Achilles tang and you’re likely in for an unpleasant surprise. I know that my system has ich, and has had for close to a decade. The only fish that ever shows spots is the aforementioned Achilles, and only occasionally. I’ve had him for 5 years.

I think folks often fail to understand that correlation is not causation. I’m highly suspicious of any of the so called ‘treatments’ that become the bright shiny object for a while. I doubt that adding something like hydrogen peroxide makes any difference one way or the other. Maintain good water quality and feed fish an adequate, balanced diet and you are 99% of the way there.
 

Mastering the art of locking and unlocking water pathways: What type of valves do you have on your aquarium plumbing?

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