Do fish have immunity?

[mindme]

Ķ
Na hes not harsh just a none believer. They are everywhere. I have broad shoulders and faced ridicule before. That's because they are closed to alternatives been preached to as the only way and may have failed in the past as I did in my early years. Then I began to think outside the box that was constraining me and preventing mother nature from doing her healing and prevention.
Everybody is welcome to come and see my aquarium but if it's a bit to far to travel then you can always see it on YouTube.

Let's put it to the test. Let's take a fish that's known to have velvet, put it in your tank and see what happens.

Because for 10 years I added fish without doing QT and had no troubles. And then I lost $300 worth of fish to velvet.

 

[bnord]

and to the OP, thanks for letting us nerds crash your thread!

 

[bnord]

Let's put it to the test. Let's take a fish that's known to have velvet, put it in your tank and see what happens.

Because for 10 years I added fish without doing QT and had no troubles. And then I lost $300 worth of fish to velvet.

I wrote what I wrote before reading this, and "do not disagree"

 

[Tired]

That is why we get shots for measles, covid, tetanus etc. We are not normally exposed to those things so we get shots. But if we lived in a place where those diseases were common, we would remain immune "if" we eat correctly, sleep well and don't freeze to death.

If this is really the case, why do so many people die of diseases that they're regularly exposed to?

The immune system attacks pathogens and tries to destroy them. It has an advantage over familiar pathogens, as it can recognize them sooner and attack them before they multiply. But that does NOT mean that regular exposure to a disease will invariably keep you from getting it, or keep you from dying of it. Otherwise, schoolteachers would never get colds or the flu, and nobody would die of malaria. Otherwise people who've gotten Covid multiple times would never suffer any ill effects from it.

Your immune system's familiarity with a disease can't help you if your body gets flooded with so much of the pathogen that the immune system is overwhelmed.

As an example: in Mexico, the drinking water in most places is heavily contaminated with various pathogens. If you go to Mexico and drink the water, you're likely to get very sick. People who've lived in Mexico all their lives and drunk the water all their lives generally get less sick, but they still frequently have bad stomach trouble, and if they get unlucky and are exposed to a high level of something particularly nasty, they catch it. Regular exposure to a disease grants some amount of resistance, it does not grant immunity.

The reason wild animals can live among pathogens and generally not get too sick isn't because they're immune. It's because they aren't generally exposed to very much of anything at any given time, and do have some resistance. If they encounter a lot of it, they get sick. Maybe less sick than an animal not used to that pathogen, and maybe it takes them longer to get sick, but they can still get sick.

 

[atoll]

Let's put it to the test. Let's take a fish that's known to have velvet, put it in your tank and see what happens.

Because for 10 years I added fish without doing QT and had no troubles. And then I lost $300 worth of fish to velvet.

Yeah come on bring one over. Now I never said I had introduced fish with velvet, maybe I have maybe I haven't in 30 years but all I can tell you is in that time I have NEVER had an outbreak of disease of any kind. That's my claim. I have bought from LFSs some others swear they would never buy from stating your bound to bring home itch, velvet and all manner of nasties without a single hole issue. I have lost fish in the first week or so for unexplained reasons, suspect drug caught but that's it, no diseases. So do you ho firstly think I would change what I do. I would wager if I QTd I would have lost fish due to QTing like many have done.

 

[damsels are not mean]

That is why we get shots for measles, covid, tetanus etc. We are not normally exposed to those things so we get shots. But if we lived in a place where those diseases were common, we would remain immune "if" we eat correctly, sleep well and don't freeze to death.

Well no, we did live in a place where those diseases were common, and that exactly why we needed to develop the vaccines.

I respect you for your success and I think management works well for ich, but velvet is what's taken over at wholesalers at this point and that kills fast. I've seen stories of previously successful ich management tanks wiping out practically overnight due to velvet. And the cases I see on forums and Facebook now are not ich they're velvet and sometimes brook.

 

[WVNed]

this again
Keep your fish however you want
I will do the same
But I have no use for people going around calling people liars
There are pictures of my fish from when I got them until now on here. Figure it out yourself.

 

[mindme]

Yeah come on bring one over. Now I never said I had introduced fish with velvet, maybe I have maybe I haven't in 30 years but all I can tell you is in that time I have NEVER had an outbreak of disease of any kind. That's my claim. I have bought from LFSs some others swear they would never buy from stating your bound to bring home itch, velvet and all manner of nasties without a single hole issue. I have lost fish in the first week or so for unexplained reasons, suspect drug caught but that's it, no diseases. So do you ho firstly think I would change what I do. I would wager if I QTd I would have lost fish due to QTing like many have done.

No way, that stuff would kill your entire tank in less than 3 days.

 

[ReefGeezer]

I did not quarantine the 15 fish I have in my 90. I did try to manage the risks though. Even then, I lost a couple along the way. I used an acclimation protocol that included formalin baths and freshwater dips. I keep the water quality top notch. I feed pretty much on the @PaulB plan. I'm landlocked so it's a little different, but the idea is the same. I also run a UV for a while after stocking a fish just for viral control. My tank is pretty well mature... now.

It seems we glance over how to GET to the point where the tank and its inhabitants are mature enough to maintain fish in a healthy enough condition to display "immune like" qualities. IMO, having good water quality and lots of places to hide are absolute starting requirements. Starting with hearty fish that handle stress well, hand picking only absolutely heathy looking specimens; acclimating them in a manner that at least limits the pathogens brought into the tank; and feeding them a lot of high protein, unprocessed, fresh as possible foods is the way to get there. While trying to stock my tank, I passed up a lot of fish I wanted to take home because I saw them flash or scratch just once; observed them breathing just slightly more heavily than I thought they should; saw cloudiness in fins or eyes; noticed any thinness or emaciation; or because they would not eat or were just acting weird. It should also be noted that mature tanks usually have a lot of organisms present that feed on protozoans and bacteria that could be harmful. This further reduces the risks of outbreak.

I would not be confident enough that I would place a knowingly infected specimen in my tank. But I think for the most part, I believe I've managed the risk pretty well. All that said, I have ordered the last two fish for my 90 from a quarantined fish site, Dr. Reef. They are very sensitive specimens and I think the premium I'm paying is a great insurance policy.

 

[atoll]

No way, that stuff would kill your entire tank in less than 3 days.

Maybe but neither of us know what I have introduced into my tanks over the last 30 years. Your assuming if I introduced velvet into my tank that it would spread to the existing fish. We do have velvet in the UK you know.

 

[mindme]

Maybe but neither of us know what I have introduced into my tanks over the last 30 years. Your assuming if I introduced velvet into my tank that it would spread to the existing fish. We do have velvet in the UK you know.

I had the same story for 10 years.

I threw in fish as I got them, sometimes some died, but most stayed healthy and my existing fish never seemed to be affected.

And then I got velvet and that was the end of that fairy tale. I still have ich now, I just manage it.

 

[atoll]

I had the same story for 10 years.

I threw in fish as I got them, sometimes some died, but most stayed healthy and my existing fish never seemed to be affected.

And then I got velvet and that was the end of that fairy tale. I still have ich now, I just manage it.

Like I have said before, I believe there us more to immunity than just a mature tank. A mature tank is but one thing in a list of things I believe contribute to healthy fish and ability to stay that way. I also had a tank that was around 10 years old but my fish would still catch itch. Now I never see it unless a new addition shows signs of it shortly after introduction. However, within 36 hours any signs have gone with no other fish showing any evidence of catching it.

 

[Paul B]

As an example: in Mexico, the drinking water in most places is heavily contaminated with various pathogens.

This is true. Have you ever been to mexico? Many of the living conditions are horrible. I took a class about the food production in Mexico and I have travelled all over the place. Mexico City is in a dry lake bed. There is no fresh water there so it is brought in. It's about 10,000' high

There are many farms below there and the sewage from Mexico travels down the mountain in troughs to fertilize the crops below. I won't let my family eat anything from there as their produce is loaded with human waste.

As you mentioned, if we go there, we get sick. My wife and I ended up in the hospital, I didn't see any Mexicans there in the hospital with dysentery but dozens of Americans.

I lived a year in the jungle of Viet Nam. Every day I had to take an anti malaria pill or I was almost guaranteed to get malaria which is a parasite similar to ich.

The Vietnamese people also lived in the jungle and they had no pills but they looked mighty healthy to me and I never heard of one of them with malaria even though their living conditions could basically be described as mud.

They ate rats, birds, snakes etc and they were fine. They were used to it and their disgusting, but natural food seemed to keep them healthy as I ate sterile 30 year old C Rations and anti malaria pills.

Anyway, enough of that. Fish are vastly different from mammals in their immunity. Mammals depend on antibodies inside the animal to prevent infection but the infection has to enter the creature to make it sick.

True fish are totally different and have the majority of their immunity on their living skin so the infection does not have to enter the body to be repelled or killed.

The slime on the skin is there for that purpose and the stronger the infection is, the more antibodies there will be on the skin. It is the fishes main line of defence.

As for scientific studies, they go on a few months or until the funding runs out. My tank and a few others have lasted decades longer than any scientific study which means that they can be almost classified as a scientific study.

If a Human, even one lived to 150 years old, a scientific fact would be that Humans can live that long.
If even one tank runs disease free for over 50 years with no quarantine, no medication, no diseases then that tank is a scientific fact and I think we should study the value of that rather than saying it can't be done and coming up with all sorts of reasons why this isn't true.

Please don't mention luck or Russian Roulette as I have been hearing that for 45 years.

My friend Humblefish is coming here in a few weeks and I told him to bring any fish he likes with the disease of his choice to put in my tank with no fanfare. I also told him while he is here we will go to a LFS and he can pick out any fish he likes, in any condition and put it in my tank. (as long as I want that fish, no sharks, barracuda, lionfish etc.

If he does that, I am absolutely sure many people on these forums will come up with some silly excuse why my fish didn't all die and I am also sure I will hear that Russian thing.

It is simple scientific evidence. Fish evolved with pathogens since way before Nancy Pelosi was born and are perfectly capable of protecting themselves from parasites and everything else, except hooks.

I have some 30 year old fish that are still spawning and doing fine.

I realize the scenario that eventually if there are enough parasites available the fish will succumb. That is true.
While in Viet Nam in a particularly nasty firefight there was so many bullets and shrapnel flying near and at me that there was little chance for me to evade all of them and come out alive. I did get hit with quite a few things but obviously lived although that may have been closer Russian Roulette.

In an "immune" tank such as I have the parasite load can never get to epidemic proportions because of the fish slime. The parasites can't multiply because the fish won't let them. It's like a reverse catch 22.

Does anyone here really believe I can keep a tank for 5 decades with no quarantine or anything else and add numerous fish from a dozen LFSs and the sea constantly and never once, not even once have a communicable disease in there?

I have been posting since way before fish forums were invented and I have never posted about an ich or velvet attack. Google me to find out.

If your fish get sick, it is because of what you did and not the fishes fault. Fish come out of the sea already immune but when we then poison them with copper or some other chemical and put them in an artificial situation like a bare quarantine tank and feed them artificial, sterile food, they can't help but get sick.

A fishes immunity is probably 95% affected by it's stress level. I recently posted an article about that. Yes, a scientific article. I will look for it.

I feel it is our job to keep the tank conditions as close to the sea conditions as we can with in reason.

Of course we can't add nuclear submarines, continents, meteorites or the vast amount of water. But we can assure that the same pathogens that are in all our fish in the sea are still in them in the tank.

That small amount of pathogens in a tank will keep the fish immune just as vaccinations keep us safe.

If that were not the case why do we let them put vaccines in us which is just weakened diseases?

I hope there are parasites in my tank because if they ever all die out, my fish will also eventually die.

We also need to wonder why there are no, old healthy, quarantined or medicated tanks. Old is not a few years, it's long enough where all the inhabitants die of old age as that is the only true test of total success.

 

[Paul B]

Here is a long article I wrote a couple of weeks ago after I came home from a class on how stress regulates our health and longevity.

It is long so if you are not interested you should maybe go and watch Oprah give away Oldsmobiles to homeless cats.


I really thought long and hard before I posted this on here as my theories are very far from most of the thoughts on this forum, but I live far away so I won't be able to hear all the yelling. I just sat through a 6 hour seminar on this and needed to get some of 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 lived longer than 122 years and that was only one French woman who didn't have a reef tank.

The reason for this is something called a "telomere". What is a Telomere as most of us are not researchers, doctors or Martin Scorsese.

A telomere is a little cap like thing on each end of a chromosome, sort of like the little thing on the end of our shoelaces. (aglets) It helps protect the end of the chromosome.

A chromosome which is an "X" shaped thing (for part of it's life) which is a chain of DNA and is a part of our genes and as aquarists that’s all we need to know. They are in every one of our cells which we and our fish are made out of.

Every creature including grasshoppers, pods and aardvarks are made of cells and all of them have chromosomes in their cells.

Being we are all built out of cells, if the cells die, we die.

Our cells constantly divide and eventually die. Every time our cells divide the telomere on the ends of the chromosome get shorter until they are so short, the cell can no longer divide. When that happens, we start to age until there are no more cell divisions taking place and our cells die. We then die of old age.

In humans that happens around age 80 give or take 20 years. Of course in fish, copepods or Nancy Pelosi that time is different.

Of course fish and us die of other things like if we are in a 6 hour lecture and the instructor is droning on and on we can die of boredom or get hit by a Toyota Landcruiser occupied by Noobs on there way to a frag swap.

So if we can have a way to make those telomeres last longer we will have found the fountain of youth. Most of the early Spaniards were looking for that but they wore armor while conquering the natives in the steamy Caribbean and stunk so bad they just dropped dead from the smell and athletes foot.

The good news is we already have. In all of us there is also something called a "Telomerase" which is an enzyme that elongates or at least stops the telomere from shortening.

That good news is not so good because even though that telomerase stops the telomere from shortening, it allows the cell to keep living without dying which is called cancer. We don't want that.



OK thats how it works in a perfect world but we don't live in a perfect world because we have things like Twitter, Facebook and the heartbreak of Psoriasis.

Now whats interesting for us as aquarists is that some things can actually cause those telomeres to shorten prematurely. When that happens it shortens the lifespan of the creature.

We know that many of the fish we are trying to keep, in too many cases just don't live as long as we would like. I am not talking now of disease but something all our fish face at one time or another, some fish face it constantly

STRESS

There is a reason for this and recently, in Humans anyway there have been research done which correlates stress with "Cortisol". Cortisol is in all of us and varies throughout the day.

Any kind of stress will cause a rise in Cortisol. Even good stress like for instance if we go skydiving, even if we wanted to go or we accomplished a back flip on top of a bi-plane while eating a hamburger from Burger King.

But these things are temporary and only last a few minutes so the effect doesn't cause harm.

Cortisol temporarily increases heart rate and blood pressure to help us deal with the stressful situation like running away from a saber tooth tiger. It will also start to dissolve bones to supply more calcium which the muscles need and for nerve conduction and limit wound repair and it actually causes the muscles to turn to sugar for that quick flight response. One of the worst things it does is "suppress the immune system".

Of course this is very simplified and cortisol doesn't magically appear. It happens through the limbic system, the pituitary gland and many other things.

We all make cortisol. This is normal. But with stress, cortisol levels stay relatively high rather than cycling throughout the day and those biological changes I just spoke about like higher blood pressure, a suppressed immune system and bone loss continually occur. We can see why that will be a problem.

One more important thing excess Cortisol does, due to stress is shorten the telomeres, or the lifespan of the creature.

We unfortunately are constantly causing our fish stress. Every day in the sea fish get stressed. They are constantly trying to evade predators and fighting to get enough food. But this is normal for a fish and wouldn't affect it's cortisol levels or lifespan. Unless of course that predator eats it. That may shorten it's life.

In a tank, depending on the lay out of the tank, the fish may be exposed to continuous stress. If the tank is to small, has a predator or antagonist. Food that is unrecognizable or the most important one, a lack of a "natural" place to hide.

Fish in the sea naturally hide from predators constantly. If you dive you will see this. They can dive into a tiny space in a coral head and know immediately that they can fit in there. You very rarely see a fish dive into a hole, then back out because they can't fit. They know they can fit due to their "lateral line" which gives them a sort of ESP of hiding places.



They try to get into a hole that they can just about fit in so that shark, moray eel or Jacques Cousteau can't get into to harm them. Fish never get cut on the sharp edges of the coral and depend on the tightness of the space for safety.

Fish really hate PVC elbows in a quarantine tank because it is usually stark white, smooth and much to big. Fish are not stupid and know they are not safe in that hardware from Home Depot. They also don't want to see us even if we look like Angelina Jolie.

This is a big stressor in fish and remember that fish was just a few weeks ago in the sea minding it's own business. Someone captured it and stuck it in a vat with hundreds of other fish, with no where to hide. Then in a plastic bag for many hours or days. Then into your quarantine tank. Talk about stress.

Of course those are the lucky fish as many others suffocate on the deck of a ship, are boiled and stuffed into a little can labeled "Dolphin Safe".

This very procedure actually "causes" disease that many of us are trying to prevent.

Remember fish in the sea are exposed to every disease and they have no problems with any of them. But now we are stressing them, sometimes for 60 or 70 days before we even put them in our reef which "we" feel is something the fish will like. They don't.

Elevated cortisol which does all those unhealthful things like suppress the immune system, causes bone loss, suppresses wound healing and shortens the telomere which shortens their natural life span.

Some other things raised cortisol does (In Humans) is interfere with memory, bring viruses out of remission, cause allergies, eliminate sex drive, increase belly fat, cause auto immune disease.

It does all of these things because none of those things are important when we are running from a Tiger and all the body’s defenses are primed for one thing, getting away.

Now if the fish, or us is constantly stressed, all of those nasty things causes the fish to become sick.

This is why many times we have a fish in quarantine for something like ich and the fish then comes down with something else.

We are causing those diseases that we think quarantine is helping. It is not, "unless" that quarantine tank is set up like a normal reef that the fish was accustomed to with associated real, natural hiding places.

Medication is another big stressor. If we as Humans get a rash or ich. We can put on a topical salve like Calamine lotion. But we don’t drink the stuff like a fish has to do.

If we use copper to eliminate a parasite, that fish is also drinking that copper which is a poison when inside the fish. Copper is also a poison if we drank it but most of us do not suffer from ich.


So if stress and medications actually cause illness in fish, what can we do?

This is something most of the Old Timers in this hobby figured out a long time ago. If they didn’t, they would not be old timers because their fish would continually die and they would get out of the hobby and get job at Home Depot loading toilet bowls into Mini vans.

All fish come from the sea fully immune from all sea based diseases.

We just have to cultivate that immunity by eliminating stress as much as possible and feeding the fish something that thy were used to eating in the sea which is whole sea food with all it’s associated bacteria. But that is for another rant that I am sure after reading this, very few will read.

 

[AydenLincoln]

Here is a long article I wrote a couple of weeks ago after I came home from a class on how stress regulates our health and longevity.

It is long so if you are not interested you should maybe go and watch Oprah give away Oldsmobiles to homeless cats.


I really thought long and hard before I posted this on here as my theories are very far from most of the thoughts on this forum, but I live far away so I won't be able to hear all the yelling. I just sat through a 6 hour seminar on this and needed to get some of 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 lived longer than 122 years and that was only one French woman who didn't have a reef tank.

The reason for this is something called a "telomere". What is a Telomere as most of us are not researchers, doctors or Martin Scorsese.

A telomere is a little cap like thing on each end of a chromosome, sort of like the little thing on the end of our shoelaces. (aglets) It helps protect the end of the chromosome.

A chromosome which is an "X" shaped thing (for part of it's life) which is a chain of DNA and is a part of our genes and as aquarists that’s all we need to know. They are in every one of our cells which we and our fish are made out of.

Every creature including grasshoppers, pods and aardvarks are made of cells and all of them have chromosomes in their cells.

Being we are all built out of cells, if the cells die, we die.

Our cells constantly divide and eventually die. Every time our cells divide the telomere on the ends of the chromosome get shorter until they are so short, the cell can no longer divide. When that happens, we start to age until there are no more cell divisions taking place and our cells die. We then die of old age.

In humans that happens around age 80 give or take 20 years. Of course in fish, copepods or Nancy Pelosi that time is different.

Of course fish and us die of other things like if we are in a 6 hour lecture and the instructor is droning on and on we can die of boredom or get hit by a Toyota Landcruiser occupied by Noobs on there way to a frag swap.

So if we can have a way to make those telomeres last longer we will have found the fountain of youth. Most of the early Spaniards were looking for that but they wore armor while conquering the natives in the steamy Caribbean and stunk so bad they just dropped dead from the smell and athletes foot.

The good news is we already have. In all of us there is also something called a "Telomerase" which is an enzyme that elongates or at least stops the telomere from shortening.

That good news is not so good because even though that telomerase stops the telomere from shortening, it allows the cell to keep living without dying which is called cancer. We don't want that.



OK thats how it works in a perfect world but we don't live in a perfect world because we have things like Twitter, Facebook and the heartbreak of Psoriasis.

Now whats interesting for us as aquarists is that some things can actually cause those telomeres to shorten prematurely. When that happens it shortens the lifespan of the creature.

We know that many of the fish we are trying to keep, in too many cases just don't live as long as we would like. I am not talking now of disease but something all our fish face at one time or another, some fish face it constantly

STRESS

There is a reason for this and recently, in Humans anyway there have been research done which correlates stress with "Cortisol". Cortisol is in all of us and varies throughout the day.

Any kind of stress will cause a rise in Cortisol. Even good stress like for instance if we go skydiving, even if we wanted to go or we accomplished a back flip on top of a bi-plane while eating a hamburger from Burger King.

But these things are temporary and only last a few minutes so the effect doesn't cause harm.

Cortisol temporarily increases heart rate and blood pressure to help us deal with the stressful situation like running away from a saber tooth tiger. It will also start to dissolve bones to supply more calcium which the muscles need and for nerve conduction and limit wound repair and it actually causes the muscles to turn to sugar for that quick flight response. One of the worst things it does is "suppress the immune system".

Of course this is very simplified and cortisol doesn't magically appear. It happens through the limbic system, the pituitary gland and many other things.

We all make cortisol. This is normal. But with stress, cortisol levels stay relatively high rather than cycling throughout the day and those biological changes I just spoke about like higher blood pressure, a suppressed immune system and bone loss continually occur. We can see why that will be a problem.

One more important thing excess Cortisol does, due to stress is shorten the telomeres, or the lifespan of the creature.

We unfortunately are constantly causing our fish stress. Every day in the sea fish get stressed. They are constantly trying to evade predators and fighting to get enough food. But this is normal for a fish and wouldn't affect it's cortisol levels or lifespan. Unless of course that predator eats it. That may shorten it's life.

In a tank, depending on the lay out of the tank, the fish may be exposed to continuous stress. If the tank is to small, has a predator or antagonist. Food that is unrecognizable or the most important one, a lack of a "natural" place to hide.

Fish in the sea naturally hide from predators constantly. If you dive you will see this. They can dive into a tiny space in a coral head and know immediately that they can fit in there. You very rarely see a fish dive into a hole, then back out because they can't fit. They know they can fit due to their "lateral line" which gives them a sort of ESP of hiding places.



They try to get into a hole that they can just about fit in so that shark, moray eel or Jacques Cousteau can't get into to harm them. Fish never get cut on the sharp edges of the coral and depend on the tightness of the space for safety.

Fish really hate PVC elbows in a quarantine tank because it is usually stark white, smooth and much to big. Fish are not stupid and know they are not safe in that hardware from Home Depot. They also don't want to see us even if we look like Angelina Jolie.

This is a big stressor in fish and remember that fish was just a few weeks ago in the sea minding it's own business. Someone captured it and stuck it in a vat with hundreds of other fish, with no where to hide. Then in a plastic bag for many hours or days. Then into your quarantine tank. Talk about stress.

Of course those are the lucky fish as many others suffocate on the deck of a ship, are boiled and stuffed into a little can labeled "Dolphin Safe".

This very procedure actually "causes" disease that many of us are trying to prevent.

Remember fish in the sea are exposed to every disease and they have no problems with any of them. But now we are stressing them, sometimes for 60 or 70 days before we even put them in our reef which "we" feel is something the fish will like. They don't.

Elevated cortisol which does all those unhealthful things like suppress the immune system, causes bone loss, suppresses wound healing and shortens the telomere which shortens their natural life span.

Some other things raised cortisol does (In Humans) is interfere with memory, bring viruses out of remission, cause allergies, eliminate sex drive, increase belly fat, cause auto immune disease.

It does all of these things because none of those things are important when we are running from a Tiger and all the body’s defenses are primed for one thing, getting away.

Now if the fish, or us is constantly stressed, all of those nasty things causes the fish to become sick.

This is why many times we have a fish in quarantine for something like ich and the fish then comes down with something else.

We are causing those diseases that we think quarantine is helping. It is not, "unless" that quarantine tank is set up like a normal reef that the fish was accustomed to with associated real, natural hiding places.

Medication is another big stressor. If we as Humans get a rash or ich. We can put on a topical salve like Calamine lotion. But we don’t drink the stuff like a fish has to do.

If we use copper to eliminate a parasite, that fish is also drinking that copper which is a poison when inside the fish. Copper is also a poison if we drank it but most of us do not suffer from ich.


So if stress and medications actually cause illness in fish, what can we do?

This is something most of the Old Timers in this hobby figured out a long time ago. If they didn’t, they would not be old timers because their fish would continually die and they would get out of the hobby and get job at Home Depot loading toilet bowls into Mini vans.

All fish come from the sea fully immune from all sea based diseases.

We just have to cultivate that immunity by eliminating stress as much as possible and feeding the fish something that thy were used to eating in the sea which is whole sea food with all it’s associated bacteria. But that is for another rant that I am sure after reading this, very few will read.

Thanks Paul!

 

[atoll]

This is true. Have you ever been to mexico? Many of the living conditions are horrible. I took a class about the food production in Mexico and I have travelled all over the place. Mexico City is in a dry lake bed. There is no fresh water there so it is brought in. It's about 10,000' high

There are many farms below there and the sewage from Mexico travels down the mountain in troughs to fertilize the crops below. I won't let my family eat anything from there as their produce is loaded with human waste.

As you mentioned, if we go there, we get sick. My wife and I ended up in the hospital, I didn't see any Mexicans there in the hospital with dysentery but dozens of Americans.

I lived a year in the jungle of Viet Nam. Every day I had to take an anti malaria pill or I was almost guaranteed to get malaria which is a parasite similar to ich.

The Vietnamese people also lived in the jungle and they had no pills but they looked mighty healthy to me and I never heard of one of them with malaria even though their living conditions could basically be described as mud.

They ate rats, birds, snakes etc and they were fine. They were used to it and their disgusting, but natural food seemed to keep them healthy as I ate sterile 30 year old C Rations and anti malaria pills.

Anyway, enough of that. Fish are vastly different from mammals in their immunity. Mammals depend on antibodies inside the animal to prevent infection but the infection has to enter the creature to make it sick.

True fish are totally different and have the majority of their immunity on their living skin so the infection does not have to enter the body to be repelled or killed.

The slime on the skin is there for that purpose and the stronger the infection is, the more antibodies there will be on the skin. It is the fishes main line of defence.

As for scientific studies, they go on a few months or until the funding runs out. My tank and a few others have lasted decades longer than any scientific study which means that they can be almost classified as a scientific study.

If a Human, even one lived to 150 years old, a scientific fact would be that Humans can live that long.
If even one tank runs disease free for over 50 years with no quarantine, no medication, no diseases then that tank is a scientific fact and I think we should study the value of that rather than saying it can't be done and coming up with all sorts of reasons why this isn't true.

Please don't mention luck or Russian Roulette as I have been hearing that for 45 years.

My friend Humblefish is coming here in a few weeks and I told him to bring any fish he likes with the disease of his choice to put in my tank with no fanfare. I also told him while he is here we will go to a LFS and he can pick out any fish he likes, in any condition and put it in my tank. (as long as I want that fish, no sharks, barracuda, lionfish etc.

If he does that, I am absolutely sure many people on these forums will come up with some silly excuse why my fish didn't all die and I am also sure I will hear that Russian thing.

It is simple scientific evidence. Fish evolved with pathogens since way before Nancy Pelosi was born and are perfectly capable of protecting themselves from parasites and everything else, except hooks.

I have some 30 year old fish that are still spawning and doing fine.

I realize the scenario that eventually if there are enough parasites available the fish will succumb. That is true.
While in Viet Nam in a particularly nasty firefight there was so many bullets and shrapnel flying near and at me that there was little chance for me to evade all of them and come out alive. I did get hit with quite a few things but obviously lived although that may have been closer Russian Roulette.

In an "immune" tank such as I have the parasite load can never get to epidemic proportions because of the fish slime. The parasites can't multiply because the fish won't let them. It's like a reverse catch 22.

Does anyone here really believe I can keep a tank for 5 decades with no quarantine or anything else and add numerous fish from a dozen LFSs and the sea constantly and never once, not even once have a communicable disease in there?

I have been posting since way before fish forums were invented and I have never posted about an ich or velvet attack. Google me to find out.

If your fish get sick, it is because of what you did and not the fishes fault. Fish come out of the sea already immune but when we then poison them with copper or some other chemical and put them in an artificial situation like a bare quarantine tank and feed them artificial, sterile food, they can't help but get sick.

A fishes immunity is probably 95% affected by it's stress level. I recently posted an article about that. Yes, a scientific article. I will look for it.

I feel it is our job to keep the tank conditions as close to the sea conditions as we can with in reason.

Of course we can't add nuclear submarines, continents, meteorites or the vast amount of water. But we can assure that the same pathogens that are in all our fish in the sea are still in them in the tank.

That small amount of pathogens in a tank will keep the fish immune just as vaccinations keep us safe.

If that were not the case why do we let them put vaccines in us which is just weakened diseases?

I hope there are parasites in my tank because if they ever all die out, my fish will also eventually die.

We also need to wonder why there are no, old healthy, unquarantined or medicated tanks. Old is not a few years, it's long enough where all the inhabitants die of old age as that is the only true test of total success.

Geat post Paul, Now those who know better will of course rubbish what you say as usual. I call them denighers, I was called a lair recently on here for suggesting my fish don't catch these parasites and disease.
However, it matters not if what you write is 100% accurate (perhaps it is am not doubting it) that to me is not the point as I see it. Nope, the point is you can keep a perfectly healthy aquarium fish without QTing in fact healthier by not QTing IMO and IME.

I have also offered for anyone to visit me if they wish and see my aquarium and how I keep it. A couple have been here but then am in the UK.

Only by thinking outside the box and opening your mind to the alternatives to QT would you reap the benefits. I know it's hard when you fail at something and you are constantly told by the "experts" what you can and can't do to think differently. I did 30 plus years ago and have never looked back.

I have a lot of fish, many are considered very susceptible to parasite etc infection apparently but not in my aquarium. I have dwarf Angel's Royal grammas, a tang, clowns and so on. None of my fish have ever succumbed to itch or velvet etc.
I know I have introduced at least ich on a number of occasions with new fish but it just clears up in 36 hours with no other existing fish catching it.

 

[atoll]

Here is a long article I wrote a couple of weeks ago after I came home from a class on how stress regulates our health and longevity.

It is long so if you are not interested you should maybe go and watch Oprah give away Oldsmobiles to homeless cats.


I really thought long and hard before I posted this on here as my theories are very far from most of the thoughts on this forum, but I live far away so I won't be able to hear all the yelling. I just sat through a 6 hour seminar on this and needed to get some of 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 lived longer than 122 years and that was only one French woman who didn't have a reef tank.

The reason for this is something called a "telomere". What is a Telomere as most of us are not researchers, doctors or Martin Scorsese.

A telomere is a little cap like thing on each end of a chromosome, sort of like the little thing on the end of our shoelaces. (aglets) It helps protect the end of the chromosome.

A chromosome which is an "X" shaped thing (for part of it's life) which is a chain of DNA and is a part of our genes and as aquarists that’s all we need to know. They are in every one of our cells which we and our fish are made out of.

Every creature including grasshoppers, pods and aardvarks are made of cells and all of them have chromosomes in their cells.

Being we are all built out of cells, if the cells die, we die.

Our cells constantly divide and eventually die. Every time our cells divide the telomere on the ends of the chromosome get shorter until they are so short, the cell can no longer divide. When that happens, we start to age until there are no more cell divisions taking place and our cells die. We then die of old age.

In humans that happens around age 80 give or take 20 years. Of course in fish, copepods or Nancy Pelosi that time is different.

Of course fish and us die of other things like if we are in a 6 hour lecture and the instructor is droning on and on we can die of boredom or get hit by a Toyota Landcruiser occupied by Noobs on there way to a frag swap.

So if we can have a way to make those telomeres last longer we will have found the fountain of youth. Most of the early Spaniards were looking for that but they wore armor while conquering the natives in the steamy Caribbean and stunk so bad they just dropped dead from the smell and athletes foot.

The good news is we already have. In all of us there is also something called a "Telomerase" which is an enzyme that elongates or at least stops the telomere from shortening.

That good news is not so good because even though that telomerase stops the telomere from shortening, it allows the cell to keep living without dying which is called cancer. We don't want that.



OK thats how it works in a perfect world but we don't live in a perfect world because we have things like Twitter, Facebook and the heartbreak of Psoriasis.

Now whats interesting for us as aquarists is that some things can actually cause those telomeres to shorten prematurely. When that happens it shortens the lifespan of the creature.

We know that many of the fish we are trying to keep, in too many cases just don't live as long as we would like. I am not talking now of disease but something all our fish face at one time or another, some fish face it constantly

STRESS

There is a reason for this and recently, in Humans anyway there have been research done which correlates stress with "Cortisol". Cortisol is in all of us and varies throughout the day.

Any kind of stress will cause a rise in Cortisol. Even good stress like for instance if we go skydiving, even if we wanted to go or we accomplished a back flip on top of a bi-plane while eating a hamburger from Burger King.

But these things are temporary and only last a few minutes so the effect doesn't cause harm.

Cortisol temporarily increases heart rate and blood pressure to help us deal with the stressful situation like running away from a saber tooth tiger. It will also start to dissolve bones to supply more calcium which the muscles need and for nerve conduction and limit wound repair and it actually causes the muscles to turn to sugar for that quick flight response. One of the worst things it does is "suppress the immune system".

Of course this is very simplified and cortisol doesn't magically appear. It happens through the limbic system, the pituitary gland and many other things.

We all make cortisol. This is normal. But with stress, cortisol levels stay relatively high rather than cycling throughout the day and those biological changes I just spoke about like higher blood pressure, a suppressed immune system and bone loss continually occur. We can see why that will be a problem.

One more important thing excess Cortisol does, due to stress is shorten the telomeres, or the lifespan of the creature.

We unfortunately are constantly causing our fish stress. Every day in the sea fish get stressed. They are constantly trying to evade predators and fighting to get enough food. But this is normal for a fish and wouldn't affect it's cortisol levels or lifespan. Unless of course that predator eats it. That may shorten it's life.

In a tank, depending on the lay out of the tank, the fish may be exposed to continuous stress. If the tank is to small, has a predator or antagonist. Food that is unrecognizable or the most important one, a lack of a "natural" place to hide.

Fish in the sea naturally hide from predators constantly. If you dive you will see this. They can dive into a tiny space in a coral head and know immediately that they can fit in there. You very rarely see a fish dive into a hole, then back out because they can't fit. They know they can fit due to their "lateral line" which gives them a sort of ESP of hiding places.



They try to get into a hole that they can just about fit in so that shark, moray eel or Jacques Cousteau can't get into to harm them. Fish never get cut on the sharp edges of the coral and depend on the tightness of the space for safety.

Fish really hate PVC elbows in a quarantine tank because it is usually stark white, smooth and much to big. Fish are not stupid and know they are not safe in that hardware from Home Depot. They also don't want to see us even if we look like Angelina Jolie.

This is a big stressor in fish and remember that fish was just a few weeks ago in the sea minding it's own business. Someone captured it and stuck it in a vat with hundreds of other fish, with no where to hide. Then in a plastic bag for many hours or days. Then into your quarantine tank. Talk about stress.

Of course those are the lucky fish as many others suffocate on the deck of a ship, are boiled and stuffed into a little can labeled "Dolphin Safe".

This very procedure actually "causes" disease that many of us are trying to prevent.

Remember fish in the sea are exposed to every disease and they have no problems with any of them. But now we are stressing them, sometimes for 60 or 70 days before we even put them in our reef which "we" feel is something the fish will like. They don't.

Elevated cortisol which does all those unhealthful things like suppress the immune system, causes bone loss, suppresses wound healing and shortens the telomere which shortens their natural life span.

Some other things raised cortisol does (In Humans) is interfere with memory, bring viruses out of remission, cause allergies, eliminate sex drive, increase belly fat, cause auto immune disease.

It does all of these things because none of those things are important when we are running from a Tiger and all the body’s defenses are primed for one thing, getting away.

Now if the fish, or us is constantly stressed, all of those nasty things causes the fish to become sick.

This is why many times we have a fish in quarantine for something like ich and the fish then comes down with something else.

We are causing those diseases that we think quarantine is helping. It is not, "unless" that quarantine tank is set up like a normal reef that the fish was accustomed to with associated real, natural hiding places.

Medication is another big stressor. If we as Humans get a rash or ich. We can put on a topical salve like Calamine lotion. But we don’t drink the stuff like a fish has to do.

If we use copper to eliminate a parasite, that fish is also drinking that copper which is a poison when inside the fish. Copper is also a poison if we drank it but most of us do not suffer from ich.


So if stress and medications actually cause illness in fish, what can we do?

This is something most of the Old Timers in this hobby figured out a long time ago. If they didn’t, they would not be old timers because their fish would continually die and they would get out of the hobby and get job at Home Depot loading toilet bowls into Mini vans.

All fish come from the sea fully immune from all sea based diseases.

We just have to cultivate that immunity by eliminating stress as much as possible and feeding the fish something that thy were used to eating in the sea which is whole sea food with all it’s associated bacteria. But that is for another rant that I am sure after reading this, very few will read.

Read it all. Thank Paul.

 

[Paul B]

Atoll, i didn't make all that up, I wish I could. I went to a 6 hour class by immunologists put on by neurologists. It was a few weeks ago and I loved it and thought it was very informative.

Most of us here as aquarists naturally feel that if you eliminate disease organisms, you and your fish will be safe and that sounds correct. It is not, just the opposite.

Hospitals being mostly clean and sterile is the most common place to contract a disease because the normal flora is destroyed and only the disease organisms are left.

In nature the diseases and good bacteria keep each other in check.
Many people can't or won't believe this and will continually quarantine and medicate their fish will keep disease forums as the back bone of these forums.

IMO I feel we should embrace nature and the natural immunity of the fish rather than artificially keeping fish seemingly healthy through medications. Of course fish can live like that but the only sign of true success is if the fish only die of old age so if you only keep a tank for maybe 10 years, it should not be called a success because those fish did not have the opportunity to live out their entire lifespan.

My fish do and I am sure yours do. I just feel bad for the people who don't realize this and keep losing fish to disease unnecessarily.

Just my opinion of course as I am not the God of fish. Just a bald, retired electrician and an hour ago, me and my wife tested positive for Covid so I think I will go and eat worms.

 

[atoll]

Atoll, i didn't make all that up, I wish I could. I went to a 6 hour class by immunologists put on by neurologists. It was a few weeks ago and I loved it and thought it was very informative.

Most of us here as aquarists naturally feel that if you eliminate disease organisms, you and your fish will be safe and that sounds correct. It is not, just the opposite.

Hospitals being mostly clean and sterile is the most common place to contract a disease because the normal flora is destroyed and only the disease organisms are left.

In nature the diseases and good bacteria keep each other in check.
Many people can't or won't believe this and will continually quarantine and medicate their fish will keep disease forums as the back bone of these forums.

IMO I feel we should embrace nature and the natural immunity of the fish rather than artificially keeping fish seemingly healthy through medications. Of course fish can live like that but the only sign of true success is if the fish only die of old age so if you only keep a tank for maybe 10 years, it should not be called a success because those fish did not have the opportunity to live out their entire lifespan.

My fish do and I am sure yours do. I just feel bad for the people who don't realize this and keep losing fish to disease unnecessarily.

Just my opinion of course as I am not the God of fish. Just a bald, retired electrician and an hour ago, me and my wife tested positive for Covid so I think I will go and eat worms.

Of course your not making it up Paul, I never thought so for a second. Others may think so but not me.

You know my philosophy to fish and reefkeeping. Follow mother nature as much as is reasonably possible, she has all the answers. Afterall she has had millions of years to perfect her ways.

Stray from her teachings and you invite problems fir your fish.

 

[ReefGeezer]

This is true. Have you ever been to mexico? ...

So, I'm not a quarantine fanatic, but for discussions sake... Could throwing a fish into a DT be similar to going to Mexico City and having a big ol' glass of the local tap water?