Are quarantine tanks worth the effort?

[Jay Hemdal Verified Community Expert]

I should also point out that ALL public aquariums that are AZA accredited, MUST utilize a quarantine process. With all of those aquariums using quarantine, do you think they are wrong or have fish that don't live appropriate captive lifespans?

2.7. Quarantine
2.7.1. The institution must have holding facilities or procedures for the quarantine of newly arrived
animals and isolation facilities or procedures for the treatment of sick/injured animals.
2.7.2. Written, formal procedures for quarantine must be available and familiar to all paid and unpaid
staff working with quarantined animals.
2.7.3. Quarantine, hospital, and isolation areas should be in compliance with standards/guidelines
contained within the Guidelines for Zoo and Aquarium Veterinary Medical Programs and
Veterinary Hospitals developed by the American Association of Zoo Veterinarians (AAZV), which
can be obtained at: www.aazv.org/resource/resmgr/files/aazvveterinaryguidelines2016.pdf

Jay

 

[KrisReef]

Interesting discussion, again.
@Paul B - I’m going to congratulate you on your secret methods that only work in your tank. My blue tang isn’t breeding even though it occasionally has ich it refuses to die or breed? I was hoping that it would get fond with my purple tang or the chocolate tang and breed like your fish do but he just gets ich spots off and on for the last 7 months since I set up the tank. When I see the spots I increase frozen or live clam rations and the ich all die (poisoned by live clams probably?).

My clowns are not breeding, there is too many fish in the tank and not enough hiding spots, but slowly they are getting used to there aquarium life, and there stress levels are dropping below normal fish tanks.

I don’t know what is keeping the ich trophants from killing all the fishes or why the blue tang are called ich magnets but this on was sickly when I got him and he was clean for a few years in his old tank but this new tank situation has had him stress(?) or spotty off and on for months.

I guess I Should set up a copper tank or TTM him and keep him in solitary for 90 days before I bring him back to the DT he’s been spotting in?

How come the ich increase with lowered fish rations?

I’m not going to try any hospital methods. I’m going to my cousins funeral next Monday. He had a pacemaker installed a week ago but I think I used the wrong settings and he’s gone. I have a pretty bad success myself with treatments.

 

[Paul B]

LOL, First off I would like to say that I enjoy these discussions and in no way hold any disrespect for anyone here as we are all aquarists with one thing in mind, healthy, long lived fish.

We certainly all have different ways to "try" to accomplish this and I post my methods and theories which I have accumulated over my 6+ decades of fish keeping and to be honest, I have killed enough fish to fill the Great Lakes.

Having said that, I would like to address some of these quotes or questions.

.

however in the ~7 year old article I already linked, you sound quite enthusiastic about copper and you say for example I quote "I had hippo tangs live ten years, and, for many of those years, the fish was swimming in copper-treated water", "ich can kill a fish in just a couple of days" and "we now have liquid copper that will cure it in a few days" etc

That article you linked to is actually 12 years old and was re posted 7 years ago. In that article I was saying how we kept fish 40 years before I wrote that article as the title of the article is "40 Years in the Making".

Quote:
There are rumors that copper affects a fish's liver. I don’t really know, but before there were captive reefs, our fish were not very healthy and everything had ich. We would always keep copper in the tank. I had hippo tangs live ten years, and, for many of those years, the fish was swimming in copper-treated water. Aquarists now like to use hyposalinity treatments. Yes, that works, but ich can kill a fish in just a couple of days - hyposalinity techniques takes weeks. In the end, the ich usually wins. This is just my opinion. End Quote:

I still believe you can cure ich with copper in a few days and if you mix it with Quinicrine Hydrocloride
(My discovery) you can "clear" a fish of it in a day . I never doubted you can easily cure ich or most other diseases.
My method is not to cure any disease, my method is to "not let the fish get any disease" in the first place so you don't have to cure it.

That Hippo tang I was referring to was for most of that time in a 40 gallon tank but I feel a hippo tang should live probably at least 15 years or more. I am guessing.

Human life expectancy were low twenties and most died at a very young age, but it didnt matter as people had many kids

I don't know when Human life expectancy was in the low 20s even Neanderthals life expectancy was supposed to be in thirties and not because their immunity was low. It was actually very good due to their habit of eating mostly raw "road kill" and drinking any water they could find.

Many of them died from injuries hunting Woolly Mammoths with sticks or fighting more modern Humans who probably ate them. Many froze or starved to death. I know because I was there.

Our immunity is very weak because we are not exposed to many pathogens and we get shots for many other things that we used to fight off ourselves.
Most of Europe died from the Plague, but not everyone. The people who survived became immune to it as did many their siblings. As a matter of fact people today whose ancestors survived the Plague are almost totally immune from Aids.

( yes I realize Aids is a virus and the Plague was thought to be bacterial but new evidence proves otherwise. I took a couple of 6 hour courses on the Plague but that is for another thread)

If we had to revert back to hunting and didn't have antibiotics, doctors, HMOs Obamacare etc. We would all just about be dead. Our modern immunity is not all it's hyped up to be.

What does a diatom filter do? Removes particulates, clearing bacterial blooms. Some say even filters out parasites that swim or similar. Does it? I don't know nor claim to. But you use one a couple times a year correct? UV? Ozone?

A diatom filter for me is to clean detritus out of my reverse undergravel filter. I used it last week for a couple of hours. Like I said, if using one of these a couple of times a year is the secret, why doesn't everyone forgo quarantine and drugs and do that?

I never used UV and I do use a low dose of ozone. 50mg/hr for my 125 gallon tank. That won't kill a fruit fly as there are brittle stars and amphipods living in my skimmer along with the ozone.
The Ozone was also off for 4 years when I moved here, but again, if thats the secret, do that.

I like it for water conditions and especially now because my tank is over run with a photosynthetic sponge that oozes toxins that kill my SPS. The tank gets along just fine without any diatom filtering or ozone. I also use an algae scrubber, will that kill parasites? I doubt it.

I believe you are being naive here. There are many hobbyist who have spawning fish which also includes captive bred and/or raised. Hobbyist are also raising some challenging ones like the Marine Beta. And our fellow hobbyist also have old fish.

Maybe. I didn't say all quarantined fish can't spawn. I said quarantine fish have a harder time filling with eggs because they don't have a functioning immune system therefore the fish is not as healthy as it should be.

 

[Paul B]

I posted that long rant because I keep losing it, but I will continue.

Certainly some fish can spawn after being quarantined. It depends on the level of quarantine and medication. Arsenic is poisonous but not everyone will die after drinking it depending on how much you drink. My wife just gives me a little at a time.

I think I said "I" never saw any old, healthy tanks where the fish were fully quarantined (74 days) or medicated (that would be a full course of all the medications like copper, przapro etc.)

I still have not seen any. An old tank is one where the fish die from old age and not disease. Many of our common fish can live about 15-20 years but the smaller ones like gobi's and pipefish have much shorter lifespans. We kind of need to know the approximate lifespan to know if we successfully kept it. I failed many times with many fish that did not reach their lifespan. But that is what we should all strive for. A 10 year old tang is not a success because that is the same as about a 40 year old Human.

Those things shorten the fishes life span through stress due to the reasons I stated above. It all has to do with "telemeres" and "Cortisol". How these things shorten life spans of fish and us was just discovered a couple of years ago and I didn't make it up. I can go into that but it would take a few hours and it is complicated .

I went into it more in this thread:

Fish lifespans and what we can do to lengthen it.

I just sat through a 6 hour lecture on this and I needed to get it out of my head Why do fish, and us have a lifespan? Why can't we live forever like Moses who was supposed to live 900 years. (I doubt he lived a day over 600) There is actually a reason we have a life span and none of us ever...

www.reef2reef.com

Time to go out for dinner. This was fun and I will get back to it.
Again, remember I in no way wish to disrespect anyone and am having a friendly discussion.

 

[areefer01]

LOL, First off I would like to say that I enjoy these discussions and in no way hold any disrespect for anyone here as we are all aquarists with one thing in mind, healthy, long lived fish.

It is the only reason to be here. Life is too short to get upset over disagreements on hobbies.

A diatom filter for me is to clean detritus out of my reverse undergravel filter. I used it last week for a couple of hours. Like I said, if using one of these a couple of times a year is the secret, why doesn't everyone forgo quarantine and drugs and do that?

As I said I can't speak to what our fellow hobbyist do, or don't do. I'm just pointing out what some argue using a diatom filter does even if that is not your use case. Water clarification can also be done with filter media or socks...

I never used UV and I do use a low dose of ozone. 50mg/hr for my 125 gallon tank. That won't kill a fruit fly as there are brittle stars and amphipods living in my skimmer along with the ozone.
The Ozone was also off for 4 years when I moved here, but again, if thats the secret, do that.

Again no idea if it matters or doesn't but it is part of your design.

Maybe. I didn't say all quarantined fish can't spawn. I said quarantine fish have a harder time filling with eggs because they don't have a functioning immune system therefore the fish is not as healthy as it should be.

What data do you have that supports this statement? Have you paired up wild caught fish and place them in a tank dedicated to spawning and compared it to like fish captive bred and compared eggs? I haven't so can't comment. I can only provide what I see in my display and limited experience. Fish spawn. Eggs hatch. Hatched things become food...

Maybe you are trying to say that you believe wild caught fish are healthier due to their immune system not being suppressed by chemicals and access to natural foods. Similar to the argument that children have a better immune system, or are healthier, when breast fed. If so I can see that argument. However I think you are incorrect stating QT fish have a harder time supporting egg fertilization or quantity of eggs. Seems to me ORA, Bali, and Biota show otherwise but then again maybe their brood stock is 100% wild. Again I don't know nor claim to.

 

[threebuoys]

@Paul B,

I apologize up front to those who will feel this diatribe is over the top, unnecessary, or inappropriate.

I apologize also to you Paul because I have no intention or expectation to change your opinion based on anything I say here.

I feel compelled to say something because,while most readers have already made their decision, some are new to the hobby and may still be trying to make up their mind.

I respect the success you have had over the years and I would be happy if I could have done the same. I started in 1973 and had experiences I'm sure were similar to yours in those years. I even had a diatom filter in a mason jar that I used unsuccessfully to eliminate cryptocaryon from my tank. I stuck with the hobby for ten years until children and career got in the way. Got back into it 3 years ago.

I believe both to QT or not to QT have many pros and cons that should influence what is a personal decision each hobbyist must make. I will not try to state those here. I admit I am pro QT. I am also comfortable that some such as you can successfully keep a tank without QT. But if someone is on the fence, I will try to sway them towards QT.

I decided to respond here because I am troubled by some of the comments Paul has made about immunity to diseases, parasites, etc. I've quoted some of your comments below.

A conclusion I've reached based on your comments is that you believe the human race would have been better off if the medical profession had never existed. You seem to say that "survival of the fittest" should be allowed without intervention for whatever living creature has been or will be. If our ancestors had followed that principal, cancer, polio, plague, ebola, covid would have never existed.

You also seem to have reached the conclusion that the immune system for the fish of the ocean is much more advanced than that of humans because the fish never had the interference of doctors. You imply that a sick fish added to a disease free tank will not harm the other fish and will likely actually benefit from the immunity the other fish have developed.

I, for one, am glad that scientists determined that copper can successfully treat cryptocaryon and velvet and that I don't have to rely on immunity to develop in my tank. I don't understand why, if the fish immune system is so strong, a dose of copper would destroy that immune system.

I am also glad that our ancestors journeyed to the western hemisphere, bringing untold illnesses along rather than staying in Europe for fear of harming others, otherwise I wouldn't be here. I'm also glad over hundreds of years the medical profession has developed medicines and techniques to prolong life rather than reverting to survival of the fittest.

So, anyone who doesn't believe in vaccinations, taking prescribed medications as the doctor ordered, etc. QT is probably not for you because it requires discipline to be successful. On the other hand,.....

One specific quote:

If we had to revert back to hunting and didn't have antibiotics, doctors, HMOs Obamacare etc. We would all just about be dead. Our modern immunity is not all it's hyped up to be.

retort: If our ancestors had not developed antibiotics, trained doctors, developed medical systems and insurance, none of us would die. We would have never been born in the first place.


David Scarborough

It is not quarantine or medication that does that as they don't get medicated in the sea. But what the sea does provide is a stress free environment for the most part with the proper food containing the right gut bacteria.

Many people get the wrong idea about my method. I purposely don't medicate or quarantine to insure the long term health and lifespan of the fish, not the opposite. It is much easier to quarantine or medicate something than to get it healthy naturally.

We can keep a cancer patient alive for a long time in quarantine using drugs, but that is not really living

I don't know when Human life expectancy was in the low 20s even Neanderthals life expectancy was supposed to be in thirties and not because their immunity was low. It was actually very good due to their habit of eating mostly raw "road kill" and drinking any water they could find.

Many of them died from injuries hunting Woolly Mammoths with sticks or fighting more modern Humans who probably ate them. Many froze or starved to death. I know because I was there.

Our immunity is very weak because we are not exposed to many pathogens and we get shots for many other things that we used to fight off ourselves.
Most of Europe died from the Plague, but not everyone. The people who survived became immune to it as did many their siblings. As a matter of fact people today whose ancestors survived the Plague are almost totally immune from Aids.

( yes I realize Aids is a virus and the Plague was thought to be bacterial but new evidence proves otherwise. I took a couple of 6 hour courses on the Plague but that is for another thread)

If we had to revert back to hunting and didn't have antibiotics, doctors, HMOs Obamacare etc. We would all just about be dead. Our modern immunity is not all it's hyped up to be.

 

[nothing_fancy]

Yes. Personally, I lost a clown fish to velvet because I didn't have a QT ready to go. I had that fish for around 8 years and it was very frustrating to know that I had failed it even though its just a fish. Its just the point that setting up a qt is so easy and cheap and if its just sitting there fallow most of the time it requires almost no maintenance compared to your main tank.

 

[reef_1]

That article you linked to is actually 12 years old and was re posted 7 years ago.

In the quoted article I thought they refer to this specific tank as being 40+ years old as they say

"his personal success over the 40+ years of the life of his tank"

while now on reef2reef it is 47 years old, so I thought article is 7 years old.

Most of Europe died from the Plague, but not everyone. The people who survived became immune to it as did many their siblings.

Yeah, thats true, but that doesnt help that specific fish in my fish tank which is about to die, medication does. I want to keep alive ALL of the fish I bring home, not just the ones which are surviving.

Most fish in fish tanks wont have any descendants, so we dont have to be afraid of stopping natural selection by our medications and weakening the bloodline.

I do use a low dose of ozone.

Ozone is "cheating" isnt that, thats one of the methods for managing ich for example and I know from first hand it works very effectively (ok I did h2o2 dosing only, but its the same essentially).

 

[hollow6210]

Forgive my ignorance--still working on setting up first tank and am planning on following hybrid TTM with H2O2 described by @Humblefish. My question is this: how does quarantining or disease treatment strip the immunity of the fish? I guess some treatments could but I don't follow the blanket statement that QT strips immunity.

 

[mfinn]

Forgive my ignorance--still working on setting up first tank and am planning on following hybrid TTM with H2O2 described by @Humblefish. My question is this: how does quarantining or disease treatment strip the immunity of the fish? I guess some treatments could but I don't follow the blanket statement that QT strips immunity.

@Jay Hemdal

 

[Paul B]

I, for one, am glad that scientists determined that copper can successfully treat cryptocaryon and velvet and that I don't have to rely on immunity to develop in my tank. I don't understand why, if the fish immune system is so strong, a dose of copper would destroy that immune system.

There is so much to get through here and I am cooking for a bunch of company tonight.

Anyway, first off we have to stop saying things like "I didn't quarantine and lost all my fish to velvet". I am sure you did but not because you quarantined or didn't quarantine. Your tank is set up incorrectly or it is new. New tanks with new water and dry rocks should always quarantine and pray a lot.

On the interview I did with "Rappin with ReefBum" this week and the one I did on You Tube with my good friend Humblefish 2 weeks ago I mentioned that I personally could not start a tank with ASW and dry rock because it would crash as many of them do. It is also near the beginning of my book that Noobs should listen to someone else as my methods won't work in that type of a tank.

Now, I never believed that vaccinations, doctors or scientists are killing us. We are very good at doing that ourselves. Humans, and especially Americans are in terrible shape. Sorry but we are. We are not exactly like Jaguars and many of us rely heavily on medications to keep us alive instead of the proper food and exercise. Coke and Pop Tarts are not health foods. That is a fact.

I had my 3 Covid shots, flu shot, measles and before I was sent to Viet Nam I got about 50 shots for God knows what. I also had 30 surgeries and am going for another one in a couple of weeks.

(All for manly things like broken bones, torn or smashed things)

Survival of the fittest has worked for the 3,000,000 or so years Humans have been around. It also works for all the animals if you believe Darwin. I don't propose that now as there wouldn't be many of us around. But the ones of us that are left would be in fantastic shape.

We may not like that, but it's true and its how our fish live in the sea.

I have to go and switch to a different computer.

 

[Dav2996]

I'm in the same boat. I am a new reefer and trying to do everything by the book. I bought a 13 gallon fluval tank just for QT but I am really fumbling with my attempt. A few times I let the ammonia climb dangerously high almost killing my fish. I've increased my water change frequency since then but then now my copper levels are all over the place, once I let it climb to almost 3.5 before I quickly did another water change late at night. I feel like I am putting my fish through an incredible amount of stress when they are about as healthy looking as they could be with a voracious appetite. I'm on the verge of just giving up and transferring them to my main tank.

I have a small tank like yours I just throw them in haha I acclimate for 20 mins with syringed water into the bag. Only have 4 fish in 20 gallon so had no issues.

 

[Paul B]

There are a few more myths in this hobby. We all want to believe and go by what scientists say as if they are always correct. They are not. Not by a long shot as history will show us. Scientists and researchers are always correct until someone else comes along and discovers something else. (Think Galileo. or Dr. Fauci)

Those two researchers who came up with the ich lifespan (I forget their names as I am old and forget a lot of things but it will come to me) they were smart guys but did 100% of their research in a lab which means almost zero in the real world and I wrote to them to tell them that as my tank was going for 20 years when they came up with that.

(Burgess was one of them)

Their work on the parasite lifespan was right on but it doesn't mean anything if the fish are immune.
If I get shot by a bullet in the chest I will probably die. But if I am wearing a bullet proof vest, I will probably be fine.

That makes us immune to bullets...Sort of.

In the sea, the fish stay immune because they are living in a soup of pathogens but living in a tank that was quarantined or medicated there are no parasites so if one gets in, all the fish get infected. It's common sense to me and I am an electrician.

My tank would not have survived for 50 years if this was not true.

All the people in Europe in the 1400s didn't die from smallpox but almost all the Native Americans did when the Europeans came here and sneezed on everyone. The Europeans had some immunity to that disease as they lived with it.

I lived in Viet Nam in the Jungle for a year but I had to take anti malaria medication every day because I was never exposed to malaria in the States. Malaria is a parasite similar to ich. The people we were fighting lived in that jungle their entire lives and didn't have the bug spray I had yet they looked mighty healthy to me as they had some immunity to it.

This is where it may get a little complicated and few people will believe it or will fall asleep. We get most of our information on the internet now and the same rumors get knocked around but most of us fail to read current research papers and I know everyone here likes researchers. Are they always correct? As I said...No. But we should have something to go by specially if it makes sense in regards to this hobby "IN A HOME TANK".

Gut bacteria controls almost 100% the immunity of fish and almost that much in us. I did not make that up and I have posted many times this research. Immunity does not come from pellets, flakes, copper, Prizapro. Home Depot PVC elbows or Taylor Swift.

Gut bacteria is not the bacteria on our hands, on our rocks or the stuff many people buy in a bottle.
It is the " Most Important Thing In This Hobby" that is totally ignored but it keeps our fish alive and well.

This is very important.........When we use copper or any medication "IT KILLS THE GUT BACTERIA".
I am not sure how many times I posted that but that is the reason medication eliminates almost 100% the fishes immunity..............................Think about that.

All those medications we put in the tank to kill something is also inside the fish. The next time you remove a fish for something or eat one, look down it's throat. You can see all the way into it's stomach and that is where that copper is going. Right to the bacteria and copper kills bacteria. It kills it so good that hospitals used to use brass doorknobs because bacteria doesn't live on it. Now it is to expensive so they hang those hand sterilizers all over the place.

How many times on this very forum do we read a fish in copper to kill parasites, and the fish comes down with something else? That is because through "kindness" we destroyed it's immunity.

Long quarantine does the same thing because in that quarantine tank there are no pathogens to keep the fish immune and in time we all lose immunity. A fishes immune system uses a huge amount of calories to stay healthy just as developing eggs does.

If we don't use the immunity we lose it which is why we get booster shots, don't we? Why don't we believe that is because the immunity in that shot wanes in time unless we are exposed to that disease.

I had Covid so now I have more immunity to it and living in New York I am exposed to it often so I will keep my immunity. But If I lived on the Space Shuttle for a year, I would lose that immunity.

How does the fish use that immunity to stay protected from parasites? I am glad I asked.

It is because "almost" all fish are covered in slime. That slime is a living part of the fish unlike our skin which is dead on the outside. The slime is exuded all over the fish even in it's gills and down it's throat and there are a couple of reasons for that. The slime contains "Anti parasitic, anti bacterial and anti viral" substances the fish makes mostly in it's kidney but also in other places.

It takes a lot of energy to keep making slime because it is water soluble and washes away. As it washes away it takes away many pathogens but besides that, the slime is the fishes first line of defense. It actually repels or kills parasites.

How does the fish know what type of antigens to exude in it's slime? Good question.

It is because a natural fish in the sea eat primarily other fish. They eat them every day constantly.

Notice the fry all over this shot? Everywhere in the sea you see this.



If you dive you will see larger fish eat these fry constantly. Those fry are eating smaller fish or inverts including parasites.

All fish in the sea are naturally filled with parasites and all fish eat them. Those parasites are processed in the fishes kidney (unlike in us) and then a complicated thing happens where the fishes immune system makes that type of antibody to exude in it's slime.

It is very simple.

 

[HBtank]

Wow, a ton of bizarre tangents and pseudo-science in here. Gonna stay out of that. And you gotta know the difference between hard science/data, and anecdotes.

Of course QT is the best approach, if resources are available. QT doesn’t require medication, it can simply be isolation and observation. I think it can be more difficult, stressful, and time consuming for fish, but will benefit your established tank/display. For coral I would highly recommend it, as the substrate they come on and problems that can pass through dipping are hard to catch immediately.

But I do think people create the illusion of a disease/pest free tank, when it is really just a “healthy“ tank. For instance, I am in the camp that a disease like ich is usually just managed. My goal is to avoid the more severe/acute outbreaks, parasites, and pests.

Coral QTs can be relatively small and not a huge hassle to establish. For fish I have landed on using quality vendors that QT.

 

[Paul B]

In what "I" would consider a healthy system there are parasites, bacteria and viruses in the same proportion they are in in the sea. If we use a medication to kill the bacteria the parasites could get stronger because parasites also are preyed on by bacteria and parasites also have an immune system. I know nothing about parasite immunity just like I know nothing about Twitter or Facebook.

But back to a healthy tank. A healthy tank should have a full compliment of pathogens the fish was living with in the sea. That would seem counter productive to a novice but it is not. The fish are perfectly capable of living with those things as they have been for millions of years.

Remember, medication and long quarantine is IMO bad.
Hopefully, some of the parasites will stay alive maybe by sampling a little fish skin or slime but they can never get to epic proportions because of the immunity unlike what many people believe.

But other factors come into play and that is as I said before about Stress which also kills immunity.

 

[Jay Hemdal Verified Community Expert]

Forgive my ignorance--still working on setting up first tank and am planning on following hybrid TTM with H2O2 described by @Humblefish. My question is this: how does quarantining or disease treatment strip the immunity of the fish? I guess some treatments could but I don't follow the blanket statement that QT strips immunity.

As I had mentioned in a previous post, for this discussion to really work, we need a list of agreed upon definitions. There is a huge range of what people consider "quarantine". Likewise, there is a difference between passive immunity (a fish being in good shape) and active immunity.

Quarantine does not "strip immunity". Additionally, passive immunity does not protect fish from all diseases. Active immunity (from which a fish was exposed but recovered) is temporary - about 6 months for Cryptocaryon. Partial immunity is the most often seen instance, where the fish still get sick, but manage to fight the disease off, at least partially.

Hybrid TTM has some drawbacks - it works pretty well for Cryptocaryon (marine ich) and the hybrid angle was designed to help with Amyloodinium (velvet). It falls flat when used against Neobenedenia (which has sticky eggs that move right along with the fish). It also won't work for diseases with direct life cycles, Brooklynella, Uronema, etc. Our copper quarantine doesn't help with those either.

Jay

 

[Paul B]

An Idea that I came up with for newer tanks would be to use a diatom filter to lessen the number of parasites until the tank is healthy enough and the immunity is strong enough to manage the parasites normally like fish were designed to do.

And PS Quarantine is not the best way to go. If you believe that, than do that.

 

[Paul B]

Quarantine does not "strip immunity".

That is debatable and has to many variables to say if it is true or not. Different fish stay immune to a pathogen for different lengths of time just like we have a set time we will stay immune to say Covid if we don't get infected again.

I mentioned quarantine for 74 days as that is what many people including I think Humblefish says.

I have no idea how long a certain fish stays immune to something and I doubt anyone else does but like in us, I am sure the immunity wanes over time.

Medication of almost any type will kill gut bacteria destroying the immunity. If that gut bacteria can be regained with the proper diet is also debatable but possible. Unfortunately most of us don't feed the correct foods with living gut bacteria and instead rely 100% on store bought food.

Jay where you work (hang out) is a large public aquarium and in those tanks fish have a wide assortment of foods to eat that are growing in the tank besides what you are giving them. Public aquariums are totally different from a small home tank and the people taking care of them are much more astute in fish husbandry.

I am not that bright but I know how to keep almost all fish long enough to only die of old age so there must be something going on immune wise. And I think I explained it to the best of my knowledge.

But anyone can research Gut bacteria and how it relates to health and immunity. Also how copper kills bacteria.

 

[areefer01]

On the interview I did with "Rappin with ReefBum" this week and the one I did on You Tube with my good friend Humblefish 2 weeks ago I mentioned that I personally could not start a tank with ASW and dry rock because it would crash as many of them do. It is also near the beginning of my book that Noobs should listen to someone else as my methods won't work in that type of a tank.

Humble is a great person.

However these sort of blanket statements you make are misleading or carry no weight. Anyone can start a new display using ASW and dry rock with success. It happens and will continue to happen. On the other hand the detail you may be leaving off is new hobbyist lack of understanding the cycle and post cycle stages displays go through to include the length of time reefs take to mature. Captivity (home aquaria) and reality (oceanic). There is always a rush to introduce corals and fish to a display and when done too soon or imbalanced things start to go south really really quickly.

The micro fauna and biological stuff takes time and there is no switch as you very well know. Trying to rush it is what causes the problems. Not the dry rock or synthetic salt. We hobbyist are trying to stuff everything into a display while feeding it to grow yet the very things we want to suppress also are a natural part of the same bloody environment. Everything wants a piece of the respected surface area and the hobbyist want a thriving display tomorrow. It takes years for 1/4" frags to grow into colonies.

Edit: for clarity sake although I think you are fine with a different of opinion. I'm perfectly cool with your process and method. It works which is great and I'm not saying it is wrong. I only question or have an opinion on some things new hobbyists may misinterpret reading some of it if that makes sense. A few of us have an advantage having communicated with you over the past 25 years so have a different understanding...

 

[Paul B]

Copper Kills Germs​

While it may live for days on plastics, wood, silverware, doorknobs, ceramics, glass, stainless steel, and other materials, the WHO also acknowledges that the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 only lives on copper for about four hours - less than a workday or night's sleep.

Copper has the ability to kill viruses and bacteria by disrupting the protective layers of certain microorganisms and interfering with their vital processes. This happens on contact - with no cleaning supplies. This is not new discovery; ancient Egyptians recognized the health benefits of copper versus other materials. However, this phenomenon of "contact killing" requires that the microorganism makes direct contact with copper.

According to Dr. Edward Bilsky at the Pacific Northwest University of Health Sciences, copper kills bacteria in the following ways:

• it disrupts bacterial cell membranes, damaging the DNA or RNA of the microbe;
• it generates oxidative stress on bacterial cells and develops hydrogen peroxide, which can kill bacteria cells; and
• it interferes with critical proteins.

(That is the end of that article)

This is a long, scientific paper if anyone is interested that discusses how and when the gut bacteria forms in fish and how it relates to fish health.
But it does say that every fish is so different that a universal baseline in regard to health and immunity is impossible to ascertain.

Front Microbiol. 2018; 9: 873.
Published online 2018 May 4. doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2018.00873
PMCID: PMC5946678
PMID: 29780377

The Gut Microbiota of Marine Fish​

Sian Egerton,1,2 Sarah Culloty,2,3 Jason Whooley,4 Catherine Stanton,5,6 and R. Paul Ross1,5,6,*
Author information Article notes Copyright and License information Disclaimer

It has been reported that 90% of fish intestinal microbiota studied to date are composed of Proteobacteria, Bacteroidetes and Firmicutes (Ghanbari et al., 2015). However, within these phyla, studies reporting gut microbiota composition have generally conveyed conflicting results and this is undoubtedly a feature of the diversity which exists amongst fish. Such diversity in results can pose difficulties in extrapolating real and meaningful trends and correlations between gut microbial composition and the factors that shape it.