Aquarium Myths and Misinformation

[Icryhard]

How does Yale and Harvard research sound to you? And I should have been clearer, vitamin supplements have no impact on the immune system. Zinc plays a much more important role. The study by Pauling in 1970 did not hold to scrutiny at all. Countless universities around the globe have disproved his claims. Stop looking for confirmation bias because your grandma told you take vitamin C.

and still you manage to provide 0 sources aside from “Yale and Harvard” and then resort to making fun of someone’s grandma or something. You then change your statement to “vitamin supplements have no impact” and “zinc plays a much more important”. The first one is differs from your original statement and the second one is completely irrelevant, since it seems to indicate that vitamin C does help, but not as much as zinc. I am not “looking” for anything, but when a person (like you) makes a claim, they’re deemed to back it up like I did with valid sources.

 

[Icryhard]

I believe in many home remedies. I don't particularly believe in vitamin C supplements or covid shots.

Judging by this statement I can tell who I am talking to. It explains now as to why you had to resort to mentioning things about people their grandmothers but failed to provide any substantial evidence towards your claim of vitamin C

 

[Icryhard]

I don't really have time to look at this article but assuming that because something is on PubMed, it's good research, is a fallacy. PubMed has a minor amount of quality control over which *journals* can be indexed by it but nobody thoroughly interrogates each individual journal *article* before deciding it can go on PubMed - there are hundreds of thousands of articles on PubMed, that would not be physically possible. I can say from experience there's a lot of garbage articles indexed in PubMed. They even specifically state that just because something is indexed in PubMed, does not mean it's endorsed or approved by the NIH.

I never stated that “just because it’s on X it’s a good research”. If you read my post you could tell it made references to (as far as I can tell) valid sources. If you wish to discredit it, be my guest. I am always open to obtain new information, but to say “I read somewhere something about some guy” isn’t going to cut it. Regardless of people here mentioning their academics levels and how trustworthy something can or cannot be. We can only learn and develop based on research and experiences. “He said she said I read something but cannot provide any evidence” isn’t one of those.

 

[Aquariumaddictuk]

Are you sure you mean penicillin? Garlic contains Allicin, but that is not the same as penicillin derived from mold.

Jay

I'm highly allergic to penicillin & eat loads of fresh garlic so I'm inclined to agree here!no reactions in nearly 40 years

 

[Aaron75]

Can freshwater mollies acclimated to saltwater carry any diseases? Should they be quarantined if you're a person that does quarantine?

 

[Jay Hemdal]

Can freshwater mollies acclimated to saltwater carry any diseases? Should they be quarantined if you're a person that does quarantine?

Typically not external diseases, but internal ones, yes. Here is a write up I did on that topic:

Using black mollies to screen an aquarium for Cryptocaryon

In recent years, a procedure has been promoted that uses marine-adapted freshwater mollies to screen for active Cryptocaryon infections in marine aquariums. The thought is that freshwater black mollies that are naïve to marine ectoparasites, will soon develop infections if that disease is present in a marine aquarium.

With mollies being stark black, white parasites will show up in sharp contrast, making their identification much easier. Mollies have also been suggested to be housed alongside sensitive fish (that cannot be easily medicated) to serve as a “canary in the coal mine” for active disease.

The basic process is to acquire a small group of freshwater black mollies and gradually acclimate them to seawater over a period of up to 5 days. They then are added to the previously fallow aquarium, or added to the quarantine tank, and then observed for at least two weeks to see if they develop ectoparasites. If they do, then a treatment needs to be instituted, or the fallow period extended.

As with many aquarium ideas, over-extrapolation can reduce the effectiveness of the original idea. The process is really only suited to screen for Cryptocaryon. Brooklynella may not even infect mollies. Uronema and Amyloodinium can survive salinities as low as 3 ppt so may already be present in “freshwater” mollies that have been raised in brackish fishponds. Marine and freshwater fish have basically the same internal salinity. Therefore, untreatable internal diseases, such as viruses and Myxozoans could possibly be brought into an aquarium with the mollies.

There is also a risk for introducing euryhaline trematodes into an aquarium along with black mollies. Fish farmers, wholesalers and retail dealers all understand that mollies benefit from being housed in brackish water, and so they usually add salt to systems housing mollies in order to reduce mortality under crowded conditions. Euryhaline trematodes take advantage of this, the trouble is that some of these can survive marine conditions and then hyposalinity is ineffective as a treatment for them.

Finally, black mollies have been used by scientists to propagate Cryptocaryon in laboratories. However, these studies went no further and there is no scientific evidence to indicate this method is actually effective. It is based on a theory, but it needs to be better tested. If properly applied, this process may have some benefit in screening for Cryptocaryon but falls short for all other diseases.


Jay

 

[Koh23]

If this were true, garlic would kill me and anyone else with a severe penicillin allergy. I happily eat plenty of garlic, but penicillin will cause anaphylacsis.

Yes..and no.

I also have penicilin alergy, in fact, it DID kill me once - after shock, heart stopped for some time, when i was kid.

But no, i also eat garlic with no problems, of course, not all alergies are the same.

Yes alicin, i type wrong, but still, best natural antioxidant, antibacterial, antifungus.....thingy out there.

 

[bluemon]

Thanks for all these mythbusters! While we have you here @Jay Hemdal, I was wondering about the credence behind the statement "all fish carry ich" or "all tanks carry ich"

I know it is most often used by people who practice ich management as a reason for why they accepted ich as a part of their tanks.

But how many of the fish do we receive as consumers in this hobby actually carry ich (even asymptomic carriers)?

I guess this can be broken down into two questions (but only for wild caught fish).

How many of the fish, when caught in the wild, actually carry ich (or what percentage of wild fish go through ich in the ocean)?

And the tangent to that: is it possible for fish to avoid getting ich while going through the suppliers holding tanks, transit, and the LFS before it comes to our tanks? Is it actually close to 100% by the time it gets to the home?

 

[Jay Hemdal]

Thanks for all these mythbusters! While we have you here @Jay Hemdal, I was wondering about the credence behind the statement "all fish carry ich" or "all tanks carry ich"

I know it is most often used by people who practice ich management as a reason for why they accepted ich as a part of their tanks.

But how many of the fish do we receive as consumers in this hobby actually carry ich (even asymptomic carriers)?

I guess this can be broken down into two questions (but only for wild caught fish).

How many of the fish, when caught in the wild, actually carry ich (or what percentage of wild fish go through ich in the ocean)?

And the tangent to that: is it possible for fish to avoid getting ich while going through the suppliers holding tanks, transit, and the LFS before it comes to our tanks? Is it actually close to 100% by the time it gets to the home?

Ich is NOT present in all tanks. The evidence for this used to be empirical - a fish system with no sign of ich for years/decades, must be ich free. More recently, Aquabiomics has begun testing tanks and some reports come back with no ich present, proving that not all tanks have ich in them.

I don't know the percentage of wild caught fish that have ich, but what happens is that most all of our fish go through importers here in the US and their tanks become a melting pot for all sorts of diseases. Since they don't hold their fish long, the diseases don't manifest themselves at that point. As fish move through the supply chain, they do so fast enough that it becomes sort of a stand-in for the "tank transfer method", where active disease is kept at bay by moving the fish to a new system every few days. Then, the fish hit your tank carrying chronic infections, which become acute in time if not dealt with through a proper quarantine.

Jay

 

[Daniel@R2R]

Great info! Thanks Jay!

 

[blecki]

Reminded me of another common myth: People with purple/scopas/hippo/etc. tangs in a 40g breeder actually getting a bigger tank or rehoming the fish when it’s time (if at all).

I actually did upgrade to keep my sailfin. Then I lost the fish to velvet so of course I got another one who seems much happier now in the 230 than the previous larger sailfin ever did in my 75.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Vitamin C was touted as a "cure" for head and lateral line erosion. For decades everyone thought it worked, and you will still hear people talk about it. Trouble is, the "study" that everyone refers to was unpublished, and was done in a ten gallon tank. In the study, the person moved the fish to a new tank....and THAT has been demonstrated as a way that HLLE can sometimes be cured.

Here is a write up I did on Vitamin C in aquariums:

Ascorbic acid in aquariums​

Ascorbic acid, (vitamin C) is a very important constituent of the diet of aquatic organisms. Some animals cannot synthesize ascorbic acid; their entire requirement must be met by their diet. Included in this group are most teleosts (bony fishes), crustaceans, guinea pigs, bats, passerine birds and primates. Some primitive fishes including sturgeon and paddlefish can produce vitamin C from its constituent chemicals, so do not need as much in their food. Vitamin C is a very unstable compound and is easily degraded by water, heat, light and oxygen into biologically inactive compounds (Shi-Yen Shiau in Dabrowski 2001). A food that has an appropriate level of ascorbic acid when it is first prepared may have next to no active material left at the time that it is fed if it has been improperly handled). Knowing this, many fish nutritionists add many times more ascorbic acid to prepared foods than the animals will require, knowing that most of its activity will be lost during storage.

Ascorbic acid is a water-soluble vitamin and is not stored long-term in an animal’s tissue. On the one hand, this means that the animal requires a steady source of this nutrient to replace any used during metabolism or excreted as waste. On the other hand, from the perspective of a fish nutritionist, it is almost impossible to give an animal too much vitamin C and there is little risk of an overdose. Lack of vitamin C in fishes can cause scoliosis and skin erosion, as well as causing them to be generally unthrifty.

Many aquarists feed their fish dried seaweeds (Nori) in the hopes that this will add ascorbic acid to their animal’s diets. Tests have shown however, that the drying/roasting process this material is exposed to during processing deactivates much material’s vitamin activity. Crustaceans in captivity have a very high requirement for ascorbic acid in their diet. Air-dried Nori is a better choice. A deficiency of this vitamin will impair collagen formation, create dark lesions on the exoskeleton and interfere with ecdysis (molting). Commercial shrimp farmers often supplement their diets with ascorbic acid at a rate of 2500 mg / kg (Shi-Yen Shiau in Dabrowski 2001).

Some aquarists have suggested adding ascorbic acid directly to the aquarium’s water in the hopes of curing cases of head and lateral line erosion (HLLE). In fact, some commercial products on the market contain this as one component in products designed to cure this malady. In an unpublished study, weekly additions of 5 mg/l ascorbic acid in aquariums containing fish suffering from HLLE demonstrated no improvement in their symptoms after eight weeks. Likewise, the same amount added to an aquarium housing deep-sea isopods (suffering from carapace degeneration) showed no improvement after six weeks. In both cases, a minor, but readily seen depression of the aquarium’s pH was recorded following each addition of the material (Indicating that higher doses would prove more detrimental). In the instance of the deep-sea isopods, (which normally spend days or weeks not moving at all) the ascorbic acid additions caused an immediate and profound increase in their activity level. This might be construed as beneficial, (like they were moving around looking for food) but it might just as easily have been because the creatures sensed the material as an irritant and were trying to evade it. There is one documented case where adding ascorbic acid directly to water is of some benefit; brine shrimp (Artemia) nauplii have been shown to ingest ascorbic acid added to their culture water at a rate of 120 mg/l for 12 hours (Dabrowski 2001). If these in turn were fed to fish, the nutritional profile of this food would obviously increase.

Jay

I'll add a couple of tidbits about vitamin C as it points up a seeming conundrum that some reefers are unaware of.

Vitamin C is reducing agent. That's the very definition of an antioxidant. Because it is a reducing agent, it also lowers ORP in the water.

So the thought goes...

Antioxidants good.
High ORP good.

Vitamin C?

The moral of the story is that sometimes overly simplistic descriptions of effects do not capture the reality.

Is it useful? I never noted any effect dosing it as an experiment, but some folks claim it is beneficial.

In a related point, tanks using ozone (oxidizer) and vitamin C (reducer) are just setting up two trains running down the same track in opposite directions. lol

 

[Gumbies R Us]

Great info as always!

 

[blecki]

I don't know the percentage of wild caught fish that have ich, but what happens is that most all of our fish go through importers here in the US and their tanks become a melting pot for all sorts of diseases. Since they don't hold their fish long, the diseases don't manifest themselves at that point. As fish move through the supply chain, they do so fast enough that it becomes sort of a stand-in for the "tank transfer method", where active disease is kept at bay by moving the fish to a new system every few days.

I imagine they don't now because it would be in no way cost effective, but would it be possible to eliminate these diseases in the supply chain if for example all tanks from the importer to the LFS were running therapeutic levels of copper? Similar to how most LFS house fish at a lower salinity now.

 

[Doctorgori]

Edit add this is the disease forum but…Some of my pet peeves:
- any light other than blue causes algae: OR “whiter/yellower the light = more algae….
IMHO is parroted from Aquarist from the “post Radium” era whom never had to light their tanks with non-blue bulbs…had you cut your reefing teeth on 6500K Iwasaki bulbs, you don’t buy it…
There is “some” truth to this but its misdirected blame, dismissive of the fact corals reefs are lit by 5500K natural sunlight anyway……True photosynthetic plants favor some higher wavelengths (hence “blurple” & Full spectrum), but nature (oceans/reefs) compensates with lower nutrients levels and herbivores, which IMO should be the focus….

- Reef tanks need to be heated to 78F, another over parroted over valued parameter. Seems “chasing “this number gets a pass (and sells heaters)….and IMO heaters are a wasted outlet and unneeded risk for any home with a thermostat… I get the idiom “stability is the key” I think its just overstated in this case. Maybe 78F is optimal over say 74F, just not convinced how much value vs risk it has….I’ve dispensed with heaters over a set house thermostat, haven’t looked back…

- Reef safe with “caution” /Expert only …frankly this is a misapplied generalization if not outright stupid…. some fish simply ship poorly or recover poorly or are improperly fed/housed … Worse is misinformation that some fish need to be in groups (Idols, chromis cardinals, et) …., I think Reef safe with “caution” needs to specify if the danger is to inverts or corals or both
….I think the tag “Expert only” is misapplied universally/liberally to fish whose husbandry/diet requirements are either misunderstood or not widely known …often times its applied to fish that simply are sold in poor shape

 

[blecki]

Realistically the online sellers apply 'expert only' to the fish most likely to die within the guarantee period they offer on fish not tagged 'expert only'. The underlying cause of the mortality is irrelevant, the label is just business.

 

[Doctorgori]

Realistically the online sellers apply 'expert only' to the fish most likely to die within the guarantee period they offer on fish not tagged 'expert only'. The underlying cause of the mortality is irrelevant, the label is just business.

Exactly

 

[ccs]

@Jay Hemdal can you please elaborate a bit more on the use of UV? Did I understand correctly that it does nothing for the free floating stages of Ick and Velvet? I mainly use UV to try and mitigate potential disease outbreaks...

Thanks!

 

[vetteguy53081]

@Jay Hemdal can you please elaborate a bit more on the use of UV? Did I understand correctly that it does nothing for the free floating stages of Ick and Velvet? I mainly use UV to try and mitigate potential disease outbreaks...

Thanks!

It addresses free floating organisms and what passes through the unit- Not what is pre-existing

 

[Court_Appointed_Hypeman]

I'm highly allergic to penicillin & eat loads of fresh garlic so I'm inclined to agree here!no reactions in nearly 40 years

That's because you have to eat the entire head or it evaporates and oxydises out. You have to leave the skin on them and let them age until they start sprouting.