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Great write up
Thank you
Thank you
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It’s certainly something we were never experiencing before...... and posts like this are popping up more and more all the time....shops and dealers started treating with sub therapeutic levels of copper and CP....or treating with full strength but only for a week or less.... it’s been the consensus that all this will do is possibly build up a short tolerance to the diseases and unfortunately it’s probably the 10th (or more) article I have read like this lately....Except thats not proof. If you note - I responded at length in that thread.
It’s certainly something we were never experiencing before...... and posts like this are popping up more and more all the time....shops and dealers started treating with sub therapeutic levels of copper and CP....or treating with full strength but only for a week or less.... it’s been the consensus that all this will do is possibly build up a short tolerance to the diseases and unfortunately it’s probably the 10th (or more) article I have read like this lately....
The LFS owner in my town has been doing this for nearly 40 years.... we have sat and had many chats at how things have changed.... and it’s all for the worse.... he has 5 or 6 stores around our area and he does not treat ANY of his fish with copper or CP before selling them.... I had 5 fish when my velvet hit... 3 from him and 2 from another supplier.... guess which 3 fish are still alive....
The issue is.....
It’s all about cost.... trying to keep cost down... the less fish that suppliers lose the cheaper they can sell them for... the more business they get.... and this is RIGHT from a supplier... I just asked one the other day why he treats his fish with sub therapeutic levels of CP/copper.... not once did he mention for the benefit of the new owner.... for the benefit of the fish but it was that he needed to stop his losses and keep his costs down.... it comes down to many factors.... if some people seen how this fish are shipped on the international flights they may never buy a fish again.... hardly enough water to breathe.... tiny little bags.... and again it’s all about cost.... water costs too much to ship on planes so they are sent in as little as possible.... it’s all actually really sad....
Sub therapeutic means that it is not enough to combat velvet or disease on its own.....I asked a specific question Francine - it was 'there is lots of anecdote that LFS, etc put subtheraputic copper into their water'. I asked what is the scientific basis for why they would do it? The definition of subtheraputic means that it should not have an effect - or am I misdefining it? Where is the evidence that a subtheraputic dose of copper would 'mask' a diseased fish?
It is not dormant.....it is literally in your whole tank.... rock, sand everywhere for 72 days.... it’s the life cycle of the disease.... and it can remain forever if you don’t take out your fish (mind you all fish would be dead long before that....) For anyone who hasn’t had this disease it will certainly make you more apt to qt....it’s a lot of work.... (if any of your fish even live) and there are many side effects of the treatments.... and can lead to secondary infections.... all kinds of nasty stuff....I have seen many statements thats velvet can be dormant in the sand for 72 days - is that true - sources?
Sincerely Lasse
There does not have to be fish in with the cuc in your shop in order for the cuc or corals to carry the disease....Ummm.... right - but which retailers sell CUC with fish in them? The one's I buy from do not. So - I would suggest that people that buy CUC from a place that has fish in the tank needs to QT them (I said that before)....
It is not dormant.....it is literally in your whole tank.... rock, sand everywhere for 72 days.... it’s the life cycle of the disease.... and it can remain forever if you don’t take out your fish (mind you all fish would be dead long before that....) For anyone who hasn’t had this disease it will certainly make you more apt to qt....it’s a lot of work.... (if any of your fish even live) and there are many side effects of the treatments.... and can lead to secondary infections.... all kinds of nasty stuff....
Also one of the other reasons why your qt/hospital tank should have no sand... no live rock.... that and also because they can absorb the copper....
But yes once you have it in your DT you must leave it fallow for 72 days.... if you add a snail or coral during that time you must restart your clock.... so if you are on day 52... and you add a coral that has not been in qt.... then you must go back down and start counting from 0 again....
There is a TON of this info in the fish disease thread....
Sub therapeutic means that it is not enough to combat velvet or disease on its own.....
It’s like if I am supposed to add 10 of something but I only add 5.....
That is what “sub therapeutic” means.... and again what this does is allows fish to build up a slight tolerance to certain diseases.... they appear fine in the shop but when you bring your fish home within days it can start showing the effects of the underlying disease.... and your last sentence hits the nail on the head.... “not enough to combat velvet or disease on its own” so again what happens is your fish appears heathy... then you have 2 choices.... do a full blown treatment in qt or hope for the best....
And I am in no way blaming the shop owners... everyone has to make money... but a lot of these places do not tell customers this and then they wonder why their fish got sick so quickly.... you will read many stories about how people can’t get fish through qt and IMO this is one of the reasons....
It really has absolutely nothing to specifically do with this “resistant” strain... that was not the entire point I was making.... but it does go hand in hand with it.... these fish are starting to build up an immunity to the CP or copper is what the article is getting at.... and they are investigating if this is due to too many shops/breeders treating with “sub therapeutic” levels....
I hope that makes more sense....
If a drug is given sub therapeutic it doesn’t work... it may have a partial effect depending on the disease, but for each disease a partial effect has different clinical outcomes... just try taking 100mg of paracetamol for a headache.. that’s subtherapeutic and it won’t work, but the headache may go on it’s own in a few hours anyway... or stop a course of antibiotics after 2 days instead of taking the full course... there are absolutely no clinical reasons to give subtherapeutic dosesSub therapeutic means that it is not enough to combat velvet or disease on its own.....
Even under identical incubation conditions tomonts vary considerably in the time
required to form theronts (Nigrelli and Ruggieri, 1966; Colorni, 1992; Burgess and
Matthews, 1994a; Diggles and Lester, 1996b). Thus, theront excystment is very
asynchronous, occurring between 3 and 72 days and peaking at 6 2 days
(Colorni, 1992)
Again from @Humblefish from a previous thread, this does seem to support what @FrancineJ was saying about subtherapeutic levels, but I can’t find the actual evidence that humblefish read to come to this conclusion.. taken from this thread
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/h...mask-ich-velvet-symptoms.353243/#post-4386728
Subtherapeutic copper eliminates some of the free swimmers, but not all, so the fish continues to be exposed to them at low levels. The fish's immune system begins to develop immunity/resistance to the parasites the longer it is subjected to sublethal concentrations. However, once copper is removed from the equation the parasites multiply exponentially and that usually overwhelms the fish. But it can sometimes take awhile (or on rare occasions not happen at all) based on just how strong the developed resistance is to the pathogen originally being suppressed.
Back in the day (before reef tanks) many would keep ich/velvet in check simply by running low level copper in their DT. Because of this, diseases weren't the big problem they are today. However, back then fish rarely lived to a ripe old age, and I suspect prolonged copper exposure was at least partly to blame.
It's also important to note that low level copper does not always have a successful outcome when managing ich/velvet - not back then and not today.
Now the question shifts to is the word subtherapeutic wrong to use in this case? Or does copper have a wider therapeutic range than proposed? or do more fish have an inbuilt immunity to these diseases than some lead us to believe and copper is only effective at the suggested doses?