What is a healthy fish?

[Humblefish]

It is no secret that gut bacteria is what controls our immunity and a fish. To expect a fish to live for five years is a total failure as a fish should only die of old age and never anything else. Absolutely any other cause of death is a total failure.
Most of our fish should live 15 or 20 or more years, I know some of yours do.

Paul, there's no direct evidence that chemoprophylaxis shortens the life span of fish. At least not the meds we're advocating. And even if the fish did only live for 5-10 years due to chemoprophylaxis, that's a heck of a lot better than, "OMG all my fish are dying from velvet." Which is what happens when most newbies forgo QT.

You forget I used to be on the other side of this argument for almost 30 years. But I had my father there to show me all the little tricks he employed so he wouldn't have to QT. Velvet, brook, uronema and other virulent diseases were also not as common back then. Ich is pretty easy to beat. Around 10 years ago I decided if I was going to advocate quarantining, then I would need to practice what I was preaching.

 

[Lasse]

Disease management (or whatever you wanna call it) is not easily repeatable because you've got 20 different guys all promoting their silver bullet: UV, Diatom Filter, Oxydator, Ozone, Garlic, Ginger, Live Blackworms, Fish Oil, Fresh Seafood, Reverse Flow Undergravel Filter, now gut flora. If I'm a newbie, which of those combinations do I put into practice? Maybe all of them?

Maybe so - but is it better to give a newbie a protocol based on analyses and medication that in most countries needs at least 5 years of advanced studies in order to be certificated for use and to advise people how to use the compounds? Or how to do the analyses? And to advise to use this methods - just in case of?

I work with public aquariums who QT using much harsher medications (primarily formalin) than what we advocate. One in particular that I've worked with over the past 10 years has most of the fish that were treated with copper, formalin, prazi, metro, antibiotics 5+ years ago. I expect those fish to live another 5 years and beyond.

Yes and I have worked for public aquariums since 2001 and I know that fishes introduced 15 years ago still are alive - without any prophylactic treatment at all - so what´s your point?

At least in Sweden - every public aquarium or companies that rent out aquariums need a veterinary that´s responsible for the treatment of the animals. By the way - the veterinary I have worked with in public aquariums have never ever recommend prophylactic treatment (neither have the veterinaries I coworked with during my active period as a fish farmer done that) All of them have not treated if they do not have known that it is a disease and witch microorganism that caused it. The only "prophylactic" treatment that is recommended among Swedish veterinaries is vaccination - but that´s another question and very much in line with what both I, @Brew12 , @Paul B and others highlight. And all of this methods are based on the thesis - let mother nature do the job. The different tools we use - is only complements that will help her doing the hard work. Sometimes needed - sometimes not.

Sincerely Lasse

 

[Paul B]

"OMG all my fish are dying from velvet." Which is what happens when most newbies forgo QT.

Noobs will lose fish no matter what they do because,,,well,,, they are Noobs.
If I teach them, they will not lose fish. Or Girlfriends.

 

[pdxmonkeyboy]

Then why even bother posting about it in this thread?

breath.....just breath... ...

As has already been stated, this thread is about fish health. It is my belief that glucans can be used to benefit fish health as has been shown by many studies.. and no, they are not all from the 1990's, actually quite the opposite.

Perhaps at times you should ask yourself, what you are contributing to the discussion? You have made your point, I have made mine, and thus I wash my hands of it.

I did want to circle back to the discussion of metabolic energy expenditure and glucan feeding and addressing the continual administration of glucans. I think that I may have been off base with my previous comment that alluded to no negative effects of continual administration of glucans.

I found this article.. https://reefs.com/magazine/beta-glucan-as-an-immune-stimulant-in-marine-aquaria/

It touches on a 6 week on, 2 week off feeding schedule and makes a down to earth case that perhaps feeding of glucans should only occur during periods of stress or as part of a QT procedure. At this point, I am going to rethink my strategy of continual glucan supplemented feeding. Since I have not identified any negatives at this point, my fish certainly look happy and healthy, perhaps an every other food batch would be more appropriate.

I will dig a little deeper after i leave the office.

 

[pdxmonkeyboy]

Maybe so - but is it better to give a newbie a protocol based on analyses and medication that in most countries needs at least 5 years of advanced studies in order to be certificated for use and to advise people how to use the compounds? Or how to do the analyses? And to advise to use this methods - just in case of?

I don't think that anyone is talking about administering medication that you have to have a license for. On a practical level... the amount of reef keepers that are also licensed veterinarians is what 1%? .5%? How many people on this forum take skin scrapes or send tissue samples to the lab to determine appropriate treatment? Like next to none.

Comparing a professional aquarium staffs handling of importation and treatment to how hobbyists approach these things is apples and oranges. Coming up with a reasonable and effective protocol that can cure illness IF it is present while avoiding long term health issues is a tremendous asset to the community.

Do a google search for fish veterinarian in your local city and see how many hits you get...

 

[Lasse]

Lasse brings up a valid point and one that I have thought about before. Is triggering immune system response some type of energy expsensive exercise that is in itself, some form of stress?

I honestly don't know if that is the case but intuition and experience tells me that it is not. Surely when you are sick you can feel tired and everyone know that if a wound is hot and red, you have an infection. Your immune system is battling an infection. Now are you tired because your body is producing antibodies or are you tired because you can't sleep or breath through your nose, etc? It turns out that your body actually produces chemicals to make you sleepy because your body does its best repairing when you are asleep. It is a complex process obviously and it does conserve energy, but it appears to be more of a case of suppressing endorphins and other hormones than purely not having enough energy because your cells are waging war inside you.

While indeed fish in pens are mega stressed I do not hold the opinion that life in an aquarium is a picnic either. NOBODY has water parameters as solid as the ocean. Ph and salinity swings are hard on fish, as is the ability to not be able to flee from stressful situations. If you were placed in a small room of people and one of them wanted to kick your .... then it would be stressful. You would eventually get used to it, but it would always be stressful.. that constant adrenal shot would take its toll.

Given the fact that it is inevitable that our fish will face some form of stress, it doesnt seem like a bad idea to regularly give them concentrated forms of immune system boosters that they are already ingesting. Certainly people with good diets are less prone to illness. No?

Anyways, its a good discussion. I needed something engaging.

My point was more that a constant mobilization of the defense system could take energy from other needed processes. Was not thinking of it as a stress factor - but why not? But if you have a system (as @Brew12 suggested) with low natural production of these compounds - I´m totally for it, maybe not in a constant way but it should be an option.

Another thing with a constant alert of the defense system is allergies. Today - many scientist suspect that the rise of allergies in the western world is caused of that the immune system runs amok because it has too little to do

A doctor I know use to say that our immune system is like an young boy - if he does not get anything to do - he just fool around doing tricks

I do not know if this is a problem - just rise the question

About stability in water around the reefs - it has been shown that many reefs have rather high variations in water quality too

Sincerely Lasse

 

[Brew12]

I don't think that anyone is talking about administering medication that you have to have a license for. On a practical level... the amount of reef keepers that are also licensed veterinarians is what 1%? .5%? How many people on this forum take skin scrapes or send tissue samples to the lab to determine appropriate treatment? Like next to none.

Comparing a professional aquarium staffs handling of importation and treatment to how hobbyists approach these things is apples and oranges. Coming up with a reasonable and effective protocol that can cure illness IF it is present while avoiding long term health issues is a tremendous asset to the community.

Do a google search for fish veterinarian in your local city and see how many hits you get...

This is still true in the US, but doesn't hold true world wide. The US is one of the few places left in the industrialized world that you can still buy antibiotics to use in an aquarium without a prescription. Canada banned the practice early this year. They haven't been legal in many parts of Europe for a long period of time. It's why you can't get Chemiclean in many parts of Europe.

It was supposed to have happened in the US in 2018 until the Trump administration rolled those regulations back. (Please, let's not make this political!!!) Eventually it will happen here. We need to get ready for a hobby where copper and H2O2 treatments are the only options, symptoms or no.

I'm hoping Humblefish's research on using H2O2 makes it a viable treatment option for prophylactic or treating symptoms.

 

[Lasse]

talking about administering medication that you have to have a license for

Most of the medications used in the threads about prophylactic QT needs prescription in most western countries of the world - with one exception - US. This include antibiotics like penicillin, metradizonole and others. Its also include most antiparasitic and anti worm compounds.

I´m not against using different treatment methods when a disease occurs - however I´m against to use these drugs in a prophylactic way.

Sincerely Lasse

Sorry @Brew12 I saw your answer after I had press send

 

[Paul Sands]

breath.....just breath... ...

As has already been stated, this thread is about fish health. It is my belief that glucans can be used to benefit fish health as has been shown by many studies.. and no, they are not all from the 1990's, actually quite the opposite.

Perhaps at times you should ask yourself, what you are contributing to the discussion? You have made your point, I have made mine, and thus I wash my hands of it.

I did want to circle back to the discussion of metabolic energy expenditure and glucan feeding and addressing the continual administration of glucans. I think that I may have been off base with my previous comment that alluded to no negative effects of continual administration of glucans.

I found this article.. https://reefs.com/magazine/beta-glucan-as-an-immune-stimulant-in-marine-aquaria/

It touches on a 6 week on, 2 week off feeding schedule and makes a down to earth case that perhaps feeding of glucans should only occur during periods of stress or as part of a QT procedure. At this point, I am going to rethink my strategy of continual glucan supplemented feeding. Since I have not identified any negatives at this point, my fish certainly look happy and healthy, perhaps an every other food batch would be more appropriate.

I will dig a little deeper after i leave the office.

This thread is about fish that have diseases with minimal or unobservable symptoms that some people want to classify as “healthy” because they apparently aren’t comfortable just admitting the truth.

Your original post gave the impression that glucan was likely to help improve the health of saltwater fish in aquariums. I merely pointed out that was inaccurate. Glucan isn’t new. It’s been studied. It’s not beneficial for most fish in our aquariums.

Brewers yeast contains glucan, so it’s not even hard to come by. I wouldn’t feed it continually to fish as a way to suppress the symptoms of their diseases.

 

[Lasse]

I found this article.. https://reefs.com/magazine/beta-glucan-as-an-immune-stimulant-in-marine-aquaria/

Thank you for that link - it is in line with most scientific articles and show that especially the 1,3 beta-glucan works for most fishes. It is not all beta-glucan that is effective which can explain some contradicting reports.

Sincerely Lasse

 

[Brew12]

This thread is about fish that have diseases with minimal or unobservable symptoms that some people want to classify as “healthy” because they apparently aren’t comfortable just admitting the truth.

Paul, this thread is about how the term "healthy" is defined by the scientific community. You may not like the answer and that is your right. If you cannot accept the fact that a fish hosting a pathogen can be healthy you will have to accept that you will never have a healthy fish by your definition.

Your original post gave the impression that glucan was likely to help improve the health of saltwater fish in aquariums. I merely pointed out that was inaccurate. Glucan isn’t new. It’s been studied. It’s not beneficial for most fish in our aquariums.

He provided scientific studies that showed the benefit to saltwater fish. Do you have scientific studies that show it isn't beneficial in aquariums or is this just your opinion?

 

[Lasse]

At this point, I am going to rethink my strategy of continual glucan supplemented feeding. Since I have not identified any negatives at this point, my fish certainly look happy and healthy, perhaps an every other food batch would be more appropriate.

I do not know your system but I always advise people to ignore what I`m saying if things works as they should (with some exceptions ). It is when things do not work you maybe can use some of my advises.

If you change your administration - change it slowly - maybe every second feed for a month or so.

Sincerely Lasse

 

[MnFish1]

In an interesting side note my daughter advised us to take the dogs off of a grain free diet and now my vet has mentioned it to me. Grain free is causing health issues in some dogs.

fiber works for dogs too.

This is exactly true - its related to an amino acid deficiency in grain-free that causes cardiac (heart) problems in some breeds of dogs

 

[MnFish1]

“The addition of glucan to the Aeromonas vaccine significantly increased the production of antibodies in all antigens tested, however, even the elevated level of antibodies did not offer sufficient protection against Aeromonas infection.”

“Glucan with vaccine against Streptococcus bactericin was not effective in turbot and glucan with vaccine against S. iniade had no effect on the Oreochromic niloticus model. Trials with commercial glucan vaccine VitaStim Taito showed no effects.”

While there have been some positive effects found, there are also studies that found no effect at all. Promoting this as some magic cure all is pretty much insane. It MAY be helpful in SOME instances.

I would say that most people would realize that there is a difference between adding something to a vaccine - vs a daily dose in food - I dont see the equivalence. I have no idea whether beta gluten makes a difference - btw - and I dont think ANYONE has called it a 'magic cure'. I agree it may be helpful in some instances

 

[Paul Sands]

Paul, this thread is about how the term "healthy" is defined by the scientific community. You may not like the answer and that is your right. If you cannot accept the fact that a fish hosting a pathogen can be healthy you will have to accept that you will never have a healthy fish by your definition.


He provided scientific studies that showed the benefit to saltwater fish. Do you have scientific studies that show it isn't beneficial in aquariums or is this just your opinion?

I am part of the scientific community. Your interpretation of healthy is just your misinterpretation. Give me a call when you’ve gone through 7 years of school to become a vet.

You seem to have assumed that because YOU can’t see symptoms of a disease with your eyes, through your aquarium glass and 5” -10” of water, that the disease doesn’t exist. That’s simply not how it works. There may be observable changes that you simply don’t see. A person can have cancer and may not notice their own symptoms or may have no symptoms. Just because they don’t have visually observable symptoms or impairments doesn’t mean they don’t have a disease.

Also, you pulled the definition of disease from Miriam-Webster, not a medical book but then proceeded to make a medical based argument.

I honestly don’t care if anyone runs their tank as an immune tank with diseases. You make your own decisions and many people are succesful. I just don’t understand why you are so infatuated with saying those fish don’t have a disease when they do.

It’s probably been a decade since I reviewed the studies on glucan. If there’s something I don’t remember, then feel free to point those specific sections out. I quoted one study that noted there wasn’t any benefit to a number of species/diseases for reference. Which saltwater species and diseases specifically benefit from glucan based on your reading of the studies?

 

[MnFish1]

I am part of the scientific community. Your interpretation of healthy is just your misinterpretation. Give me a call when you’ve gone through 7 years of school to become a vet.

You seem to have assumed that because YOU can’t see symptoms of a disease with your eyes, through your aquarium glass and 5” -10” of water, that the disease doesn’t exist. That’s simply not how it works. There may be observable changes that you simply don’t see. A person can have cancer and may not notice their own symptoms or may have no symptoms. Just because they don’t have visually observable symptoms or impairments doesn’t mean they don’t have a disease.

Also, you pulled the definition of disease from Miriam-Webster, not a medical book but then proceeded to make a medical based argument.

I honestly don’t care if anyone runs their tank as an immune tank with diseases. You make your own decisions and many people are succesful. I just don’t understand why you are so infatuated with saying those fish don’t have a disease when they do.

It’s probably been a decade since I reviewed the studies on glucan. If there’s something I don’t remember, then feel free to point those specific sections out. I quoted one study that noted there wasn’t any benefit to a number of species/diseases for reference. Which saltwater species and diseases specifically benefit from glucan based on your reading of the studies?

Being a part of the scientific community doesnt seem to matter much - at least when I post things lol. So - the fact that you have a science background but yet seem to criticize everyone else (with our without a scientific degree) should make little difference. Note - I'm not criticizing - just asking for consistency

 

[Paul Sands]

Being a part of the scientific community doesnt seem to matter much - at least when I post things lol. So - the fact that you have a science background but yet seem to criticize everyone else (with our without a scientific degree) should make little difference. Note - I'm not criticizing - just asking for consistency

That was @Brew12 that apparently thinks you need a science degree to participate in a discussion about disease on a hobbyists reefing board. I was merely pointing out that I met his standard. I frankly don’t care if you have a degree at all.

I mostly disagree with your opinions, and frankly, the things we disagree about mostly are not about scientific things. I mostly object to the fact that you don’t follow the discussion and mostly seem to be interested in just petty personal argument rather than the actual topic. It’s just a waste of everyone else’s time. See your comment above for proof.

 

[Brew12]

I am part of the scientific community. Your interpretation of healthy is just your misinterpretation. Give me a call when you’ve gone through 7 years of school to become a vet.

Forgive me if I find this highly unlikely. Then again, I work with degreed engineers that make me wonder how they graduated college, also.

You seem to have assumed that because YOU can’t see symptoms of a disease with your eyes, through your aquarium glass and 5” -10” of water, that the disease doesn’t exist. That’s simply not how it works. There may be observable changes that you simply don’t see. A person can have cancer and may not notice their own symptoms or may have no symptoms. Just because they don’t have visually observable symptoms or impairments doesn’t mean they don’t have a disease.

Actually, no. That is not the case. There are numerous studies that detail how the immune system of a fish can make any damage caused by the parasite to be insignificant. It will also greatly reduce the reproductive rate of cryptocaryon irritans. I'm not sure which scientific resources you have access to but a simple search of scholarly articles on immunity and cryptocaryon irritans will give you plenty of options. As a self proclaimed scientist, this should be easy research for you.

Also, you pulled the definition of disease from Miriam-Webster, not a medical book but then proceeded to make a medical based argument.

That is actually a very bad assumption. I happened to copy that one because it was publicly accessible. I reviewed multiple scientific sources and they all agree that pathogens can cause a disease but the disease is the symptom. If there are no symptoms there is no disease.

If you still have your medical journals I'd suggest going back and reviewing them.

I just don’t understand why you are so infatuated with saying those fish don’t have a disease when they do.

How about because it is the truth as recognized by the scientific community. The typical marine fish will have over 15 strains of vibrio. Known potentially deadly pathogens. Yet science does not consider every fish where vibrio can be found to be diseased.

I quoted one study that noted there wasn’t any benefit to a number of species/diseases for reference. Which saltwater species and diseases specifically benefit from glucan based on your reading of the studies?

You claimed it had no benefit in an aquarium. Now you are backtracking and saying it may have no benefit to certain species. Which means your statement was wrong. It can have benefit.

 

[Lasse]

@Paul Sands Can we please have your scientifically definition of health and disease? I would love to have that and if you also can bring references it should be great. And please - no cherry picking

Sincerely Lasse

 

[Paul Sands]

Forgive me if I find this highly unlikely. Then again, I work with degreed engineers that make me wonder how they graduated college, also.


Actually, no. That is not the case. There are numerous studies that detail how the immune system of a fish can make any damage caused by the parasite to be insignificant. It will also greatly reduce the reproductive rate of cryptocaryon irritans. I'm not sure which scientific resources you have access to but a simple search of scholarly articles on immunity and cryptocaryon irritans will give you plenty of options. As a self proclaimed scientist, this should be easy research for you.


That is actually a very bad assumption. I happened to copy that one because it was publicly accessible. I reviewed multiple scientific sources and they all agree that pathogens can cause a disease but the disease is the symptom. If there are no symptoms there is no disease.

If you still have your medical journals I'd suggest going back and reviewing them.


How about because it is the truth as recognized by the scientific community. The typical marine fish will have over 15 strains of vibrio. Known potentially deadly pathogens. Yet science does not consider every fish where vibrio can be found to be diseased.


You claimed it had no benefit in an aquarium. Now you are backtracking and saying it may have no benefit to certain species. Which means your statement was wrong. It can have benefit.

Flaming petty personal attacks. Very classy.

Again, as for the definition of a disease, just because you can’t observe the symptoms with your eyes, doesn’t mean the symptoms don’t exist. A fish with ich has a disease. They may not have visible symptoms, but they do indeed have a disease.

I didn’t backtrack my comment on glucan. I asked you to prove that it was useful in an aquarium. Rather than finding a citation, you decided to resort to insult me instead.