Why do you think new fish die in their first year?

[jkr]

I do not QT, if I had 80% of my fish die in the first year, I wouldn’t keep a reef tank ! I have had a tomato clown for about 20 years, my last 2 losses were wrasse, seemed to be doing really well , then just dissapeared !! One after 2 months and one after 10 months, I think water quality is most important.

 

[StewL6]

Just plain stress, disease, parasites, failure to settle in environment. Fish killing fish

 

[Paul B]

How about junk food feeding vs the level of effort Paul puts into fish food prep, surely that factors strong

Pauls posts about commuted immunity from live and fresh food bacterial complement stands out among healthy long-lived fish owners

Brandon it is the live "gut" bacteria in the food I feed that is the secret but don't tell anyone or there will be no need for disease forums. If someone gets all of their food from an LFS or only buys food specifically made for fish food they will most likely have problems with disease because fish in the sea don't usually only eat food from an LFS that may have been packaged and frozen at the start of the last ice age and I am sure they do something to the food to kill pathogens which is a backward way to think. But we do need those disease forums because they get the most interest.

 

[brandon429]

I really believe that Paul for sure. My own health has been impacted by doing that same transition away from boxed, frozen and pre cooked. not joking. I have seen consistently Dr.'s in my purview will recommend a pill before they'll ask to see my last 2 months daily intake logs. I don't have any, but if they'd ask I'd feel better about how they assess things.

 

[Rick's Reviews]

Most fish deaths seem to occur within the first year after purchase. Often, the cause of death is unknown. Sometimes, clues suggest possible causes. We are all frustrated and disappointed when death occurs and ponder what we should do differently to help new fish to survive. New hobbyists are particularly challenged when death occurs within days, weeks or months of a major purchase.

What has your experience been? Have you altered your approach to new fish acquisition as a result? Are you more successful now than when you were a novice?

From my experience and it's ongoing. basic water parimaters are rushed to achieve?
We all share the same desire which is to have a beautiful aquriam that's full of life, we all want beautiful flowing aquarium life from corals to crabs.
I think many discount the fact of building an aquarium takes you away from the normal life.

for me I built it just to take me away from this world, I could spend £50k or like now £3k but the reward I get from sitting and watching is priceless.

I have watched so many videos and answered so many questions.. death is the worst of any aquarist in my opinion

 

[threebuoys]

I realize now that I should have more carefully worded my question for this poll. My hope was to get a sense of the two or three primary reasons hobbyists believe to be the leading cause of deaths shortly after new fish are acquired.

All of the choices in the poll certainly occur and need to be guarded against as best as possible.

As a teaser, in my experience, two choices that exceeded my expectation as cause of death are starvation and bullying. The limited responses to the poll suggest others have noticed these causes also.

In my experience, one choice that was much lower than I expected was disease ( if I discount the school of blue chromis I purchased which quickly succumbed to uronema).

I am frankly embarrassed by my experience over the past 17 months in terms of the number and percentage of fish I have lost. I will also say that the vast majority of deaths I've encountered occurred within the first 3 months I had the fish. I intend to write a more complete analysis of my experience to include in this thread.

 

[brandon429]

Well done. I thought adding the poll in the disease forum also sets a neat angle to check for biases or new inputs too.

 

[Arego]

It doesn't take much to keep a hardy marine fish alive. If you cannot get them past one year or more the reefer needs to be honest with themselves that they're not very good at what they are doing.

A quick glance at your phone standing in the store, in front of the tank, is not research.

 

[Paul B]

My own health has been impacted by doing that same transition away from boxed, frozen and pre cooked. not joking.

Mine to. I get most of my gut bacteria from fresh fruits and vegetables with some live clams added. Of course I also eat sushi.

Only gut bacteria will keep our fish healthy and IMO the main reason there are no old, quarantined or medicated tanks.

Most people only feed "Fish food" from a LFS.

 

[ID-Reefer]

My system is only about 14 months old. Ive had tanks in the past but based on this system...

I have a 240 gal mixed reef. I believe every fish Ive lost has been due to two primary issues. 1. getting picked on till death. 2. Not eating - starvation.

I have ICH in my tank and going with ICH management. I have 3 tangs, an emperor angel, CBB and about 15+/- other fish. None have any visible spots and are very fat and healthy. Ive had most of these fish for 9+ months. I feed frozen and make some of my own chopped up clam food from live fresh clams. I supplement that with nori and pellets soaked in vitamins and aminos. daily. Im convinced that if I can get a new fish to eat regardless if it shows signs of ICH it will survive and thrive.

If memory serves, Ive lost a powder blue tang, Long nose butterfly, cow fish, mandarin all due to starvation. No matter what I tried I could not get them to eat. Competition didn't appear to be a factor. The mandarin died in under 48 hours so something else could have been a factor. Other than the tang, all were mail order so I had no way of knowing if they were eating prior to entering my tank.

Ive lost 2 clowns, 4 royal grammas, 3 Lyretail ANTHIAS, 2 Flame gobies all to assumed aggression from their own kind based on witnessing the aggression. Im giving up trying to house groups of those fish. Had hoped the tank size and amount of hiding space would make it possible. Ive had success with other groups of the same kind with no loss (Flame hawks, Blennies, Wrasses).

 

[brandon429]

That loss rate doesn’t rule out disease at all, you need to fallow that system vs buy replacement fish. The causatives you’re assigning to losses despite known presence of mixed vectors is because you’re determined never to admit mixing that many unprepped fish is killing them by disease, am I reaching here or does not all posts in the disease forum state the same by inference


don’t get mad, it’s a % likelihood restatement am making. that’s a huge amount of losses. If you’re sure losing fifteen fish in a skip prep system can’t ever be a disease expression, then ok.

 

[jda]

If I can get fish past a week, I can usually get them to live near their whole lifespan. However, I know when and where to order fish - divers preferred to long-chan-of-custody-through-LA type of deal, but this has been harder with Hawaii offline (I have been resisting achilles and flame angels since Hawaii went down with the hopes that they will be up again soon). I also know who not to pair up with whom, and it is rarely the mob talk on message boards about same-shape tangs and mirrors and all of that. I don't have disease issues, but nobody seems to care as to why, so I might be done talking about that.

I don't know anything about gut bacteria. If it come in whole mysis or the marine mix that i get from Brine Shrimp Direct, then my fish get it. I do feed a lot of quality pellets and eventually nearly everything except for a copperband eats them. I am not big on Nori since my larger fish (triggers mostly) crush it before the other fish get any. All of my tanks have many, many pods, starfish and the like that fish can hunt if they want.

In the past month, I have gotten new Chrysurus Angelfish (my favorite), Bluethroat Trigger, 7x Carberri Anthias (accident), Fowleri Tang, Queen Angel, Blue Angel, Rock Beauty (my second favorite), Blue Hippo and a few damsels. All are eating with a gusto and come to the glass in groups to meet me when I come for food. All of these fish have been sought for about a year - Chrysurus are collected only during a small time each year and I had to wait for some time for the diver to catch all of my Caribbean angelfish. Worth the wait for good stuff, IMO.

 

[Paul B]

If I can get fish past a week, I can usually get them to live near their whole lifespan.

This is true. Some fish will just die right away and we can't help that. We don't now what the fish went through during and after capture. Maybe it hasn't eaten in a month or listened to Rap music.

 

[vetteguy53081]

Acclimatiion
Method of capture by wholesaler
Tank husbandry/water quality
Poor diet
disease
Inexperience
Poor advice from LFS
Immature tank

 

[Paul B]

I don't know anything about gut bacteria. If it come in whole mysis or the marine mix that i get from Brine Shrimp Direct, then my fish get it.

Actually it may not come from those foods

(from my Immunity thread in 2015)

In "Popular Science" (August 2015) there is an article about this very topic. The author states that "the most germ free envirnment today is on the International Space Station. Everything is sterilized including the air. All the surfaces are coated with bacteria limiting coatings, even the water is treated with iodine and biocidal nano silver so the only bacteria prsent are the ones coming from the astronauts themselves."

They can't open a window or send out for Pizza so there is no fresh influx of microbes to balance the ecosystem. Sounds like quarantining doesn't it? (I wrote that sentence)

"He also states that a loss of gut bacteria correlates with many diseases and could impede longer space travel. If we lose our gut bacteria, our immune system goes dormant."

Sounds like many of our tanks doesn't it?

 

[Frithton]

Which is why we need to be careful with treating new fish with antibiotics without cause. The treatment can wipe out beneficial organisms just as well as any harmful ones. I used to work in microbiology and would see many secondary infections following antibiotic therapy because it wiped out some normal flora.

 

[Paul B]

You can see that on any disease forum. Treat something and end up with something else.

The amount and types of medications some people use boggles my mind and many times, they are hurting rather than helping.

 

[davidcalgary29]

I'll add four more:

1. Improperly fitting (or no) lids, allowing jumpers to carpet surf to their deaths;
2. Anoxic conditions due to improper/insufficient water flow
3. Dosing NoPox without adding an airstone or skimmer, leading to #2
4. Bleaching accidents caused by overzealous cleaning during a pandemic.

I swear that these aren't personal anecdotes.

 

[Frithton]

I'll add four more:

1. Improperly fitting (or no) lids, allowing jumpers to carpet surf to their deaths;
2. Anoxic conditions due to improper/insufficient water flow
3. Dosing NoPox without adding an airstone or skimmer, leading to #2
4. Bleaching accidents caused by overzealous cleaning during a pandemic.

I swear that these aren't personal anecdotes.

So bleaching the fish does not prevent COVID....

 

[davidcalgary29]

So bleaching the fish does not prevent COVID....

Well, yes. As a method of disease prevention, it's top-notch, but the overall physiological side-effects are a bit of a downer...