@Lasse
I do not believe in prophylactic treatment of fish. There I said it I have been outed as a heretic in the fish world. As such how did your friend design his holding system and how does he handle in coming fish to keep them healthy? Your answer may shed some light in this darkness.
Here is the real question for the rest of you that think you can create a disease free system with disease free fish. How in the world do you think fish survive in the wild when there are 1 million bacteria per cubic milliter in the ocean and 10 million viruses in that same sample size? Please answer that before you postulate that keeping fish in any other way that is different than the natural system they come from is somehow superior. The pages and pages of dead and dying fish in the treatment section of this R2R forum demand an answer. Until you can answer that talk to the hand.;Stop
I will be up front with you all I personally killed way more fish trying the prophylactic methods you recommend than other methods. And don't start with the you were just lucky. I learned in very short order running laboratories that the only way to survive and thrive in that environment is consistent and repeatable results. Anything else is a waste of time and resources.;Nailbiting
I operated at one time a local wholesale operation and processed hundreds of fish and inverts successfully and some not so succesfully. I have handled shark and rays which are way more difficult to handle than smaller ornamental fish. I depended on the science of repeatable results to keep the fish alive and develop a customer list of aquarium stores. All that said I am still very much a student in this art form we call a hobby. I ask these hard questions for people like
@Wildreefs and myself who after using all the must use tools have had the same results. Time to stop casting about for answers and use what will work for the most people most of the time. It is abundantly clear that what is suggested with prophylaxis is not working for the vast majority of hobbiest period.
The hobby will die due to regulation or worse until we learn from nature how the system works and it clearly is not poison and antibiotics that the fish and inverts have never seen in all their lives until we capture them and try to clean them up for our aquarium.
I couldn’t have summed this up any more clearly, at least not at work typing on an iPhone .
I am all for the pursuit of the ideal aquarium. I broke down my tank in January, thinking i can outsmart the naysayers who say qt is a waste of time. I had the knowledge, tools, and willingness.
Turns out I didn’t have the first two, since parasite still escaped ttm and copper, as well as Uronema with multiple formalin and metro usage.
The last one, willingness, is hanging i the balance now. In now way am I prepared mentally to feel good about what is taking place not breaking down the tank again to take another swing at it.
I will try to use common sense and what sounds right. My lfs just lost a wild fire clown to brook last week after formalin dips. Makes sense, he was being returned to he same tank so it was bound to reinfect, if the formalin truly killed it in the first place(he ones in the fish)
But then I look and see 20 other clowns apart of this system living fine. If it’s so rapid and contagious, why aren’t they succoming to it? Had I not seen that fish the week it was there, and just saw the other clowns, would it be safe to say the rampant killer is not there ?
2k in fish I killed trying to treat something that may or may not have affected them.
Had multiple fish just stop eating, while other fed during treatment. I believe the flameback stressed himself into the ground on a glass box. Definitely acting different then the days prior sitting in lfs tank with sand and fake decorations.
Although ammonia was showing negative, I can’t help but think it was a factor. Even when I had a tank up and running for qt, no way was there wasn’t spikes from having 3-4 small fish in some 20 gallons of water.
Now if I was able to afford a large system, some few hundred gallons , I think the bioload would handle it, however we also tell people to add fish gradually to allow the bio population to scale up to the demand. How does one expect that in at qt, when it goes from nothing to 3-4 in an instant?
Once that part is delt with, even the survivors that made it thru copper, most likely some ammonia, stress from small empty tank, etc, still Carried it in, and all that for what?
If formalin really does shorten lives, then all I did was give them a shorter life expectancy, and did nothing towards what I was trying to reach.
Now in regards as to what lase (sp?) was saying about years of. I copper , I think the landscape has changed dramatically.
Instead of having lfs who carried everything in front of you, knowing you would need everything from tank, stand , skinner lights and snails from them, most of them have realized they can’t compete with the inline outlets, so in turn looked to make the most of the livestock. How does one do that?
By acquiring cheaper livestock. I know most guys get good stuff from quality marine, but also fill voids and get cheaper stuff from local places. Take quality fish, and mix them with cheaper, mass collected stuff, and well they don’t average out, you end up with whatever the low stuff brought in.
Same thing goes for captive bred. Taken clean, lab made fish from sterile tanks, and mix them with wild stuff like most places do, and the stuff isn’t clean anymore.
Also, with the increase of shipping , places are shipping with less water, which is more ammonia, more proximity with the nasty stuff such as parasites , bacteria etc. mos chromis are shipped in a Few ounces of water or less.
All this efficiency helps with hard goods I suppose , but the livestock doesn’t deviate from the standards they’ve had.
See it with corals, drags get smaller and smaller, and colonies are hacked up and sold very tiny. Can’t cut a fish in half to sell it twice, but you can cut corners around the fish with trying to save.
I think this is part of the reason fish health has declined. There a ton of lfs in the nyc area that only sell livestock, and are selling them cheap only to put the burden of death on the buyer. All about how far up the chain you can move them.
Places that raise captive fish have the right intentions. Problem is, they only sell direct to lfs outlets, which again mix them with wild, and by the time the consumer gets them, the captive notion is far gone.
I have a few parrots, I obtained them from breeders who don’t even let you in the aviary out of fear of you introducing something to them. Could have come from petsmart of a park with a wild disease, and they can’t trust that to enter in their facility.
Why are captive fish different?
