"Ich Management"

[kboogie]

Today - "Darwinism" is often used by opponent of the concept of evolution in a derogatory manner in order to insinuate that it is an "ism" (believe) and not science. Scientist very seldom use it.

I feel you appropriately captured why "Darwinism" was used.

Modern medicines and methods can explain why expected life time (with is calculated by a average - not median) have rise among certain populations (among those that can afford them) because infant mortality tends to decrease very much among these populations.

I hope it is okay if I respectfully disagree with the use of 'average' for life expectancy. When doing survival analysis on non-normal, highly skewed distributions, you use the median and not the mean because the mean is greatly influenced by the skew, in the case of life expectancy, that is the infant mortality numbers. You will find that means are used to simplify the explanation. In addition to the skew, the use of the median is even more important when looking at samples vs true populations (knowing every case).

Not trying to be argumentative. It is a common thing that happens. People in my field who have to use the information for high-value predictions always debate with the marketing people about accurately communicating what is happening versus making it easier to understand. I'm a huge believer in educating people, which is why I always took the time to explain these types of things.

 

[Lasse]

It's the very first post in this thread! I'm bad off.....

No - do not missunderstand me - I did not meant under debate in this thread - it was a general conclusion off how most people look at cleaner shrimps and ich. I love to read that study because I want to extend my knowledge

Sincerely Lasse

 

[Lasse]

Definition. Life expectancy at birth is the average lifespan a newborn can be expected to live, assuming that age-specific mortality levels remain constant.

Source OECD

Sincerely Lasse

 

[Staghorn]

I think you’re all wrong!! I add a pinch of ginger, garlic, pepper and butter to all my fish, and no ick….. in fact they are delicious!!!

 

[SeaWhatYouSave]

I wanted to add my two cents here. I've been lurking this site and practicing ich management for years but only recently joined.

I've tried all the various management techniques and in my experience, there are two things that are far more important than all the others.

First, keeping temperatures low is absolutely critical. Low temps means slower parasite spread which means more time for fish to fight the infection. I run my tanks around 75-76 degrees now for this reason, and I rarely see any random parasite outbreaks. In fact, the only time I see outbreaks is if my chiller is having issues and my temperature spikes.

Second, you have to be strategic about when you add fish. The key to ich management is preventing a parasite outbreak from snowballing out of control, so one of the most important things to do is to avoid creating a snowball by adding new fish at the wrong times. When you add a fish to your tank, it is often weak and malnourished due to all of the travel and stress it's been experiencing. Therefore, any new fish you add to a tank with low levels of ich are pretty much guaranteed to get ich immediately. When your fish are showing increased signs of ich or you just had a death due to ich, do not add any fish! Wait until at least a month after you last saw ich symptoms. Also, never add a visibly sick fish to your tank, and don't add more than one or two fish at once (because this can cause an outbreak if all of the new become sick simultaneously).

I've been running UV sterilizers for years in various configurations but they haven't seen to have much effect on parasites, even with a 55 watt sterilizer on a 60 gallon system! They probably help but nowhere near as much as lowering temps.

I don't believe H2O2 dosing to be effective at all based on my own experiences. The variety of reef safe cures that I have tried have always failed, sometimes also killing coral in the process.

 

[Jay Hemdal]

I wanted to add my two cents here. I've been lurking this site and practicing ich management for years but only recently joined.

I've tried all the various management techniques and in my experience, there are two things that are far more important than all the others.

First, keeping temperatures low is absolutely critical. Low temps means slower parasite spread which means more time for fish to fight the infection. I run my tanks around 75-76 degrees now for this reason, and I rarely see any random parasite outbreaks. In fact, the only time I see outbreaks is if my chiller is having issues and my temperature spikes.

Second, you have to be strategic about when you add fish. The key to ich management is preventing a parasite outbreak from snowballing out of control, so one of the most important things to do is to avoid creating a snowball by adding new fish at the wrong times. When you add a fish to your tank, it is often weak and malnourished due to all of the travel and stress it's been experiencing. Therefore, any new fish you add to a tank with low levels of ich are pretty much guaranteed to get ich immediately. When your fish are showing increased signs of ich or you just had a death due to ich, do not add any fish! Wait until at least a month after you last saw ich symptoms. Also, never add a visibly sick fish to your tank, and don't add more than one or two fish at once (because this can cause an outbreak if all of the new become sick simultaneously).

I've been running UV sterilizers for years in various configurations but they haven't seen to have much effect on parasites, even with a 55 watt sterilizer on a 60 gallon system! They probably help but nowhere near as much as lowering temps.

I don't believe H2O2 dosing to be effective at all based on my own experiences. The variety of reef safe cures that I have tried have always failed, sometimes also killing coral in the process.

Welcome to Reef2Reef!

Yes, I still hear a lot of people saying to “raise the water temperature” to treat ich. That’s an artifact from FW ich, it just makes marine ich get worse due to 81 degrees being the “sweet spot” for Cryptocayon’s reproduction.

None of the reef safe cures really work. Most are snake oil, or are known ich treatments, but at very low doses that don’t work.

In my ich management article here, I explain that it should really be used as a last resort, and people need to be proactive in management - it isn’t an easy way out.