Heresy (partly)

[MnFish1]

As a 'fish medic' I have answered probably hundreds of questions about 'what x disease is, etc'. That said - I wanted to post a couple thoughts about 'fish disease' and QT.

1. I fully believe in a biosecurity plan for every reef tank. Every zoo and aquarium in the world (As far as I know) follows one.
2. Once you have that policy in place - don't violate it.
3. I advocate the 'Current Quarantine Protocol' Current Quarantine Protocol on this thread.

Having said that - there are lots of people who 1) Don't have access to antibiotics/medications/treatments. 2) Do not believe that these medications are safe. So here is the heresy part

1. Lots of people do not QT - and have no problems. There is a view on this site by some that feeding well, introducing parasites, etc - is beneficial to a tank's health
2. Lots of people DO QT - and have problems. My comment would be in many cases its skipping a step - or misdiagnosing a problem and not treating for that problem.

These are my personal comments - not R2R comments. @Jay Hemdal et al - feel free to critique:

1. Make sure you have a definition about what 'quarantine' means. Is it observation (no medication) - is it observation with medication x,y,z? is it something else.
2. Fish, people, etc - everything reacts negatively to stress. There are threads here saying TTM (Tank Transfer Method) is barbaric) for example. Is it? IDK. But - valued posters have suggested so.
3. There is an old saying - you get what you pay for. If you find (today) - a 3 inch yellow tang for 29.99 - you are going to probably get what you pay for. I suggest (if you have one) - buying your fish from a trusted LFS - where you can observe the fish before purchase. I know - the big companies do not like this - R2R may not like this - I will never buy online again (with rare exception) - see #2, Stress and susceptibility to illness shipping is a huge stress..
4. If you are going to have an "immune tank" - make sure you know what you're actually doing. For example - you might have 10 fish - that have been fine - for 5 years. You add a clown Gobie and massive die off. Different fish from different parts of the world have different strains of parasites. Thus - they are immune to the parasites where they were collected in Vietnam - but perhaps not from fish collected in Indonesia. iMHO - there is no such thing as an immune tank. There are tanks whose fish resist illness due to long-term health. No fish can be immune to every illness from around the world
5. Stocking density. The more fish in your tank - the more likely that a parasite will overwhelm even an immune tank. Let's say you have 10 pipefish in a 100 gallon aquarium - vs 10 semilarvatus butterflies. The parasites need surface area to reproduce. The pipefish - when attacked by CI (Cryptocaryon) - is much more likely to do well as compared to the other tank.
6. Nothing good happens quickly in a reef tank. There is truth in this - But- when it comes to adding fish - every time you do - you risk more parasites.

Comments welcome

EDIT addition: well fed fish are important. There are no live vs frozen vs flake etc - that are 'bad'. In fact - there are at least a couple articles out there suggesting that pellets/flakes that have (supposedly) been researched - are best. Whether from living or dead source, protein is protein, carbohydrates are carbohydrates are carbohydrates and fat is fat. I happen to like various LRS foods for my fish.

 

[KrisReef]

Pellets are like what the marines eat, MRE! I like fresh food and the older I get the more I appreciate it,
In a pinch, the MRE isn’t bad compared to starvation.

I recently set up a new tank, it came with two previously qt’d clownfish that had never seen an anemone. I added in fish from my un -qt’d “immune” system and noticed some of my older fish were showing spots ( ich, bacteria?) that went away on the immune fishes.
When the QT’d clowns went into the new anemone they were ok for about a week. The female was busy trying to excavate a bare spot they have previously use, scraping in the coral sand. One evening I noticed that she looked like she was wearing a cotton ball. She died before the next morning. Her mate died the next night with no visible signs of infection.

The remaining fish are still swimming, no spots visible for the last week, except the fox face has looked discolored, but they do that. I added three new clownfish to the same tank a week ago. They are fighting for dominance and I may have to remove the weaker, least popular guy. They were in an anemone with 7 or more other baby clowns so I knew they were used to the skin irritation, and hoped they will work out as a triple group. They are growing and show no signs of illness.

Live and fresh frozen food is not a miracle. It’s standard nutrition.

I would have medicated the clowns that got sick but dumb me forgot I had the meds on my cluttered desk.

Thanks @MnFish1 for publishing this thread, for the sake of the hobby and benefits of the family fish we are keeping.

 

[WVNed]

The best food for a new fish is any that it will eat. It will learn to eat others with time. I personally think it is important to avoid a monotonous diet of the same thing every day.

This also avoids the problem of having a fish used to only eating one thing and suddenly it isn't available.

 

[Montiman]

The thing with QT is there is obviously a point of diminishing returns.

I breifly worked at a public aquarium and in our case every fish went into a dedicaded QT room where all employees needed to wash their hands up to the elbows before and after leaving in addition to going through a foot bath. The room had a seperate air handeler and the systems were completely seperate all fish were medicaded preventatively based on what medications the particular species would tollerate, but most were treated with 2 weeks of copper plus metronidozol as well as spot treatments with formalin and praziquantel for those animals that needed it and could tolerate it. All fish were held for 90 days before their introduction into the main system. Despite all of this we had ich in the main system.

When any hobbiest tells me that they think they can eliminate all ich with QT I raise an eyebrow. It is near impossible. This being said ich is no big deal. I am much more concerned about velvet, worm infections, brook, uronema, and fish lice than ich. These are much easier to eliminate but I have come to believe that in 2-3 weeks with basic medications almost all of the really bad parasites can be eliminated. After 1 round of prazi and copper with a possible formailne bath 80-90% of your problems are gone.

It just seems people seem to be extreme in either direction with no middle ground on QT.

 

[MnFish1]

Pellets are like what the marines eat, MRE! I like fresh food and the older I get the more I appreciate it,
In a pinch, the MRE isn’t bad compared to starvation.

I recently set up a new tank, it came with two previously qt’d clownfish that had never seen an anemone. I added in fish from my un -qt’d “immune” system and noticed some of my older fish were showing spots ( ich, bacteria?) that went away on the immune fishes.
When the QT’d clowns went into the new anemone they were ok for about a week. The female was busy trying to excavate a bare spot they have previously use, scraping in the coral sand. One evening I noticed that she looked like she was wearing a cotton ball. She died before the next morning. Her mate died the next night with no visible signs of infection.

The remaining fish are still swimming, no spots visible for the last week, except the fox face has looked discolored, but they do that. I added three new clownfish to the same tank a week ago. They are fighting for dominance and I may have to remove the weaker, least popular guy. They were in an anemone with 7 or more other baby clowns so I knew they were used to the skin irritation, and hoped they will work out as a triple group. They are growing and show no signs of illness.

Live and fresh frozen food is not a miracle. It’s standard nutrition.

I would have medicated the clowns that got sick but dumb me forgot I had the meds on my cluttered desk.

Thanks @MnFish1 for publishing this thread, for the sake of the hobby and benefits of the family fish we are keeping.

KrisReef Said​

"Pellets are like what the marines eat, MRE! I like fresh food and the older I get the more I appreciate it,In a pinch, the MRE isn’t bad compared to starvation."​

LOLOLOL there was a pun there. Marines. it took me a couple minutes to get what you mean. however. If you take the analogy further - none (or most people) of cat owners do not feed live mice. Dog owners do not feed live squirrels/rabbits. In total reality - patients (in human medicine) - do fine on years of Total Parental Nutrition) - which is just chemicals. So - I will contrary to my usual beliefs will disagree with you on this one