Where the gas exchange happens is for me not important. What is important is that it happens. As I stated earlier, my current set up has a HOB skimmer for gas exchange, because I can't surface skim to take advantage of the gas exchange at the top of the water and the DOCs pretty much ensure very little exchange is taking place. I figured this out the hard way.
I do exactly that myself; never had a problem acclimating fish to the tank. My LFS also has a lower than normal SG.... After allowing 30 minutes for the temp to equalize, I cut open the top of the bag, rotate it 90 degrees so that the open end is down in the water, and allow the fish to swim out on its own. This acclimates the fish very quickly and nicely.
Almost all LFSs run the SG low because the dealers do this to deal with disease and secondarily gas exchange. They just follow suit because their systems have similar sorts of problems. I think it starts at the dealers, I am not sure how collectors run their systems as I have never been to a collecting station.
I’ve never thought about dissolved oxygen capacity to support fish. But to your point it would be interesting if someone had data around minimum levels of dissolved oxygen.
May not be a bad idea to have an oxygen reactor. But an oxygen reactor must be frequently dosed with ozone to prevent bacteria growth.
www.reef2reef.com
Im in what info you want and need? I dont know if its where you purchase your fish from and well if a different country has different protocols in Qt there fish on arrival and or captive bread. All my fish are captive bread as it stands.
www.reef2reef.com
It seems to me the most efficient 'gas exchange' occurs at the surface of the tank water. I also tend to believe in higher flow in general - i.e. if you've even been snorkeling, etc - near reefs the amount of flow is insane compared to most tanks that I see.
I disagree (kind of). I do not think anything done here will answer these questions. To answer those questions, you would need a much more controlled environment (or at least a way to have everyone posting answer multiple questions) - far to many for me to make up or list. At best - to me it seems it will be a list of either successful or failure tanks - which is what we have now. People posting their experiences. For example what if person A buys fish from an LFS that does QT - they might have better results than Person B that buys from from an online vendor that does not. etc. etc. etc. IMHO -it seems a better 'plan' might be to start with a tank that has either CI or velvet present - and then compare whether QT was done or not up-front and the mortality that either occurs or does not.if this doesn’t work, we know to abandon claims and go with fallow and qt
and if it does work, fish will be saved from loss. Look at the response this thread got in the fish disease forum
This thread helps new reefs run without fallow or qt pls post
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/how-to-run-your-new-tank-without-fallow-and-quarantine-post-here-for-guidance-live-time-we-track-your-tank-out-to-eight-months.757418/ Please post new or current reefs there for disease control arrangement help They use methods that don't include fallow or...
Here is my experience. I do not QT at my house. Never have. Never had losses. Fed dry food, used dry rock, etc. to set up my current tank (in build thread). I had a couple fish that from time to time got a couple white spots - which were quickly gone and did not recur perhaps for weeks. I did not see any huge stressors, etc - before they developed. Life was good (no disease for years). I ordered a couple fish from an online vendor - followed their acclimation instructions - within a couple days they were dead. Within a week the rest of my tank was dead. For YEARS - I never had a problem. All the sudden every fish is dead. My opinion is that the majority of the time people can add fish - and there won't be a problem - until there is a problem.
No QT means two things in people's minds. First I don't care and I just threw my fish in. This is what I will be smeared for. The second way which I actually practice is more thoughtful, but will be morphed into something I taken out of context, like a game of telephone.
This discussion is born of a base thinking. The two viewpoints on that thinking are maintain a sterile environment that only the things that I approve of enter or it's counter point is that the ocean is messy and I should look for biological competition and diversity. This is not to say that the two viewpoints don't have overlap in fact they do and that IMO is where the real discussion can take place.
Most people are aware of the sterile thinking, in fact at some level most have it. Even people that say they don't use QT. I used to have it so I get what is being said. I am not going to re-hash it here because I think it is well worn. Please do not say that I don't understand because I do, like I have said I have lived it and what I found over my 35 years of this is that it is less successful than a more natural approach.
I am going to speak to my approach because I don't want to put words or thoughts in the mouths or minds of other natural advocates, but I will say that many many many of the ideas that I use are rooted in the same thinking as those people.
First off no QT for me does not mean do nothing. That is entirely incorrect and I don't like being smeared with it. I have suggested many times to people having trouble to implement some of the ideas that I am using and they tell me that it is too hard and they aren't interested. Unfortunately they then go to a QT method to face a new set of challenges. THERE IS NO EASY WAY out of this!!!!!!!!
1. Gas exchange gas exchange gas exchange. This was the first thing that I observed to be key to no QT. I got this idea ultimately from my time in the Philippines. Here is what I saw on the "reef"
Guesses as to how many GPH this is? Mine is a lot, and I have gone with that. Over the years I have perfected how to get massive turn over without blowing everything around. You can see my build thread for what I have done if you are curious. My thought for the aquariums is huge surface agitation and surface skimming through overflows. This creates the best situation I have been able to come up with to ensure the air outside of the aquarium is in equilibrium. I would like to say use protein skimmers because their gas exchange is huge but they do other things that I don't like and that out weighs their awesome gas exchange.
Addendum to gas exchange is something that I have come to recently understand. It first came with the idea of ph being depressed from household CO2. I finally tested my household CO2 and I just about dropped dead with the amount of CO2 that is in the house. Once again you can see my build thread for the numbers and the solution. My conclusion was that if the household CO2 was high from the two humans in it, wouldn't it make sense that the O2 would be depressed? I went with this theory. I believe it is solid, and dovetails into my massive oxygen requirements.
Why I think elevated O2 is important for successful non-QT, or more importantly a successful aquarium. First off oxygen affects metabolism. Metabolism drives immune response. If you are being slowly suffocated it is hard for your body to fight infection, it is more concerned with basic function. I don't think most collectors distributors care about gas exchange because it adds capital costs that are hard to recoup. Second along the same lines, digestion is a huge consumer of resources in almost any creature. Lowered oxygen impedes digestive function at time that is most critical for the creature. Lastly most parasites are going to target the gills of fish. Because this is where the nutrients and fuel are at. This further impedes the fishes ability to uptake oxygen which affects the other two items. All of this creates a negatively reinforced spiral.
Next up in my thinking on non-QT is biological. This is a two part approach. The first thought is that active predation of parasites that fall off of the fish in a biodiverse tank helps limit the amount to re-infect. The goal isn't elimination the goal is load reduction. Leaving the parasite present but under-performing, which segues nicely into the next part that I have taken from @Paul B. That is inoculation through constant low level infection. This ensures that when a new fish with a high parasitic load is introduced to the tank the fish that are currently in the tank are most likely immune and can easily deal with the infection. I am aware of things that don't have free swimming stages are unaffected but that is where I fall back on gas exchange.
Finally meds. Medication has consequences both to the fish and the biome that they are introduced into. I think we are all aware of the biome problems, there are thoughts on how to deal with that, but little regard is taken on the damage done to the fish. We don't yet seem to have a good way to try to mitigate the effects the meds on the fish. IME the meds hit the fishes digestive tract ... HARD. This is the worst because most fish have endured lengthy transit as @Jay Hemdal pointed out. They usually don't eat and are medicated the entire trip. This means their reserves are depleted and just when they need food the most they can't process it. I believe that it can be so bad that as soon as the fish eats it's system will shut down and it will die.
Fish eat anything, why are they so picky in our tanks. I have vomited in seawater and fish came from seemingly nowhere to chow down. My wife as feed fish cheerios to get them to come out. My dormate in the Philippines would feed his net collected fish Tetra freshwater flake. All of this, and more, for me point to something being wrong with the fishes food intake when they arrive at our aquariums. I believe more specifically their digestion.
These are the two core prongs of my view of a non-QTed system, gas exchange and biodiversity. Also why eschew meds. I am not against them I just believe that there are cons and they should be weighed against the pros before being used. Too many are either unaware or nonchalant about the cons, and I find this infuriating. Are there exceptions in all of this ... of course yes as in any approach. I am not per se against the sterility thinking and the QT that comes with it, but what I have found in my time and experience is that that thinking produces fragile systems that are prone to crash. Will all QT'ed systems crash, I don't know, but my experience tells me that this is the case.
