Can you quarantine fish without copper and low salinity?

[Gareth elliott]

All fish are "shipped" it is just that some may spend more or less time in the lfs. I am admittedly not a religious QT person and I have never had ich, velvet or urinoma but I did lose a couple of fish to flukes one time before I even knew what they were.

Sorry meant direct shipped fish

If seen in person you can visually inspect a fish’s condition and feeding response. Both of which can be used to gauge the current immune system of the fish in question. Not perfect, but i couldn’t imagine ordering a fish whose condition i was unsure of till i opened the box; without some sort of plan to treat the most common afflictions outside the dt. Ordered a fish last week. Arrived quite ill and lethargic and passed on day 2, even with attempting antibiotics. after a necropsy believe it also had eye flukes (have a really poor microscope and had frozen the fish before i did this hard to id anything positively ). But Glad it never made it to my tank.

 

[jda]

Where they come from matters too. The fish that I get direct from Hawaii to Denver are significantly more healthy than the ones that stop off in LA for a while.

 

[Lasse]

In my opinion and other quarantine aquarists at public aquariums opinion, prophylactic treatment done correctly is the safest and best policy. To treat every animal like it has every disease, so your displays end up with none of them.

My bold - this is not true at all - maybe among some aquarium in the states but here in Sweden you need a veterinary to work with the aquarium and there is no veterinary here that recommend prophylactic treatment. It is more or less forbidden – especially with antibiotics. I do not know one public aquarium here in Sweden that use prophylactic treatment – QT through observations – yes but try to fix something that´s not broken – never.

Where they come from matters too. The fish that I get direct from Hawaii to Denver are significantly more healthy than the ones that stop off in LA for a while.

And what you think the wholesaler do - probably prophylactic treatment and because it has been that way for a while – there can be pathogens that are resistant in the system. They need cooper in order to supress diseases and so on.

I have said it before and I say it again – The last 15 years more than 20 000 imported fishes from the Pacific, Indian Ocean, Caribbean, Hawaii and the Red Sea have passed through my hands when I have helped a friend of me. This direct imported fish has normally not shown up any diseases. Sometimes some butterflies and tang shown up ich after some days – if they bring the ich or if the ich was in some of the aquariums is difficult to say. During this time – I probable has seen one or two fishes with ich already when they arrive. During this time – DOA has normally been lesser than 2 %. Never seen velvet. Brooklynella a few times – more seldom the last 5 years. Bacterial diseases – sometimes and often only one species.

The LFS in my country does not work with prophylactic methods at all and the wholesalers does not do it either. Personally – I would never ever buy a fish that have been treated prophylactic because that many of the medicines that is used for treating fish can create serve damage of liver and other organs. Copper as an example – supress the immune system and will bioaccumulate. Many of the known parasite drugs alter the toxilogical breakdown pathways in the liver (known as P- 450 MFO system). IMO – you just play with the devil. You can´t create a pathogen free system – it will be like the old joke – the operation was a success, but unfortunately the patient died.

My concern is the stress they are under being put into a new environment that could lower their immunity, especially since one of the fish is a tang. I have little doubt there is ich in my tank although it has never been noticed.

As I say in post 8 in this thread

If you use this method, I will suggest that you during the last two weeks slowly (maybe 5 – 10 % a day) do WC with help of the water in the DT. This of two reasons – vaccination against pathogens existing in the DT not seen by the fish before and that the fish get the same smell as the fishes in the DT. This with smell sounds funny but I have experiences with very aggressive fishes (like Lake Tanganyika cichlids) and this way of handling new fish before introducing reduce the loss by stress and bulling very much. I have the same experiences with saltwater fishes. Nowadays – I always put my newcomers in my refugium for a week – when the newcomer is introduced into the DT – no reaction from my old fish. I have introduce new fish without having the in the refugium – all this cases my largest wrasse start to bulling them directly – is a huge differences in behaviour from this fish

Sincerely Lasse

 

[jtl]

Lots of good discussion. I think the next time I get fish I will just put them in quarantine for a couple of weeks of observation. Maybe a 5 min fresh water dip to check for flukes and call it a day unless something shows up. I am down to the last 4 days so I will play this hand out.

 

[AcroNem]

My bold - this is not true at all - maybe among some aquarium in the states but here in Sweden you need a veterinary to work with the aquarium and there is no veterinary here that recommend prophylactic treatment. It is more or less forbidden – especially with antibiotics. I do not know one public aquarium here in Sweden that use prophylactic treatment

You're allowed to disagree, it may not be "true" or practiced over there, but it is in many places here. Things seem very different between our types of facilities, and that's fine. Like I said you can disagree and do it your own way, but it doesn't make our practices "not true at all". We can toss evidence for what's "best" all day long and we won't really get anywhere. We also have vets on staff, and our vets apparently disagree as well. That's all okay, just wanted to state the above. Have a good day

 

[Lasse]

May I ask - do you have children that play out in the wood with all nasty bacteria, worms, parasites, ticks and so one (FYI around where I live - it’s a lot of ticks that is vectors for at least 3 very serve diseases). If you have - do you treat them with all types of prophylactic medicines when they come back home – because they can have been infected of whatever?

If you discover a ticks on your leg – do you go to the doctor and ask him to treat you against all these nasty diseases (parasite, bacterial and viral) that ticks can be vectors for or do you wait until you have an indication. When you come to the doctor – does hi/she treat you for all possible diseases that ticks can give you – or does he/she do a diagnose and treat you against the real disease?

Let me take another example – of different reasons I have got heavy medication of antibiotics now and when. I know how I feel after this and how my stomach works after that. Never – ever would it come into my mind that I would do that treatment just because I could get an infection but have no signs of it - yet. And with antibiotics – it’s a huge risk to create resistant populations of bacteria. And I have friends that have been treated with metradizanole – and if I suggest them to take a cure just in case – they would kill me.

Idiotical aeguments? maybe - but IMO - this way of using prophylactic treatments in all different steps of the supply chain will make our hobby to die sooner or later.

Sincerely Lasse

 

[Sunny Goold]

My bold - this is not true at all - maybe among some aquarium in the states but here in Sweden you need a veterinary to work with the aquarium and there is no veterinary here that recommend prophylactic treatment. It is more or less forbidden – especially with antibiotics. I do not know one public aquarium here in Sweden that use prophylactic treatment – QT through observations – yes but try to fix something that´s not broken – never.



And what you think the wholesaler do - probably prophylactic treatment and because it has been that way for a while – there can be pathogens that are resistant in the system. They need cooper in order to supress diseases and so on.

I have said it before and I say it again – The last 15 years more than 20 000 imported fishes from the Pacific, Indian Ocean, Caribbean, Hawaii and the Red Sea have passed through my hands when I have helped a friend of me. This direct imported fish has normally not shown up any diseases. Sometimes some butterflies and tang shown up ich after some days – if they bring the ich or if the ich was in some of the aquariums is difficult to say. During this time – I probable has seen one or two fishes with ich already when they arrive. During this time – DOA has normally been lesser than 2 %. Never seen velvet. Brooklynella a few times – more seldom the last 5 years. Bacterial diseases – sometimes and often only one species.

The LFS in my country does not work with prophylactic methods at all and the wholesalers does not do it either. Personally – I would never ever buy a fish that have been treated prophylactic because that many of the medicines that is used for treating fish can create serve damage of liver and other organs. Copper as an example – supress the immune system and will bioaccumulate. Many of the known parasite drugs alter the toxilogical breakdown pathways in the liver (known as P- 450 MFO system). IMO – you just play with the devil. You can´t create a pathogen free system – it will be like the old joke – the operation was a success, but unfortunately the patient died.



As I say in post 8 in this thread



Sincerely Lasse

Thanks Lasse and all the others who contributed plus @CyberGuy for starting such and informative thread- I have found the info in all the contributions very helpful.

On Copper (I am in Czech and I am going to have to ask if it is used here (there is an importer I want to use) and I wonder if Germany is the same as Sweden as I will probably pop over there to buy fish (as I will do with a lot of coral). I thought it was safe to assume all importers use copper but what you speak about Lasse is exactly why I don't want to use it.

@CyberGuy I mentioned Safety Stop but it's Formalin (not Malakite Green) with Methylene Blue. I think its a great product for those reefers (most) who don't QT and this is at least something and easy.

In the last couple of days I have done some re-reading of Humblefish's stuff and looked up a bunch of treatments. So my rambling below is mostly to try to clarify thoughts in my head

After reading the information I think a problem is having the observation skills and experience to just observe. I also think that eliminating 75% of issues with an almost good enough approach is not very good and even 90% means you are likely eventually gonna get hit.

Still I think I will do Methylene Blue and then observe and get the fishes strength up with good food. After that I need to choose some solutions because I wouldn't feel confident that I would be able to identify that there may be an issue. I will consider hypo but I discovered that takes a fair bit of time and I thought I could combine a short hypo with a tank transfer method (but I haven't seen anyone has done that). Maybe I will use Focus and PraziPro soaked in the food on Days 4 and 10 of tank transfer as it appears they are completely safe for the fish (even reef safe). I think I will also have some Metroplex handy (or General Cure - I know General Cure is metro plus prazi but I don't know if in that combo it is more effective). I'd probably like to have 1 other medication that covers most things (because if something comes up I'm probably not going to be able to diagnose correctly) but I haven't worked out what that could be.

Humblefish has a list of minimum medications he recommends having on hand (now I can't find it so I may be dreaming) but it is a lot. Meredith has a great post on treatments for most of the popular fish (or types of fish) and that is super interesting to me.

Anyhow so for me a best case scenario is a strategy that treats all fish for most common diseases and it enhances their chances for survival. So far I think some observation and what Humblefish recommends with the TTM with Prazipro probably does that for most specie. I'd also like to just put Methylene Blue in the bag when I pick up the fish (but I need to read up on that) plus for some finicky wrasse I think I will put sand in the bag too and have my QTs temp, pH and salinity all pretty closely matched to the water in the bag so I can get the fish into QT as fast as possible