It's all @Paul B's fault... my journey to an immune reef (hopefully!)

[Gweeds1980]

I've seen a PBT in ich management tanks before, I even owned one that was resistant, as well for about a year before trading it for aggression (ironically it died of parasites in its new home within 30 days-- a stress event).

This is a very, very, very rare thing but there are exceptions to every rule.

The difference with "immune" (resistant) in the ocean and resistant in a glass box, as mentioned, is a lot more fish, in a smaller enclosed space, in far less optimal conditions (typically) which makes them "sitting ducks".

Think of it like this --- kids get sick before daycare-- but boy take them around a bunch of other kids in a small enclosed space and they're perpetually sick (and so are the parents if it's their first) for 6 months to 1 year. Then, they become more resilient.

The issue is that the kids are in far more ideal environments, we have access to better medicine when needed, kids can communicate better what is wrong, and they're unlikely to die of the really dangerous things because of vaccinations.

Parasites are animals, and thus there is far less we can do. I'm not really worried about a resistance to ich with my fish because I won't expose them to it. If I ever do, I'll start from square one again. In the long run, I'm losing far less fish and I find this practice more ethical.

That's my personal opinion, coming from ten years of "ich management" myself. We miss the immense difference between "ocean immune" and "small glass miniecosystem immune" with these arguments, time and time again. IMO

Let us also remember if a fish doesn't live 8-10 years or more in captivity, it was not a success.

I'll come back to you in 8-10 years!

I'm not claiming this is a success, yet. I totally agree, there is a vast difference between our tanks and the ocean, which is why i try to keep mine as close as possible to NSW (which I also use). I dose plankton every two hours, nitrate and phosphates are kept a little higher than NSW though. This makes my system less 'natural' than @PaulB's system, but more natural imo for the fish, if you see what i mean? I also run UV to limit parasite numbers.

I do feel however, that this is an 'important' experiment as very few tanks attempt to impart immunity, which is VASTLY different to ich management that you mention.

In very basic terms, I am trying to manage immunity, in the hope that it will deal with whatever diseases I introduce. Ich management looks at trying to control the pathogens themselves and limit the opportunity for them to infect, which is much harder and less effective IMO.

 

[Gweeds1980]

@4FordFamily... I assume the PBT you had which was resistant was either kept in a system which was ich free by you, or by the next owner? If so, it would have lost its immunity.

Tangs are more susceptible to ich as we know, in part due to a thinner mucous layer. They also consume a lot less DHA in their diet in the wild. We can boost that in the aquarium to give them a better immune system.

What could be more ethical than allowing a fishes immune system to do what it's supposed to do?

Do we not try to make our dogs, cats and other pets immune too, is that unethical?

 

[4FordFamily]

@4FordFamily... I assume the PBT you had which was resistant was either kept in a system which was ich free by you, or by the next owner? If so, it would have lost its immunity.

Tangs are more susceptible to ich as we know, in part due to a thinner mucous layer. They also consume a lot less DHA in their diet in the wild. We can boost that in the aquarium to give them a better immune system.

What could be more ethical than allowing a fishes immune system to do what it's supposed to do?

Do we not try to make our dogs, cats and other pets immune too, is that unethical?

No, the PBT I mentioned was during my ten year "tenure" practicing ich management.

A fish did not evolve to live in a small glass cage, where parasites can reproduce exponentially faster and reinfect the same fish en masse. That's the point I'm trying to make. Sorry for the vagueness!

 

[4FordFamily]

I'll come back to you in 8-10 years!

I'm not claiming this is a success, yet. I totally agree, there is a vast difference between our tanks and the ocean, which is why i try to keep mine as close as possible to NSW (which I also use). I dose plankton every two hours, nitrate and phosphates are kept a little higher than NSW though. This makes my system less 'natural' than @PaulB's system, but more natural imo for the fish, if you see what i mean? I also run UV to limit parasite numbers.

I do feel however, that this is an 'important' experiment as very few tanks attempt to impart immunity, which is VASTLY different to ich management that you mention.

In very basic terms, I am trying to manage immunity, in the hope that it will deal with whatever diseases I introduce. Ich management looks at trying to control the pathogens themselves and limit the opportunity for them to infect, which is much harder and less effective IMO.

Ich management is anything other than treating fish for the pathogens they are afflicted by. I didn't have UV or any other methods. I fed good quality food and kept my water parameters strong. Highly varied with selcon, live blackworms, etc.

There are many ways to "manage ich".

 

[Brew12]

There are many ways to "manage ich".

Just like there are many ways to QT fish. Unfortunately, not all of them will work effectively either. I find it sad how many people say they did QT their fish and observed them for 2 weeks before adding them, only to see their systems infected.

I believe there is an effective way to run an ich managed system. Just takes 4 parts. A failure in any single part can cause problems.

1) High quality nutrition
2) Redundant or highly reliable equipment to avoid stressor events
3) Proper stocking
4) Method of limiting parasite numbers such as UV or ozone.

If a person can commit to all 4 of these items, I see no reason why they can't be successful. My problem is when people just pick one or two items off the list and try making it work. If you aren't protecting your system from a heater failure, you are depending on luck to keep your system safe. I see it as being no different than someone who copper treats for 4 days and calls it good or who doesn't test to maintain levels.

 

[Gweeds1980]

Ich management is anything other than treating fish for the pathogens they are afflicted by. I didn't have UV or any other methods. I fed good quality food and kept my water parameters strong. Highly varied with selcon, live blackworms, etc.

There are many ways to "manage ich".

I'm absolutely not trying to start an argument here, I am a keen reader of the disease forum and your knowledge and experience is clearly invaluable to the hobby. However, I have to disagree with your statement that 'Ich management is anything other than treating fish for the pathogens they are afflicted by'.

Surely ich management is exactly what is says on the tin... managing ich. Whilst I do that in part, through the use of UV, everything else is aimed at making my fish immune. Not just to ich, but to as many pathogens as possible. That is managing immunity, not managing ich. As Paul has said several times, the two are not the same.

I come from a background of traditional quarantine... I did it for years with FW and reefs, but I got fed up with something making it through every 5 years or so. I started researching fish immunity and came across @PaulB and his tank... that got me thinking and researching more, to where I am now. As I say, let's compare fish losses in 8-10 years, I can be pretty sure something will have made it into most traditionally quarantined tanks in that time and it will wipe out most fish, I truly have no idea what will have happened in mine by then... maybe everything will have died, but maybe not.

 

[Gweeds1980]

Just like there are many ways to QT fish. Unfortunately, not all of them will work effectively either. I find it sad how many people say they did QT their fish and observed them for 2 weeks before adding them, only to see their systems infected.

I believe there is an effective way to run an ich managed system. Just takes 4 parts. A failure in any single part can cause problems.

1) High quality nutrition
2) Redundant or highly reliable equipment to avoid stressor events
3) Proper stocking
4) Method of limiting parasite numbers such as UV or ozone.

If a person can commit to all 4 of these items, I see no reason why they can't be successful. My problem is when people just pick one or two items off the list and try making it work. If you aren't protecting your system from a heater failure, you are depending on luck to keep your system safe. I see it as being no different than someone who copper treats for 4 days and calls it good or who doesn't test to maintain levels.

True dat.

Hence why I have a spare skimmer, reactor, 2 spare return pumps, spare heaters, temp controller, gyre, UV and wavemakers! I even have a spare sump! Next is a spare tank lol.

Believe it or not, I even have some copper on standby... just in case I get this horribly wrong. I will also add that in the UK we don't need a prescription for CP either... I can buy that from any 24hr pharmacy if I need it. All that is basically in case I have a catastrophic failure and simply need to save my fishes lives, then all bets are off and I'll do whatever needs to be done.

I would however add to that list a 5th... a way of introducing fish to the diseases in the DT so an already compromised immune system doesn't fail on the fish.

How many times have we seen 'my fish recovered from ich without copper, but then I bought a new (insert incredibly expensive and rare fish) and they all got ich and died'...

 

[Paul B]

Jason, I use Larry's food myself and I feel it is probably the best "commercially prepared" food there is. Having said that, And I know and like Larry, I wouldn't use just that food alone (although Larry will disagree with me) He does add pro biotics and that is great but he doesn't add, and I wouldn't expect him to, living pathogens or 95% of the people wouldn't buy his food. As Gweeds said, you don't have to add diseases, all new fish carry diseases (as long as they are not treated in any medication or quarantined for a long time. A short period of observation is fine, like a week but even that will stress a fish unless it is a large enough tank for that fish.

Read that link above that Gweeds linked about stress and disease.

Remember fish in the sea are loaded with parasites on their skin and in their stomach as fish in the sea almost always eat fish and most of them don't quarantine them first. The parasites they eat (at every meal) are processed in their kidney and the kidney then produces the immunity that fish needs to be immune from that parasite. Those parasites are missing in almost 100% of the tanks we keep, therefor that immunity, that is a normal part of the fishes physiology is absent.

I don't see a big push against keeping fish immune the way they were designed to be immune since they were invented by Al Gore. This is very simple but we make it so complicated by buying immune fish, then remove their immunity so we can medicate them when they get sick. To me that is ridiculous and un natural.

I also don't buy the argument that there are more densely populated parasites in a tank then the sea. If the fish are immune, those parasites in a "natural" tank will never reproduce to record numbers because they can't infect fish. All they can do is grab some slime, fall off and reproduce but those young parasites also need to feed and most of them will be killed by the fishes immune system just like in the sea.
I didn't make this up but I do make up stuff about how well I can dance or how much I look like Tom Sellic. Actually the Tom Sellic thing is true And I can dance

But even if the parasite density gradually became higher in a tank, the fishes immune system would just make more anti parasitic substances and it wouldn't bother the fish at all. Fish, parasites, bacteria and viruses all evolved to live together like Supermodels and high heels. If you remove one of those things from a fish you are stunting it's immunity and that is an important part of a fishes health.

No one has to believe any of this. Do an experiment in a quarantined tank. Get a fish loaded with ich, velvet, tuberculosis, Plague, whooping cough or whatever you like and put it in there to see what happens. In my tank or maybe Gweeds tank, nothing would happen except the fish may dance better, perhaps do the macarana.
It seems odd that the two oldest tanks I know of, mine and another member who has a 30 year old tank never quarantines and our fish live forever, never getting sick. Isn't that special.

 

[jasonrusso]

Jason, I use Larry's food myself and I feel it is probably the best "commercially prepared" food there is. Having said that, And I know and like Larry, I wouldn't use just that food alone (although Larry will disagree with me) He does add pro biotics and that is great but he doesn't add, and I wouldn't expect him to, living pathogens or 95% of the people wouldn't buy his food. As Gweeds said, you don't have to add diseases, all new fish carry diseases (as long as they are not treated in any medication or quarantined for a long time. A short period of observation is fine, like a week but even that will stress a fish unless it is a large enough tank for that fish.

Read that link above that Gweeds linked about stress and disease.

Remember fish in the sea are loaded with parasites on their skin and in their stomach as fish in the sea almost always eat fish and most of them don't quarantine them first. The parasites they eat (at every meal) are processed in their kidney and the kidney then produces the immunity that fish needs to be immune from that parasite. Those parasites are missing in almost 100% of the tanks we keep, therefor that immunity, that is a normal part of the fishes physiology is absent.

I don't see a big push against keeping fish immune the way they were designed to be immune since they were invented by Al Gore. This is very simple but we make it so complicated by buying immune fish, then remove their immunity so we can medicate them when they get sick. To me that is ridiculous and un natural.

I also don't buy the argument that there are more densely populated parasites in a tank then the sea. If the fish are immune, those parasites in a "natural" tank will never reproduce to record numbers because they can't infect fish. All they can do is grab some slime, fall off and reproduce but those young parasites also need to feed and most of them will be killed by the fishes immune system just like in the sea.
I didn't make this up but I do make up stuff about how well I can dance or how much I look like Tom Sellic. Actually the Tom Sellic thing is true And I can dance

But even if the parasite density gradually became higher in a tank, the fishes immune system would just make more anti parasitic substances and it wouldn't bother the fish at all. Fish, parasites, bacteria and viruses all evolved to live together like Supermodels and high heels. If you remove one of those things from a fish you are stunting it's immunity and that is an important part of a fishes health.

No one has to believe any of this. Do an experiment in a quarantined tank. Get a fish loaded with ich, velvet, tuberculosis, Plague, whooping cough or whatever you like and put it in there to see what happens. In my tank or maybe Gweeds tank, nothing would happen except the fish may dance better, perhaps do the macarana.
It seems odd that the two oldest tanks I know of, mine and another member who has a 30 year old tank never quarantines and our fish live forever, never getting sick. Isn't that special. [emoji14]

This is pretty far into this thread so maybe I missed it at some point, but how do you introduce a new fish?

For example, I have my system up and running for years with immune fish. Now I want to add a new one. How would I get him ready? Just plop him in and hopefully he doesn't catch anything and starts eating the food which will build up his immune system?

 

[Paul B]

That is correct, just plop him in. I have been posting on this thread for 7 years and in all that time, whenever I have gotten a new fish, I would post it on here. I never posted that I did anything special to introduce the fish except I may introduce it to the other fish by name. Occasionally, as what I did a few weeks ago I will get a fish for free or almost free that is loaded with parasites and I feel it won't last very long or the store gave it to me in the hopes that I can cure it. I also plop that fish into my tank. Sometimes he lives, sometimes he doesn't, but he never effects any other fish and his parasites or whatever was wrong with him helps to add a new strain of whatever he has to allow my fish to become immune to that disease.

A few years ago I acquired a copperband butterfly where the rest of them in the store died. I got him for five bucks and he was in the process of getting last rites and full of ich. I didn't put him right into my reef because he could barely swim and my other fish would have killed him so I put him in a spare 5 gallon tank with copper/formalin and maybe (I forgot ) quinicrine hydrochloride for a couple of days. He looked fine and I put him in my reef.
I had to remove him because my old, very large copperband didn't get along and ripped off all his fins. I put him back in the small tank for a few days and fed him live worms. In a week he was better than new and I gave him away. That story is also in my book.
I have probably added 25 fish in the last 7 years, maybe 50 I don't count, but they either jump out, which happens many times because healthy, spawning fish get all googlie eyed and like to jump. But I just plopped them right in as long as they were well enough to swim.

 

[4FordFamily]

I'm absolutely not trying to start an argument here, I am a keen reader of the disease forum and your knowledge and experience is clearly invaluable to the hobby. However, I have to disagree with your statement that 'Ich management is anything other than treating fish for the pathogens they are afflicted by'.

Surely ich management is exactly what is says on the tin... managing ich. Whilst I do that in part, through the use of UV, everything else is aimed at making my fish immune. Not just to ich, but to as many pathogens as possible. That is managing immunity, not managing ich. As Paul has said several times, the two are not the same.

I come from a background of traditional quarantine... I did it for years with FW and reefs, but I got fed up with something making it through every 5 years or so. I started researching fish immunity and came across @PaulB and his tank... that got me thinking and researching more, to where I am now. As I say, let's compare fish losses in 8-10 years, I can be pretty sure something will have made it into most traditionally quarantined tanks in that time and it will wipe out most fish, I truly have no idea what will have happened in mine by then... maybe everything will have died, but maybe not.

I'm in no way trying to be argumentative either, sorry if I am coming off that way.

Ich management can be done many ways. To many who "attempt" these methods, it's primarily relying on the fish's immune system. You can attempt to support it a myriad of ways but at the end of the day that's what's going on. What I'm saying is that you can do that with nothing at all and rely on nature (certainly not best practice) or as close to "properly" as possible, as Brew outlined.

Just my .02-- that and 2 cents may get you a cup of coffee, friend!

 

[Paul B]

I'm in no way trying to be argumentative either

I am trying to argue with everyone. No I'm not, just kidding.
Everyone here I am sure wants to see healthy fish and many of us have different methods and a different scale to determine what we consider a healthy fish.

 

[Gweeds1980]

I am trying to argue with everyone. No I'm not, just kidding. [emoji14]
Everyone here I am sure wants to see healthy fish and many of us have different methods and a different scale to determine what we consider a healthy fish.

Scale, haha.

 

[Brew12]

For example, I have my system up and running for years with immune fish. Now I want to add a new one. How would I get him ready? Just plop him in and hopefully he doesn't catch anything and starts eating the food which will build up his immune system?

This is one of the beauties of running a truly immune system. Yes, the fish you bring in may not have an immunity but that is ok. Ideally, you will have UV or ozone running to help cut down on the population. The immune fish will also act as decoys and help protect the new fish. Any parasites that drop off the new fish will reproduce in high numbers but the next generation should be limited in that only the ones who attach back to the new fish can reproduce well. You only need to keep the new fish alive long enough for its natural immune system to start limiting the damage the parasites can do.

 

[jasonrusso]

This is one of the beauties of running a truly immune system. Yes, the fish you bring in may not have an immunity but that is ok. Ideally, you will have UV or ozone running to help cut down on the population. The immune fish will also act as decoys and help protect the new fish. Any parasites that drop off the new fish will reproduce in high numbers but the next generation should be limited in that only the ones who attach back to the new fish can reproduce well. You only need to keep the new fish alive long enough for its natural immune system to start limiting the damage the parasites can do.

I just bought a new Vectron 600 at 300gph so I have plenty of CAT 2 UV sterilization.

 

[Gweeds1980]

This is one of the beauties of running a truly immune system. Yes, the fish you bring in may not have an immunity but that is ok. Ideally, you will have UV or ozone running to help cut down on the population. The immune fish will also act as decoys and help protect the new fish. Any parasites that drop off the new fish will reproduce in high numbers but the next generation should be limited in that only the ones who attach back to the new fish can reproduce well. You only need to keep the new fish alive long enough for its natural immune system to start limiting the damage the parasites can do.

Herd immunity...

 

[Paul B]

I just bought a new Vectron 600 at 300gph so I have plenty of CAT 2 UV sterilization.

That sounds like a nice piece of equipment, but not for this type of system that this thread is about where we don't want to kill disease organisms. If we kill them, the fish won't become immune to them

 

[Gweeds1980]

This is pretty far into this thread so maybe I missed it at some point, but how do you introduce a new fish?

For example, I have my system up and running for years with immune fish. Now I want to add a new one. How would I get him ready? Just plop him in and hopefully he doesn't catch anything and starts eating the food which will build up his immune system?

Two ways... one as @PaulB and @Brew12 says is to rely on herd immunity... whereby fish which are not immune are protected by very low pathogen numbers due to the other fishes immunity.

In my tank, I'm not quite there yet... so I developed a 'quarantine' protocol, or more accurately 'pathogen acclimation' protocol.

Goes like this:
Week 1. Feed with main DT diet to give fish building blocks of their adaptive immune system.

Week 2. Start using DT water as the new water in the QT for WCs. I've done this a few times now and do 5% per day for 7 days.

Week 3. Place rocks and sand from the DT into the QT.

Week 4. Observe. The new fish may, or may not, get sick. If it does, the immune system will kick in and it'll fight off the illness. I extend this period to ensure the new fish has been symptom free for 7 days. Then it's into the DT.

I don't feel my tank has been running this system for long enough yet to rely on herd immunity. Although I absolutely will be doing that eventually. I would anticipate about a year or so from now.

So far I have introduced the following fish successfully using this method:

Coral beauty
Green wrasse
Powder blue tang
Cleaner wrasse
Vlamingi tang (despite my better judgement... it was a weak moment!)

As we stand, all these fish are in my DT, living quite happily with all my diseases

 

[Brew12]

whereby fish which are not immune are protected by very low pathogen numbers due to the other fishes immunity.

I would point out this is also one of the main reasons to run UV or ozone. It will also help keep numbers down while the fish build immunity.

 

[Paul B]

We also need to remember that the fish we buy from an LFS were in the ocean a couple of weeks ago eating the proper foods and they are already immune from everything. We just need to strengthen that immunity by not dosing with anything and put them in a natural tank that is large enough, feed foods with live bacteria in them and keep them exposed to whatever they were exposed to in the sea, which was everything.