Myths and Misinformation - fish edition

[HankstankXXL750]

Just to clarify - overall nutrition is important…..long term. For a short term acute issues, it is more about the fish getting sufficient calories - adding vitamins or HUFAs won’t stop diseases.
The trouble is, people think they can control disease through diet, and that isn’t true.
Jay

I agree and did not make any statement about nutrition playing a role in healing a sick or damaged fish. Just that providing appropriate nutrition can play a role in helping to avoid illness.
If we don’t have one, maybe an article on what actually constitutes good nutrition for our fish. As you stated in my post about my angler, you told me that krill isn’t good because it has been blanched. This is something I didn’t know and have used it (in conjunction with other uncooked frozen marine items) forever. I know or assume that fresh is better than frozen, but I am only occasionally able to buy that as we don’t have an oriental market near us.

 

[MnFish1]

I agree and did not make any statement about nutrition playing a role in healing a sick or damaged fish. Just that providing appropriate nutrition can play a role in helping to avoid illness.
If we don’t have one, maybe an article on what actually constitutes good nutrition for our fish. As you stated in my post about my angler, you told me that krill isn’t good because it has been blanched. This is something I didn’t know and have used it (in conjunction with other uncooked frozen marine items) forever. I know or assume that fresh is better than frozen, but I am only occasionally able to buy that as we don’t have an oriental market near us.

I think what you're saying is clear - and obvious. There are many posts here suggesting for example that 'pellets' are bad - one needs to use 'xxxx ground up yyyy'. There are also multiple articles about this fallacy - and the problems with individual hobbyists trying to make up live food menus from their grocery store - not providing enough essential vitamins, etc. Of course I would expect an anglerfish would not eat pellets - I'm talking in general. I would ask @Jay Hemdal - what is fed in the majority of large aquariums in the US - which hopefully are attempting to keep their fish as long as possible - is it live - a mix - or a combination - or a special mixture individual to each institution. My guess is the last. But - I asked - because I would like to know

 

[HankstankXXL750]

I think what you're saying is clear - and obvious. There are many posts here suggesting for example that 'pellets' are bad - one needs to use 'xxxx ground up yyyy'. There are also multiple articles about this fallacy - and the problems with individual hobbyists trying to make up live food menus from their grocery store - not providing enough essential vitamins, etc. Of course I would expect an anglerfish would not eat pellets - I'm talking in general. I would ask @Jay Hemdal - what is fed in the majority of large aquariums in the US - which hopefully are attempting to keep their fish as long as possible - is it live - a mix - or a combination - or a special mixture individual to each institution. My guess is the last. But - I asked - because I would like to know

I got a tour and fed the sharks at the Denver Aquarium and it was led by the head biologist. Was very informative as she was willing and eager to discuss their process and give guidance for my home use. There they fed a lot of fresh seafood while, chopped, shredded etc. They also fed live foods that they either got or cultured in their other facility.
As to my angler I fed live glass shrimp for a long time, but eventually weaned to frozen. Krill seemed to work the best, but I found out when I had a problem that krill alone was probably not meeting all of his requirements.

 

[lion king]

Your response seem to take the quote as “Nutrition is THE only foundation to health” I read it as “nutrition is only THE foundation to health”. Read the second way, I take to mean that if you do t provide adequate nutrition survival is limited.

If as a human you eat only pop tarts and coke, you will most likely not be very healthy and have a much harder time fighting disease, infection and injury. So a balanced nutritious diet would be the foundation (building blocks to start from).

That is exactly as I meant it.

Fish, just as people can live a while on a poor diet. Fish come in with nutritional stores from the wild, some will last longer than others, some species require a more concentrated effort to provide valuable food, and not just calories. Many predators, like anglers for instance, once they use up their nutritional stores and are not provided an adequate diet to give them what they need, will decline rather quickly. Sometimes when a fish like an angler refuses to eat, they are just turning down food that have no value to them, animals are much more deliberate than humans about what they put their bodies. I and very deliberate how I feed myself, as well as my pets. You mentioned pellet food, just read the ingredients, and ask yourself why aquatic life would need soy and wheat by-products, among so many other nasty things.

It really bothers me when hobbyist pat themselves on the back when they've kept a certain species alive for a few years, thinking they've done some great accomplishment. Most of these species literally live 10-20 or even more years in the wild. Along with water conditions, if you provide a diet as close to their natural diet, using fresh when you can, live when necessary; many times you'll keep your fish close to their wild lifespan. I have actually had long term success with the diet recommendations I make, I have seen other hobbyists just make a couple dietary changes and been amazed at not only the difference in longevity, but also vibrancy in color and activity. A good diet will help prevent disease and help in recovery from disease and injury. It is not to replace medication when needed, it is not either/or, it's both.

When I have made suggestions of dietary support in lieu of medication, it's not as a cure. It's because I thought in that situation, medication wasn't needed. Just like humans running to the doctor for antibiotics for every hangnail, hobbyist do the same thing for every scrape and nip. Sometimes just some immune system support and optimum water conditions is all that is needed. Same in a situation where you have lions or eels in a tank that has a protazoan outbreak, if you are able to remove them quick enough, all they need is immune support and clean water. I've seen this work enough times, to know that it works.

 

[HankstankXXL750]

That is exactly as I meant it.

Fish, just as people can live a while on a poor diet. Fish come in with nutritional stores from the wild, some will last longer than others, some species require a more concentrated effort to provide valuable food, and not just calories. Many predators, like anglers for instance, once they use up their nutritional stores and are not provided an adequate diet to give them what they need, will decline rather quickly. Sometimes when a fish like an angler refuses to eat, they are just turning down food that have no value to them, animals are much more deliberate than humans about what they put their bodies. I and very deliberate how I feed myself, as well as my pets. You mentioned pellet food, just read the ingredients, and ask yourself why aquatic life would need soy and wheat by-products, among so many other nasty things.

It really bothers me when hobbyist pat themselves on the back when they've kept a certain species alive for a few years, thinking they've done some great accomplishment. Most of these species literally live 10-20 or even more years in the wild. Along with water conditions, if you provide a diet as close to their natural diet, using fresh when you can, live when necessary; many times you'll keep your fish close to their wild lifespan. I have actually had long term success with the diet recommendations I make, I have seen other hobbyists just make a couple dietary changes and been amazed at not only the difference in longevity, but also vibrancy in color and activity. A good diet will help prevent disease and help in recovery from disease and injury. It is not to replace medication when needed, it is not either/or, it's both.

When I have made suggestions of dietary support in lieu of medication, it's not as a cure. It's because I thought in that situation, medication wasn't needed. Just like humans running to the doctor for antibiotics for every hangnail, hobbyist do the same thing for every scrape and nip. Sometimes just some immune system support and optimum water conditions is all that is needed. Same in a situation where you have lions or eels in a tank that has a protazoan outbreak, if you are able to remove them quick enough, all they need is immune support and clean water. I've seen this work enough times, to know that it works.

Actually someone else mentioned pellets I believe. I bought a bunch of pellets early on, actually herbivore pellets. The main reason was the nori we buy today is nothing like what I bought in the 80’s. You could hang it on a clip and the fish had to take bites. Now first fish that hits it tears it loose to float away. I later got some little pouches that hold the nori and it is much better. I still feed it in my 75 just because several of the fish regularly take it.
However other than my larger predators I feed a blend of frozen brine, spirulina enriched frozen brine, and frozen mysis.
Just had clownfish babies and started culturing rotifer, then hatch some brine shrimp eggs, and decided to raise some as well plus three strands of copepods. Thinking about either mysis or amphipods, just trying to figure them out. If I can successfully raise these then I am sure I will be providing a better diet for my fish.

 

[wickedtuna]

Regarding drip acclimation on incoming fish:
i receive dozens of bags of fish in at a time. To test every single bag's water parameters would be a big feat. I just add all the bags into a tank and acclimate by drip and oxygen to my holding tank. What steps would you recommend i change? Overall this method works for the vast majority of my fish, but there are some puffer fish that I have had die in acclimation. How should I change their acclimation to accommodate your recommendation?

 

[Jay Hemdal]

Regarding drip acclimation on incoming fish:
i receive dozens of bags of fish in at a time. To test every single bag's water parameters would be a big feat. I just add all the bags into a tank and acclimate by drip and oxygen to my holding tank. What steps would you recommend i change? Overall this method works for the vast majority of my fish, but there are some puffer fish that I have had die in acclimation. How should I change their acclimation to accommodate your recommendation?

If the fish are coming from the same source, I'll often do a spot check on a few bags, and if the salinity and pH is pretty close, I'll acclimate them as a group...mix up one batch of low pH water the same salinity as the bag averages and just acclimate from that point. You just don't want the fish to be in high ammonia as the pH rises, that can kill the fish.

Here is an article I posted on general acclimation:

Acclimation Methods

Acclimating Animals to Aquariums Jay F. Hemdal c.2020 Introduction to acclimation techniques Most beginning aquarists hear that they must “acclimate” any new animals they add to their aquarium. Acclimation (sometimes termed...

www.reef2reef.com

Jay

 

[wickedtuna]

I receive lots of fish in shipments each week and I have used the acclimation drip method with little deaths. There are some pufferfish species that have shown stress - slow breathing, lethargy. Some haven't made it. I open all the bags into a common basin and drip acclimate them to a holding tank. How would you recommend I change this to match your protocol? Am I supposed to adjust their ph in their individual bag before moving them?

 

[Jay Hemdal]

I receive lots of fish in shipments each week and I have used the acclimation drip method with little deaths. There are some pufferfish species that have shown stress - slow breathing, lethargy. Some haven't made it. I open all the bags into a common basin and drip acclimate them to a holding tank. How would you recommend I change this to match your protocol? Am I supposed to adjust their ph in their individual bag before moving them?

From the article I posted the link to:

Long duration shipments
Animals that have been in shipping bags longer than 36 hours build up huge amounts of metabolic waste in the form of ammonia. At the same time, the animal has been releasing carbon dioxide into the shipping water. The combined result is that the carbon dioxide lowers the pH of the water, which in turn neutralizes the relative toxicity of the ammonia. Levels of ammonia at 2 or 3 parts per million and a pH of 6.0 are not unheard of. If you acclimate these animals in the normal manner, the process will drive off the carbon dioxide faster than the ammonia is being diluted. As the pH of the water rises, the ammonia becomes toxic, often killing the animals right in the acclimation container. The key is to measure the shipping water’s pH, temperature and specific gravity (If marine). Then, using water from the tank (not freshly mixed water) create water that closely matches all of these parameters and carefully move the animals directly into it. This is done by adjusting the specific gravity and lowering the pH with the addition of a proper amount of acid (Sodium phosphate monobasic, carbon dioxide or other acids have been used). From this point, the animals can be drip acclimated.

Drip Acclimation​

Setting up a line siphoning water from the main tank to an acclimation container is a common practice at many aquarium wholesale companies. These “acclimation tables” can assimilate huge numbers of fish into quarantine systems, dealing with high ammonia levels and other issues in assembly line fashion. Some home aquarists have attempted to emulate this in their home, but there are issues that must be addressed. First of all, the name “drip acclimation” is a misnomer. It should be termed “flow acclimation”, as the rate must be faster than a drip. If one were to set up a drip line at one drop of water per second (as many home aquarists have assumed would be an appropriate rate) it would take FIFTY hours to equilibrate the difference in water parameters between one liter of shipping water and the receiving tank to within 90% of each other! Obviously, the flow rate must be faster than that. A flow of one milliliter per second would result in one liter of shipping water reaching 90% equilibration in 2 1/2 hours

Aquarists must monitor the changing water chemistry values in the acclimation container throughout the process, and adjust the flow rate accordingly. One trick is to place a few drops of methylene blue liquid per gallon of water in the acclimation container. Not only does this have some antibiotic affect, and can help with oxygen transfer, as new water flows into the acclimation container, the aquarist can judge the amount of mixing by the dilution of the blue color over time.

Just as with regular acclimation methods, as the water quality values between the aquarium and the container get closer, the rate of change slows down, unless you increase the water mixing rate.

Flow acclimation systems may require adjunct aeration and heating to maintain better water quality in the acclimation container during the longer acclimation time. It also helps to use rectangular acclimation containers as the volume can be measured using a ruler (length in inches * width * depth of water / 231= gallons).

 

[HankstankXXL750]

@Jay Hemdal So how much does pH weigh into acclimation? Is this a major or minor stressor. My online fish supplier ships in 1.019 water unless it is an invert. Their recommendation is to have my QT at their salinity and then temp acclimate then transfer. I open the bag transfer to a net over a five gallon bucket then release the fish into the QT. I have had tremendous success with this without ever testing pH.

 

[Jay Hemdal]

@Jay Hemdal So how much does pH weigh into acclimation? Is this a major or minor stressor. My online fish supplier ships in 1.019 water unless it is an invert. Their recommendation is to have my QT at their salinity and then temp acclimate then transfer. I open the bag transfer to a net over a five gallon bucket then release the fish into the QT. I have had tremendous success with this without ever testing pH.

A rise in salinity is MUCH more stressful to marine fish than a change in pH is. The degree of change also has a lot to do with it. A rise in pH if there is ammonia in the water can be very harmful. If I had to choose, a change in pH is less stressfult than the salinity rise, but more stressful than a small temperature change (less than 8 degrees).

Jay

 

[Jay Hemdal]

I appreciate everyone's feedback, support and questions about this post (it has even been spread beyond R2R!).

In reading back through this, I see that the original post appears dogmatic and short, very much like how these myths are often presented. I think this has put some people off. I wrote it that way on purpose, TLDR (Too Long, Didn't Read) is a common complaint with Internet information, and I wanted people to be able to give it a quick read. However, this morning, I did go back to the original post and added some text that hopefully softens the presentation a bit, as well as supports some of the statements.


Thanks,

Jay

 

[Jay Hemdal]

Here is another one, not a myth really, not even misinformation, but rather, it is mis-applied information:

Hydrogen Peroxide - as a low dose, static bath to treat acute disease issues.

The history of peroxide use goes like this: a paper was published showing how 75 ppm peroxide baths would eliminate Amyloodinium on Pacific threadfin fish. These fish were cured if the dips were done twice and the fish moved to clean tanks each time. Somebody read that and thought, "Hmmm, I wonder if low dose peroxide used as a static bath would work on ich?" They then began pushing the idea out there as an "experiment". The problem is that peroxide at levels high enough to kill ich theronts can also harm the beneficial bacteria, and sometimes ornamental shrimp. Additionally, hydrogen peroxide is an oxidizer. Like all of these (chlorine, ozone, permanganate etc.) the level of active chemical in the water is related to the organic levels. The less organics in the water, the higher the active dose. As you add peroxide, it consumes organics, causing a rise in unreacted peroxide. So - you need to use test strips to monitor that change.

Hydrogen peroxide has been shown to cause a reduction in theronts in marine aquariums, but the dose tested for an 80% reduction was 10 ppm, which is pretty high to use as a static bath.

The only time I would suggest it is when a person is attempting what is called "ich management" - as an adjunct treatment to a whole suite of efforts:

1) strong UV sterilizer
2) frequent water changes
3) siphoning the sand early every morning
4) good mechanical filtration to remove theronts
5) low dose peroxide additions

Ich management works if you catch the infection early enough and do it right. Once the number of trophonts on the fish reach a certain point (perhaps 30 or so spots on any one fish) then "propagule pressure" comes into play, where the effects of the trophonts themselves stresses the fish and the ich management techniques start to fail.

Here is an article I wrote that discusses some of that:

Hydrogen Peroxide Bench-testing

Bench testing of the effects of hydrogen peroxide in aquariums.

www.reef2reef.com

Jay

 

[brandon429]

misinformation test:

that someone who adds 12 fish from a pet store, 6 months ago, skipping all disease preps for the rock, inverts, fish and corals must rule out disease when 100% of the fish die in 24 hours at month 6

the statement was that any disease by rule would have manifested early. true or misinformation Jay? add to the details: no corals or inverts were lost: just 100% of the fish six months after skipping any sort of disease preps/stocked fully from common pet stores.

in tracking literally thousands of cycle thread outcomes for just shy of ten years here, not counting 20 yrs at other forums, I routinely see delayed onset disease outbreaks in tanks that skip all manner of prep. even though I don't do disease troubleshoots, I do cycle troubleshoots, and this is a noted pattern reported directly in my thread collections, so I'm inferring is misinformation.

we even have examples of very aged systems who skip all preps causing disease outbreaks just by delving into the sandbed or rearranging rocks causing a mass clouding event.

it's possible to destratify latent diseases by physical action and have them express...I've seen it a few times here.

 

[Jay Hemdal]

misinformation:

that someone who adds 12 fish from a pet store, 6 months ago, skipping all disease preps for the rock, inverts, fish and corals must rule out disease when 100% of the fish die in 24 hours at month 6

the statement was that any disease by rule would have manifested early. true or misinformation Jay

100% of the fish dying from a disease in 24 hours, with no previous symptoms is pretty rare (= I've never seen that in my fish). If you said within 3 days, I would say improbable, but possible due to Amyloodinium. If you said the fish began dying over a few weeks, then that is very commonly seen with flukes, even beyond the six month period.

Certainly Cryptocaryon can show up in aquariums after being symptom-free for at least six months (my guess is that there are some minor symptoms, just that they were missed).

Jay

 

[kenchilada]

Tank Transfer Method (TTM) – this method does work, but in my opinion, it works best for ich (Cryptocaryon) and not for egg laying flukes at all. It can be very rough on fish due to ammonia and excessive handling, and already stressed fish being housed in buckets. Remember that lateral viewing of new fish is a vital tool for diagnosis....top down views in buckets do not give you a good enough view of how the fish is doing.

I find your assessment of TTM to be misinformed and biased.

Buckets? Most people do TTM in glass aquariums, not buckets. I have not seen anyone advocate buckets as preferred over a glass tank, and buckets are typically discouraged.

Ammonia is fairly easy to manage when you're discarding the water every 72 hours. Active bio-filtration (sponge filter, power filter, etc) can still be used as with any tank as long as its sterile.

TTM does not claim to be a cure for flukes and usually prazi is used during or after. This is like calling copper treatment "misinformation" because it doesn't treat flukes. What TTM does treat varies based on which variant you choose.

The biggest downside to TTM is it takes a lot of work, equipment, space, and salt. If you follow the directions it works very well.

No offense, but I don't think you should misrepresent and discredit a method that you are not familiar with just because you don't use it.

 

[Jay Hemdal]

I find your assessment of TTM to be misinformed and biased.

Buckets? Most people do TTM in glass aquariums, not buckets. I have not seen anyone advocate buckets as preferred over a glass tank, and buckets are typically discouraged.

Ammonia is fairly easy to manage when you're discarding the water every 72 hours. Active bio-filtration (sponge filter, power filter, etc) can still be used as with any tank as long as its sterile.

TTM does not claim to be a cure for flukes and usually prazi is used during or after. This is like calling copper treatment "misinformation" because it doesn't treat flukes. What TTM does treat varies based on which variant you choose.

The biggest downside to TTM is it takes a lot of work, equipment, space, and salt. If you follow the directions it works very well.

No offense, but I don't think you should misrepresent and discredit a method that you are not familiar with just because you don't use it.

These were intended to be "short bites", not full evaluations.

Yes, I am biased, but for good reason. My well-informed experience with TTM goes back to the 1980's - we used it to control Cryptocaryon by moving fish through a series of five 100 gallon, glass paneled systems. It worked fine. However, as public aquarists, we had loads of fish handling experience and the systems all had operating bio-filters. We also had a lab to run full diagnoses, and the fish also went through fluke treatments. If we saw Amyloodinium, we'd pull the plug and go to copper, since TTM doesn't work for true velvet.

I said "buckets", but that includes totes and other containers with no lateral viewing. You may use glass tanks, but many people do not, and that lack of lateral viewing is a terrible deficiency - right at a time when you need to be the MOST observant with new fish, and some of these people running TTM can't even tell if their fish are eating or not!

Handling the fish this often is also an issue - some people have virtually no experience on how to properly catch and move fish - and damage is very common.

Then - there is the question of just when is TTM useful given the logistics of treating diseases? If you use it as part of a quarantine process, you still need a single tank to run the fish through additional quarantine for flukes. If your DT develops ich and you want to use TTM, you can't do that and just put the fish back into the DT, the ich will still be active. That means you would run TTM, but then need to move the fish to another tank during the proper fallow period for the DT.

So - for the average home aquarist, TTM has major flaws. Hyposalinity in a single tank, allowing the fish to adapt more peacefully is a better option for people that don't want to use copper.


Jay

 

[kenchilada]

These were intended to be "short bites", not full evaluations.

My well-informed experience with TTM goes back to the 1980's - we used it to control Cryptocaryon by moving fish through a series of five 100 gallon, glass paneled systems. It worked fine. However, as public aquarists, we had loads of fish handling experience and the systems all had operating bio-filters. We also had a lab to run full diagnoses, and the fish also went through fluke treatments. If we saw Amyloodinium, we'd pull the plug and go to copper, since TTM doesn't work for true velvet.

I said "buckets", but that includes totes and other containers with no lateral viewing. You may use glass tanks, but most people do not, and that lack of lateral viewing is a terrible deficiency - right at a time when you need to be the MOST observant with new fish, and some of these people running TTM can't even tell if their fish are eating or not!

Handling the fish this often is also an issue - some people have virtually no experience on how to properly catch and move fish - and damage is very common.

So - for the average home aquarist, TTM has major flaws. Hyposalinity in a single tank, allowing the fish to adapt more peacefully is a better option for people that don't want to use copper.

Jay

Interesting. As a average home aquarist I dont agree. I’ve used TTM successfully on several dozen fish, including fish with heavy velvet, and found it to be an easy option as a complete beginner.

I do not understand your association of buckets with TTM. It is not common amongst any home aquarists that I know. Maybe your bullet point should just address the use of containers without lateral viewing instead.

I find hyposalinity much more likely to go wrong between watching for low pH and maintaining the narrow window of salinity the whole time. I also think people are likely to injure fish acclimating back to full seawater.

Meanwhile the major flaws you listed can be solved with a transparent aquarium and a colander, easily added to any how-to guide on the subject.

To each his own.

 

[Jay Hemdal]

Interesting. As a average home aquarist I dont agree. I’ve used TTM successfully on several dozen fish, including fish with heavy velvet, and found it to be an easy option as a complete beginner.

I do not understand your association of buckets with TTM. It is not common amongst any home aquarists that I know. Maybe your bullet point should just address the use of containers without lateral viewing instead.

I find hyposalinity much more likely to go wrong between watching for low pH and maintaining the narrow window of salinity the whole time. I also think people are likely to injure fish acclimating back to full seawater.

Meanwhile the major flaws you listed can be solved with a transparent aquarium and a colander, easily added to any how-to guide on the subject.

To each his own.

I re-read my post and I think it is pretty clear, but I added more clarification about lateral viewing. I also added a section about how TTM actually has limited benefit for treating fish in a DT with ich since you cannot just put those fish back into the DT without a proper fallow period.

Jay

 

[Jay Hemdal]

Before using or repeating any of the following information, please research it more thoroughly.

These are often repeated bits of information that are perpetuated by people using old or incorrect information. Once it becomes "common knowledge" it continues to spread through the Internet, often being changed or over-simplified in the process. These are some examples of misinformation about fish that are frequently seen online:


Mixing medications with focus+food – this cannot work unless you calculate the dose properly. General Cure should not be dosed orally, as the two components have two different oral doses. This article discusses that: https://www.reef2reef.com/ams/proper-dosing-of-medicated-foods.780/

Using dietary supplements as a “medication” the best diet in the world will not stop active infections – this is called the “chicken soup” syndrome. A proper diet is of course important for long-term fish health, it's just that changing to "great diet" will not stop active disease.

Adding vitamins or food additives to the aquarium’s water – this just feeds the heterotrophic bacteria, aquatic animals, if they uptake it at all, do so slower than the bacteria does.

Nitrite is toxic to marine fish – ammonia is highly toxic to marine fish at a high pH, but the salts in the water completely de-toxify nitrite ions for marine fish. Nitrite IS deadly to freshwater fish, unless some salt is added to the water.

76 day fallow period (or longer) for Cryptocaryon – published in a paper where the co-author was also the editor for the journal. The original study was from a PhD thesis that isn’t widely available. 45 to 60 days at 81 degrees F. is a more reasonable fallow period. Fallow periods for other disease are different.

Ramp up medications slowly – too many fish die from disease if you take too long, dealers don’t do this, should you? (the only exception is salt when you are raising the salinity or the old ionic copper/citric acid solutions).

Drip acclimating shipped fish – not if there is high ammonia. Best to match the temperature, pH and salinity and move the fish directly over and then acclimate them (with no ammonia) to your tank.

Tank Transfer Method (TTM) – this method does work, but in my opinion, it works best for ich (Cryptocaryon) and not for egg laying flukes at all. It can be very rough on fish due to ammonia and excessive handling, and already stressed fish being housed in small containers. Remember that lateral viewing of new fish is a vital tool for diagnosis....top down views in buckets or totes do not give you a good enough view of how the fish is doing. Then, just when is TTM useful given the logistics of treating diseases? If you use it as part of a quarantine process, you still need a single tank to run the fish through additional quarantine for flukes. If your DT develops ich and you want to use TTM, you can't do that and just put the fish back into the DT, the ich will still be active. That means you would run TTM, but then need to move the fish to another tank during the proper fallow period for the DT.

Using RODI and no aeration for FW dips – use aerated, pH and temperature balanced water in all cases. Tap water is fine!

Using black mollies as “canaries” – really only screens for ich, Cryptocaryon, and can introduce euryhaline trematodes into the system.

Mortality caused by medications, years after application. Copper, formalin and cyanide have all been implicated in fish loss years after exposure – this is not borne out by histopathology or veterinary necropsy. Public aquariums all have comprehensive, proactive quarantine/treatment protocols, yet they have some of the longest-lived fish. I've done three studies since 1983 that all show that latent cyanide mortality (while often severe) always manifests itself within 30 to 50 days of exposure. Long term copper exposure has been shown to cause damage to fish, but this is ionic, not chelated copper, and the toxicity appeared during or shortly after the copper exposure.

“Stray voltage” causes fish loss or health issues – This is a red herring, stray or induced voltage (typically < 50 VAC) has no measurable affect on marine fish, as they are not grounded, so there is no electrical potential. Stray voltage has been ruled out as a cause of HLLE. True electrical shorts can harm or kill fish, as well as people. All aquariums must be plugged into GFI circuits.

All,

Thanks for your comments and input. I merged this text with an article that I had written for Aquarium Fish magazine back in 2000, and posted it in the library section here:

Aquarium Myths and Misinformation

This is an update and expansion of my Aquarium Fish magazine article, published in 2000. Some of this material was previously posted as a thread in the Fish Disease forum.

www.reef2reef.com

Jay