Fish immune to disease?

[TonyD1988]

I'm sure this will get some interesting replies and I think I know the answer but I want to hear it from you all first. Just because a fish is exposed to ich/velvet/brook, does it automatically carry the disease, even if it doesn't show any symptoms/isn't affected by it? I've had a foxface rabbishfish for three years whos been exposed to ich and velvet and has never shown any symptoms which is why I am asking. I am cycling my 300 that crashed due to a fish bringing velvet in. He has been in a QT now for 5 months with 2 other fish and none of them show symptoms of anything. The only treatment they have received was prazipro+metroplex. I don't want to put them through copper if it isn't necessary.

 

[vetteguy53081]

I don’t think any fish is Immune to disease. Resistant- yes

 

[Auquanut]

Great question. Following. I know I've had ich in my DT, but haven't seen a physical manifestation in years. Does that mean it has died off, or is it just lying in wait for the right conditions to reappear. Not really the same scenario, but similar.

 

[Jay Hemdal Verified Community Expert]

Not all diseases are cut from the same cloth. It is thought that if a fish survives Cryptocaryon, some resistance persists for perhaps 6 months or so. Neobenedenia flukes do not seem to create a resistance in fish, so reinfection occurs if the fish is exposed again. Viral diseases impart a strong immunity in fish that overcome them- I’ve never seen a fish get lymphocystis more than once. In all cases, propagule pressure - the number of parasites assaulting the fish - affects how a fish can fight it off.
Jay

 

[Paul B]

I am sorry and you can make up your own mind but I feel "all" fish can become "totally" immune from every communicable disease. There are a few tanks on here that are long running and never had any disease.

My own reef just hit it's 50th birthday and no fish in about 40 years has had any communicable disease. I have not lost one fish to disease in that time and I have never quarantined or medicated.

It is very easy but many people on here will just tell you it is luck so I am going to keep my tank running another 50 years just for kicks and at 100 years old I will see if people still think it's luck.

The Other Way to Run a Reef Tank (no Quarantine)

The other way to run a reef tank (No Quarantine) I was asked by my friend Humblefish to start a thread on my practices of running a tank with no quarantine, hospital tanks, medications, dipping or almost anything else. It is "not" just to take a fish from a store and drop it in your reef...

www.reef2reef.com

 

[brandon429]

its not that its luck, its that nobody else has access to all ocean sourced materials. we gotta use petsmart or LFS stuff although anyone can feed the way you do if they seek it out. I wouldn't expect your fish to remain disease free if transferred out into a common live rock setup/inland home reef tank. I do believe yours suppresses disease as an ecosystemic whole unit though.

 

[Shon]

? Disease =/= Parasite ?

I am unfamiliar of anything developing immunity to a parasite.. within a single generation.

 

[Paul B]

I am unfamiliar of anything developing immunity to a parasite.. within a single generation.

Shon, LOL, you are familiar to it now as I just said my tank is totally immune.

Brandon my good Buddy. Remember for 47 of those 50 years my tank used almost all ASW.
It is not the water and other things from the sea,

I won't re hash it now because after running my tank for half a century, I think I can say it is totally immune. Call it luck or offering up tea leaves to the moon, but I , and my fish, including the 30 year olds call it immunity.
People with sick fish just don't want to know about it or believe it but I am done explaining it.

 

[Jay Hemdal Verified Community Expert]

I am sorry and you can make up your own mind but I feel "all" fish can become "totally" immune from every communicable disease. There are a few tanks on here that are long running and never had any disease.

My own reef just hit it's 50th birthday and no fish in about 40 years has had any communicable disease. I have not lost one fish to disease in that time and I have never quarantined or medicated.

It is very easy but many people on here will just tell you it is luck so I am going to keep my tank running another 50 years just for kicks and at 100 years old I will see if people still think it's luck.

The Other Way to Run a Reef Tank (no Quarantine)

The other way to run a reef tank (No Quarantine) I was asked by my friend Humblefish to start a thread on my practices of running a tank with no quarantine, hospital tanks, medications, dipping or almost anything else. It is "not" just to take a fish from a store and drop it in your reef...

www.reef2reef.com

? Disease =/= Parasite ?

I am unfamiliar of anything developing immunity to a parasite.. within a single generation.

Correct, immunity is not seen with metazoans like flukes or copepods. There does seem to be a level of acquired resistance (not immunity!) to fish that have been challenged by certain protozoan infections. Viral infections do seem to confer what is essentially immunity in fish that survive the initial infection.
Jay

 

[dedragon]

probably mollies as they r a freshwater/brackish fish that can technically live in saltwater, but no fish is immune to parasites altogether

 

[Lasse]

There is vaccine developed against ich but the problem is that there is different strains of the parasite. But the vaccine create an immune reaction against actual strain.

Sincerely Lasse

 

[Paul B]

LOL, So Jay, if I pull some of these out of the gills of my fish, will they be OK?



50 years parasite free.

Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
(ISRN ImmunologyVolume 2012 (2012), Article ID 853470, 29 pageshttp://dx.doi.org/10.5402/2012/853470Review ArticleAn Overview of the Immunological Defenses in Fish SkinMaría Ángeles Esteban)
Quote: Immunity associated with the parasites depends on the inhabiting discrete sites in the host. Especially important for this paper are the ectoparasites, those habiting in or on the skin. Until recently there had been little direct evidence of innate immune mechanisms against parasites associated with mucosal epithelium [285]. The active immunological role of skin against parasitic infection has been shown recently [286–288], and now mucosal immunity against them start to be elucidated.
Non-parasitic fishes usually die following infection, but animals surviving sublethal parasite exposure become resistant to subsequent challenge. This resistance correlates with the presence of humoral antibodies in the sera and cutaneous mucus of immune fishes.
According to these authors "probiotic for aquaculture is a live, dead or component of a microbial cell that, when administered via the feed or to the rearing water, benefits the host by improving either disease resistance, health status, growth performance, feed utilisation, stress response or general vigour, which is achieved at least in part via improving the hosts or the environmental microbial balance."The first demonstration that probiotics can protect fishes against surface infections was against Aeromonas bestiarum and Ichthyophthirius multifiliis in rainbow trout [330]. The research on this topic is considered of high priority at present because enriched diets could be used as preventive or curative therapies for farmed fishes. End Quote
Another interesting fact found in a recent issue of Scientific American By Ferris Jabr | September 12, 2012 |

 

[brandon429]

The trick is getting others tanks free of disease not just Paul’s, using Paul’s methods. Yet to be seen in an orderly, clear rolling post. Lots of single examples exist, but not one single rolling post exists where someone shows how to make new reefs comply. Those always devolve into 100 page theory threads, safe from having to do any live time work on file for proof.

not one single work thread exists for these proofs, yet we have no trouble making work threads composed of *others tanks* for most other claims in reefing, take that fwiw.

having to make proofs as work threads means people can’t omit details etc, it’s pure live time accountability


fallow and quarantine sure have work threads, its amazing to me the ‘best’ system gets to run with zero testing in public at all while the methods working for the public in thousands of pages using others tanks is the bad method.

 

[Lasse]

Is not 5 years enough Brandon?

Build Thread - Lasses Dream Build

Hi all My name is Lasse Forsberg and I live in small place named Bohus – 20 kilometres north Gothenburg, Sweden. I got my first tank 1961 when I was eleven years old and lived in an inland country town 160 kilometres from Gothenburg – I had it for a couple of years but soon I become a teenager...

www.reef2reef.com

Sincerely Lasse

 

[brandon429]

if we scroll pages and pages in the fish disease forum, what methods do we see getting applied

show me a fish disease forum addressed by Paul, or Lasse, where multiple tanks are fixed of disease live time.

Lasse no it’s not enough at all, we need you to help in the fish disease forum where work is needed


*in the fish disease forum, medical applications and techniques rule the day for a reason, repeatability.

getting to work solely by our own tank example is insulating and protective for claims. Someone start up a help thread in the fish disease forum, let’s see it live time compared to current techniques

 

[brandon429]

When I see 132 pages of something I’m wanting to see about 200 varying tanks getting subjected to a test. It’s always just the authors tank, thats preventing strong testing of claims.

 

[brandon429]

Lasse I would add this: yours and Paul’s methods have thousands of supporters. They read your work and go home and apply the techniques and report back strongly in testimonies they really do.


the problem is organization, the public needs to see work threads that exclude your systems and focus on new builders, other people’s tanks, so we can check for patterns.

then we can upscale them into the fish disease forum as a sticky.

 

[atoll]

its not that its luck, its that nobody else has access to all ocean sourced materials. we gotta use petsmart or LFS stuff although anyone can feed the way you do if they seek it out. I wouldn't expect your fish to remain disease free if transferred out into a common live rock setup/inland home reef tank. I do believe yours suppresses disease as an ecosystemic whole unit though.

I have no real access to the sea and what I do have is Irish sea cold waters and yet my experience is similar to Paul's as you know. However, I make much of my own foods to which I add krill and cod liver oils. I also run an Oxydator as you know which also helps but it's only part of the equation to what I experience as a very healthy fish population.

 

[atoll]

The trick is getting others tanks free of disease not just Paul’s, using Paul’s methods. Yet to be seen in an orderly, clear rolling post. Lots of single examples exist, but not one single rolling post exists where someone shows how to make new reefs comply. Those always devolve into 100 page theory threads, safe from having to do any live time work on file for proof.

not one single work thread exists for these proofs, yet we have no trouble making work threads composed of *others tanks* for most other claims in reefing, take that fwiw.

having to make proofs as work threads means people can’t omit details etc, it’s pure live time accountability


fallow and quarantine sure have work threads, its amazing to me the ‘best’ system gets to run with zero testing in public at all while the methods working for the public in thousands of pages using others tanks is the bad method.

I have a tank thread but don't update it so often.

 

[346700984]

Our Foxface rabbit fish currently has ich so I know they definitely can get get it.