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

[Gweeds1980]

Gweeds, the way you feed, "all" your paired fish should be spawning as I know they will. Spawning goes along with immunity and if your fish become truly immune, only being run over by a school bus, twice will kill them and disease will be a non issue like it has been for me for decades.

Thanks Paul, it's interesting to note that the only paired fish I have are the clowns and the humbugs... the clowns have been laying regularly for nigh on 6 months, well before I started this feeding regime. However, the humbugs started breeding behaviour (darkened colouration, male bobbing in a repetitive fashion, shimmying against each other and cleaning of a rock) only this week.

By all accounts acanthurus tangs will succumb to ich at some point... be interesting to see what happens with my OST as it was infested when I had the original breakout but I haven't seen a single spot since.

Or... It's all luck and has nothing to do with science... in which case I may as well just sit and wait for the apocalypse [emoji6]

 

[Paul B]

Just as a point, my reef is far from balanced. My nitrates are 160, PO4 is 2.0 but parameters that far off don't seem to matter much to healthy fish and corals. Of course I can't keep the delicate corals many people keep and I am sure Tahoe can keep much more delicate corals than I can as many people can. I am more interested in spawning, immune fish than corals. I would need to drastically cut down on my feeding to get my nitrates much lower if I wished to keep that type of a tank but I like to see all my fish spawning al the time. For many years I kept my tank with low nitrates and phosphates and kept beautiful corals but my tank was never meant to be a thing of beauty, it is and always has been an experiment and I treat it as such. I do things to this tank that most people should not do and I know that.
At my age, with all the time I have in this hobby I am a little beyond trying to figure how to keep things. I know things I can't keep and things I can keep so I don't screw up and put in a beautiful, colorful, delicate coral that I know will croak. And I have stupidly killed many of them. I am actually on the downside of this hobby and in a few years start giving away most of my stuff as I probably won't live forever. My wife is also not well and requires more and more of my time so I have less time to spend on this.
Many people on here have much nicer looking tanks than I have and I am jealous of some of them.
I go for the odd and different. I prefer clingfish to tangs, pipefish to angels, cusk eels and dragonettes to butterflies, except copperbands which are one of my favorites.

 

[Gweeds1980]

Just read a very interesting paper on the ability of Docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) to render parasites unviable...

DHA is better known as omega 3... a fatty acid which is mostly found in fish oils, particularly in the skin...

Could this possibly be evolutions way of dealing with those pesky skin parasites??

I can foresee an experiment involving a fish afflicted with velvet and some cod liver oil...

 

[Tahoe61]

My point is that do not lend too much weight to one tank and methods. We are mostly all adults and know that not every thing posted on the net is objective and true to fact just because it's presented as such.
I sincerely encourage your endeavor.
I love thinking out of the box and hope you go on to provide updates.

 

[Paul B]

By all accounts acanthurus tangs will succumb to ich at some point...

Don't believe that as that is an old wives tale that I heard from an old wife. For most of the life of my tank I had tangs, mostly hippo's but I have had my share of naso,s, lipstick and all the others.
In a regular tank like most people keep they are more suseptable to ich but they also become immune just as all fish do. When Al Gore, who invented immunity was giving out immunity, he didn't omit tangs.
Tangs are more susceptible to ich because "IMO" and only my opinion, they are almost always a schooling fish and due to that they have a more fine tuned lateral line. This "advantage"o the fish is a determent in a glass tank as the glass of the tank really screws up their nervous system but many people will disagree with that.

 

[Gweeds1980]

My point is that do not lend too much weight to one tank and methods. We are mostly all adults and know that not every thing posted on the net is objective and true to fact just because it's presented as such.
I sincerely encourage your endeavor.
I love thinking out of the box and hope you go on to provide updates.

Thank you... I think there's enough differences in my and Paul B's approach to the same to avoid and copyright issues.

For a start, I do like pretty delicate corals and would love my tank to be able to support thriving acros.

Also my nitrates and phosphates are much more than his... his tank is much older than mine and I live in the UK... [emoji4]

 

[Paul B]

DHA is better known as omega 3... a fatty acid which is mostly found in fish oils, particularly in the skin...

I have been writing for many years about fish oil. I take the stuff myself. In the sea fish get a large percentage of their diet as oil.

 

[ritter6788]

But don't let it out or the companies that make quarantine tanks and medications will go the way of the Dodo

Like people that write books? ;Bookworm

 

[Gweeds1980]

Also my nitrates and phosphates are much more than his... his tank is much older than mine and I live in the UK... [emoji4][/QUOTE]

LOWER... much lower...!
It was late, cider had been involved.

 

[Paul B]

I thought you couldn't get live blackworms in the UK.

Like people that write books? ;Bookworm

Yeah, like them.
I wrote about fish oil in my book because I know people can't argue with me in a book. The people who disagree with my methods won't and should not read my book because it is a totally different way of thinking from the inside the box thinking that most of this hobby goes by. It also has a lot of old school technology that no one agrees with any more. So don't read my book. . My tank runs on smoke and mirrors and my fish, especially my pipefish are plastic.
I think Gweeds has a good idea but he will encounter a lot of flack along the way and I applaud him for taking the challenge.
Of course this forum is more tolerant than that other forum so he should be fine.
There are a few ways to run a tank. Of course one way, the more common way is to quarantine everything and don't feed live foods as they may carry disease. That is a fine way to run a tank if that is what you want.
If you want a natural tank you need to feed live foods with live bacteria and pathogens the way fish live in the sea. Both methods work if you stick with the procedures of that method, but they can't be mixed. A quarantined tank needs everything to be sterile all the time, no parasites or disease organisms. A natural tank depends on those things and allows the fishes immune system to do what it is paid to do.
Both systems have flaws, both systems can crash.
I lose fish occasionally but never from disease. We sometimes die without having a disease. We can get an allergic reaction, have a rib puncture a lung, get poisoned, suffocate, fall off a building or get run over by a bus. I have seen my fish try to jump out and hit the light and die. Maybe they get concussions, I don't know.

 

[Gweeds1980]

I thought you couldn't get live blackworms in the UK.

You can... there is a thriving black market in anything illicit... I can get hold of all sorts... if I told you how I'd have to kill you [emoji6]

Or I get them from an old FW buddy down the road who rears them...

 

[4FordFamily]

No, it's just how I keep my fish and I am not a trend setter except in the way I comb my hair.



No, it is not. Well balanced has to do with chemistry. Immunity means your fish will not and never have been sick even if exposed to pathogens.



Maybe, maybe not. If you quarantined them for 72 days, they are not immune.



That could very well happen.



Mine has been ticking for 46 years and I am tired of that noise, Tick, Tick, Tick. If it explodes now, it has had one heck of a run and I would call that a success, ticking or not.

I just came home with another one of these and he found his cousins in my tank and they are all playing and texting each other.

No one can diminish your success, although you don't keep tangs or otherwise disease prone fish by and large -- but it's the repeatability of your success that's the issue. For every Paul there are perhaps tens of thousands of "others" that have lost and lose fish they shouldn't have.

 

[4FordFamily]

Don't believe that as that is an old wives tale that I heard from an old wife. For most of the life of my tank I had tangs, mostly hippo's but I have had my share of naso,s, lipstick and all the others.
In a regular tank like most people keep they are more suseptable to ich but they also become immune just as all fish do. When Al Gore, who invented immunity was giving out immunity, he didn't omit tangs.
Tangs are more susceptible to ich because "IMO" and only my opinion, they are almost always a schooling fish and due to that they have a more fine tuned lateral line. This "advantage"o the fish is a determent in a glass tank as the glass of the tank really screws up their nervous system but many people will disagree with that.

Back to numbers - tens of thousands of dead tangs unable to fight ich like some zebrasoma, naso, and some bristletooth tangs would disagree. I would wager a $100 bet that if you dropped an Achilles in your tank that it would die within 6 months, but I can't get past the ethics of betting on an animal's life. But you don't and admittedly haven't kept acanthurus tangs in ich management systems.

Please don't spread this, there's some credence to what else you say, this is NOT a wive's tale, friend. Not any more of a tale than saying many wrasse are far more capable of fighting parasites even in a closed loop system than other fish. This is also true. Wrasse that burrow in sand at night or sleep in mucous cocoons are more able to readily fight off even velvet, in my experience somewhere betweeen 25-50% of them do so long-term.

For the record - I've seen several orange shoulder and sohal tangs kept in ich management environments for some time in the past. So it's not ALL acanthurus tangs, but most. I've had the odd clown tang I kept in ich management tanks but the vast majority slowly died.

 

[Gweeds1980]

Back to numbers - tens of thousands of dead tangs unable to fight ich like some zebrasoma, naso, and some bristletooth tangs would disagree. I would wager a $100 bet that if you dropped an Achilles in your tank that it would die within 6 months, but I can't get past the ethics of betting on an animal's life. But you don't and admittedly haven't kept acanthurus tangs in ich management systems.

Please don't spread this, there's some credence to what else you say, this is NOT a wife's tale, friend. Not any more of a tale than saying many wrasse are far more capable of fighting parasites even in a closed loop system than other fish. This is also true. Wrasse that burrow in sand at night or sleep in mucous cocoons are more readily to fight off even velvet, in my experience somewhere betweeen 25-50% of them do so long-term.

For the record - I've seen several orange shoulder and sohal tangs kept in ich management environments for some time in the past. So it's not ALL acanthurus tangs, but most. I've had the odd clown tang I kept in ich management tanks but the vast majority slowly died.

Thanks for that, for the record I absolutely understand where you're coming from on this and largely agree.

I do not have the experience with reefs that you do. I would suggest that I do have the experience with regards to keeping a strict QT protocol. I kept this with all my various FW tanks going back to my late teens... so about 18 years or so. By and large it was successful, but I lost all sorts over the years to various infections which made it through...

Dats, high end plecs, snakeheads, discus, African and American cichlids all eventually succumbed to either FW WS, fungal or bacterial infections. I believe (and it may only be me) that this was in large part due to two reasons.
1. My occasional sloppiness which led to a pathogen being introduced.
2. The lack of resistance of the fish due to being kept in 'sterile' conditions.

The two are obviously linked. I cannot change me... I honestly could not tell you, in the majority of cases, what went wrong, thus 1 above cannot be changed. What I can change is 2... so why not give it a go?

I believe I have the relevant skills to do so and I totally understand both the concept and the difficulty of keeping a system with pathogens present, but in low numbers.

I run UV, this will not be changed... I anticipate that this will aid in the destruction of a number of pathogens to keep levels below 'infestation'.

The question I would ask is why those tens of thousands of tangs were unable to fight ich? Is it due to an inherent inability to stave of attack from the parasite? Evidence suggests no... otherwise over the millions of years of evolution, they would have died out already. Is it due to their immune response being overwhelmed due to the vast numbers of parasites in a closed system as opposed to the reef? Far more likely.

What I am striving for here is to keep levels of all things (good and bad, chemical and pathogenic) to as close to real reef levels as possible... thus allowing the fishes immune system to respond in a successful manner.

I joke when I say I'll know I've been successful when I can purposely introduce velvet and my fish survive. A fish which already has symptoms is likely near enough dead without some serious intervention (which is well documented on this fine forum). The problem is, we only know these fish have the disease by the symptoms it displays.

My QT protocol under this 'immune' system is still under development, but I will be slowly and carefully introducing all new fish to the pathogens in my tank in order that their immune systems can keep pace.

For anyone interested, I'll add another post shortly to show how I've achieved this with my coral beauty (which was guaranteed disease free when I obtained it).

IMHO and like Paul B, this is just my opinion (with a bit of science and fish guts thrown in), I believe my method is a sustainable and viable alternative to the strict 'sterile' QT protocols adopted by the majority.

Cheers.

 

[robby2782]

Back to numbers - tens of thousands of dead tangs unable to fight ich like some zebrasoma, naso, and some bristletooth tangs would disagree. I would wager a $100 bet that if you dropped an Achilles in your tank that it would die within 6 months, but I can't get past the ethics of betting on an animal's life. But you don't and admittedly haven't kept acanthurus tangs in ich management systems.

Please don't spread this, there's some credence to what else you say, this is NOT a wife's tale, friend. Not any more of a tale than saying many wrasse are far more capable of fighting parasites even in a closed loop system than other fish. This is also true. Wrasse that burrow in sand at night or sleep in mucous cocoons are more readily to fight off even velvet, in my experience somewhere betweeen 25-50% of them do so long-term.

For the record - I've seen several orange shoulder and sohal tangs kept in ich management environments for some time in the past. So it's not ALL acanthurus tangs, but most. I've had the odd clown tang I kept in ich management tanks but the vast majority slowly died.

I've seen similar threads regarding the quarantine process being unnecessary, yet never commented until now about how irresponsible this is for new hobbyists, existing hobbyists, as well as the life of the fish and not to mention the pocket book. I have known of dozens of hobbyists over the nearly three decades I've been in the aquarium hobby, including my father who owned an aquatic pet store when I was a child, that have exited over devastating losses because they thought quarantining was "a waste of time" or "didn't have enough room in their home", and then the tank is wiped out by one of several types of diseases or parasites that wasn't present prior to adding the fish.

To solely leverage a single unique experience over an abundance of other documented experiences is similar, in my opinion, to stating that cigarettes are not dangerous because there are older people whom have smoked for decades that haven't died of cancer or COPD/emphysema. Perhaps this is hyperbole, but the mortality of a living thing is impacted in both scenarios; so why take an unnecessary risk of a life, or waste your current investment?

 

[Gweeds1980]

My 'immune' QT protocols.

It's worth noting first that I do not suggest anyone follows this. This has worked for me... once so far. That could well be luck!

If you do try this, and it doesn't work, then remember IT WASN'T MY FAULT!

Also, my fish came from a guaranteed disease free system, so step one has not been completed with this fish, but as this is the 'normal' part, I can't envisage any problems arising.

1. Treat all new fish as per accepted 'sterile' QT protocols, I will be doing 30 days copper treatment at therapeutic levels and treating any other visible or quantifiable pathogens as per accepted norms.

2. Day 1 of 'immune' QT... commence feeding with the same foods as DT. 7 days duration. Remove all copper and other medications.

3. Day 8. Perform 20% water change using NSW from same source as DT as the new water. Do this daily for 7 days.

4. Day 15, place live rock from DT sump into QT. Stop water changes.

5. Day 22. Resume 20% daily WC but using DT water as new water.

6. Day 29, introduce new fish into DT.

No problems arose from this method with my coral beauty. However, should I notice any symptoms of any kind developing all WC will cease and fish will be observed. One symptoms cease then resume above protocol.

If symptoms worsen, remove from 'immune' QT into sterile QT and treat as per accepted norms. Once treatment completed, restart from day 1 of immune protocols.

 

[Gweeds1980]

I've seen similar threads regarding the quarantine process being unnecessary, yet never commented until now about how irresponsible this is for new hobbyists, existing hobbyists, as well as the life of the fish and not to mention the pocket book. I have known of dozens of hobbyists over the nearly three decades I've been in the aquarium hobby, including my father who owned an aquatic pet store when I was a child, that have exited over devastating losses because they thought quarantining was "a waste of time" or "didn't have enough room in their home", and then the tank is wiped out by one of several types of diseases or parasites that wasn't present prior to adding the fish.

To solely leverage a single unique experience over an abundance of other documented experiences is similar, in my opinion, to stating that cigarettes not dangerous because there are older people whom have smoked for decades that haven't died of cancer or COPD/emphysema. Perhaps this is hyperbole, but the mortality of a living thing is impacted in both scenarios; so why take an unnecessary risk of a life, or waste your current investment?

Because millions of years of evolution suggests it's possible.

Also, please, please, please do not confuse this with 'not quarantining'. I do quarantine, in fact for a longer period that the accepted norm for fish.

I am in no way encouraging ANYONE to follow my example.

All living things have to battle disease and parasites... it is a fact of life. Fish are no different. Most people (me included until very recently) strive to keep their systems disease free and that is very sensible but IMO we are stripping those fish of resistance to the very pathogens we are trying to defeat. Why not let the fish have a bash at defeating them? I am trying to give the fish the tools to do that.

Again, please, please, please do not confuse this with not quarantining!!

 

[jaws789832]

Both methods work if you stick with the procedures of that method, but they can't be mixed. A quarantined tank needs everything to be sterile all the time, no parasites or disease organisms. A natural tank depends on those things and allows the fishes immune system to do what it is paid to do.

I do mixed procedures and it seems to be working for me. Every new fish I buy I do place in quarantine but mainly for observation only. I don't treat prophylactically but just observe them for a month. If I see sign of disease I do then treat them accordingly. While in there I only feed live foods though, blackworms, baby brine, and if all is going well and I am not treating, Pods. I figured I don't want to purposefully put a diseased fish into the lions den of my DT, and I want him as healthy as possible when he does go in. Plus by observing him for a month I can get him used to my feeding schedule and make sure he is eating correctly. I have had great luck with this system and probably will keep it up. Is my tank disease free? I really have no idea. Are my fish immune? once again no idea, but everything is fat happy healthy and breeding so something must be going right. My copperband has pretty much doubled in size, the 2 mandys are little sausages, Tangs are fat and look like pigs. 6 line Wrasse is a joker and loves to show off whenever you are next to tank, and the clowns are pretty much like rabbits and always protecting their eggs.

 

[robby2782]

Because millions of years of evolution suggests it's possible.

Also, please, please, please do not confuse this with 'not quarantining'. I do quarantine, in fact for a longer period that the accepted norm for fish.

I am in no way encouraging ANYONE to follow my example.

All living things have to battle disease and parasites... it is a fact of life. Fish are no different. Most people (me included until very recently) strive to keep their systems disease free and that is very sensible but IMO we are stripping those fish of resistance to the very pathogens we are trying to defeat. Why not let the fish have a bash at defeating them? I am trying to give the fish the tools to do that.

Again, please, please, please do not confuse this with not quarantining!!

I actually didn't intend to refer to you, per se, but I'm not sure how your comment about evolution has anything to do with introducing an animal into a man-made controlled environment is relevant to the argument about no quarantine process at all. Besides, you are quarantining based on your prior posts.

 

[Gweeds1980]

I actually didn't intend to refer to you, per se, but I'm not sure where your comment about evolution has anything to do with introducing an animal into a man-made controlled environment is relevant to the argument about not quarantine at all. Besides, you are quarantining based on your prior posts.

Yes I am... hence my comment of not confusing this with not quarantining!

The point of my reference to evolution is that even though we are putting these fish into closed systems, with fake water, run by electronics and in our living rooms... they are here because of the millions of years of evolution that went before, that has included the pathogenic arms race and thus the development of immunity and resistance.

I QT in order to control the pathogens in my DT, not to stop them from getting in there in the first place.

Bu example, I will have velvet in my system at some point... but I want to be the one to introduce it, in a controlled manner and with full knowledge that my fish already have resistance to it... NOT by throwing in a heavily infested fish and crossing my fingers... that would be foolish and a sure way to guarantee failure.