Is a "quarantine tank" really that essential?

[HB AL]

So what's your plan B if he gets sick or dies?

Plan b is to let nature take its course, if for example he gets "sick" let him naturally fight it off as other fish have done, if I wake up and he's dead well not much you can do at that point. Having had so many fish over the course of the last 30 years sometimes for no apparent reason you find a dead one in the morning.

 

[atoll]

OOPs, sorry HB AL not CarrieB of course, my bad.

 

[mcarroll]

Fish don't have many lymph nodes, but the cellular interactions which take place in the lymph nodes still take place. Mammals just have more of an anatomical niche for such interactions ("why?" is a very fascinating question). Fish are not less evolved than mammals. In fact, fish have been evolving along their lineage in their environment for much longer than mammals. It is just a little funny to realize that when mammalian immune systems are seemingly so much more "advanced."

I think it would be really interesting to see if fish antibody titers wane quickly when they are put in sterile conditions. This would support your notion that quarantining fish does more harm than good unless your tank is completely sterile. If anybody can find any published studies on this, I would love to hear them: a requirement for persistent antigenic exposure to maintain long term antibody titers in fish. If not, we have a pretty large Danio rario breeding colony going. It would take some time, but I think we could set up some experiments to test the duration of antibody responses against experimental antigens.

@revhtree I need to be able to Like a post twice.

 

[mcarroll]

I did add a fish yesterday to my system, floated it and dropped it in. If I tell you what it is some of you guys are really gonna think I'm nuts, I will update truthfully with the outcome good or bad...

There's nuts and then there are cashews.

Did the fish come from online or a LFS?

If local, how long were you able to observe him before making a decision about his health and pulling the trigger? It would be cool if you could elaborate a little on how you decided.

 

[HB AL]

There's nuts and then there are cashews.

Did the fish come from online or a LFS?

If local, how long were you able to observe him before making a decision about his health and pulling the trigger? It would be cool if you could elaborate a little on how you decided.

All my fish come from 1 LFS.
It arrived Monday and told them I would buy it Saturday if all looked well. We threw in some pellets and it went to town, my hand up towards the glass didn't even faze it while it was eating. That's my scientific approach to purchasing a fish.

 

[mcarroll]

When buying local I like to watch em for a while. If you really really know the store you might rightly feel more comfortable than that, but there's still a bit of inherent risk. The LFS really is supposed to be the quarantine. If they don't have time to be in QT and be observed for at least some time, there's a risk of the fish not being whole. Observation time does reduce risk of a questionable fish entering your reef.

Whether you or your tank are, or should be, sensitive to this risk is another set of questions that only the tank owner can really answer.

If you were buying online, I think a more rigorous QT at home would be more recommended. I would think of this as there being no LFS involved, thus the fish has never truly been QT'd or given post-capture recovery time. You certainly would never have any pre-purchase observation time.

 

[HB AL]

Went home for lunch and he is still only allowed to hang out by a rock in the corner, but the bully is no longer harassing him. I gave the fish some pellets, and drop some where he is hanging out and he ate like a champ. Other than his fins being torn up there are no visible parasites on him or all the other guys.

 

[edosan]

My experience so far:

I have seen many many reefers, with complete wipeouts following (probably they do it wrong) Pauls Ideas!

I also do belive in boosting inmune system (Paul ideas! RULES! jeeje), with live food, guts, clams etc. Probiotics. I also belive that probiotics will not solve all problems. You know we can feed also natural antibiotics? actually with whiteworms for example and bread or similar food for them, we can create antibiotics naturally (just make a quick search on home made antibiotics / Penicillin)

The theory of expose fishes to most diseases intentionally, do no... Fishes form diferent regions have inmune system developed for some things, but not others.

LFS: They are some that are pretty good and they care, and sell fishes with no illness (or they do their best to achieve it). I have seen reefers buying from some stores, not to get anything and do what Paul Said with success (Yeah I have seen that too!). On the other hand, IME those stores are exeptions, usually stores do care, but problems sometimes are hidden to the normal eye.

If you buy from different LFS, do QT!

QT also for me is not a disease free tank, is just a copy of your main tank, with much less deco. For me fishes can live in the QT with no problems.
So far in less than 2 years, I have avoid at least 3 huge problems in the DT using QT.

Tangs are problem magnets, I love them, but the do catch almost everything (specially, Leuco, Aquilles, Japonicus)

QT for me is for observation, and feeding, BIG. DO NOT TREAT anything in QT.

New fishes can have 2 problem (and much more), first one: Bring something that can kill your complete tank with fishes, or second: Have a low Inmune System and die in your DT. That is why I do QT, I have experience both cases.

Of course QT is a Pain, and if you do not have the space, is a real pain.

I also know reefers that they to scared to add a new fish in the DT.

I DO QT ALL! But I DO NOT SAYING QT is the way to go, just look at the facts, and do what you feel is best.

That was my brainstorm...jaja a total mess!

 

[1987]

I think some people get lucky. Speaking as someone who didn't get lucky, and had whole tank wiped out by one sick fish...I do QT. I don't have the crazy stress anymore, and once my tank was done I never added anything to it.

 

[Rick.45cal]

So just to catch everybody up. I brought in 5 fish to my QT this week that visually had nothing wrong with them, but one of them was carrying Uronema. It has ravaged my QT, and killed 3/5ths of the inhabitants. The fourth vicitim will likely not make it through the night. The fish were brought in a week ago, 2 dead this morning, third this evening and it will be 4 by morning. (I don't hold out much hope for the 5th).

So for anyone who isn't familiar with Uronema, it's a parasite. Kinda like ich, kinda like velvet. But Uronema isn't an obligate parasite, like velvet and ich. Uronema is a "free living parasite". That means it can live on detritus, dead cells, organic matter... fish are just the icing on the cake. NO FALLOW PERIOD CAN SAVE YOUR DISPLAY. Your fish once infected die swiftly from a host of secondary systemic bacterial infections. So here's the real deal... ONCE URONEMA IS IN YOUR SYSTEM IT IS THERE FOR GOOD! There is no fixing it, except possibly with a bottle of bleach! GAME OVER!!!!

Uronema is nearly untreatable, systemic infections are nearly untreatable and both carry a nearly 100% mortality rate.

So it REALLY sucks, having this happen, but it could have been much worse had they have gone into my display tank with no quarantine.

 

[mcarroll]

That sucks!

Where'd you get the fish (LFS, online?) and how long were you able to monitor them before bringing them home?

And how did you ID the culprit?

 

[Maritimer]

Ouch.

Very sorry for your recent-and-impending losses, Rick.45cal!

Uronema's a horror for certain.

~Bruce

 

[Paul B]

I added these guys a couple of days ago. They have 3 more in the store so if I get time I will get those also. They school very nicely.

 

[Rick.45cal]

That sucks!

Where'd you get the fish (LFS, online?) and how long were you able to monitor them before bringing them home?

And how did you ID the culprit?

Online, major online fish retailer, it was a healthy looking yellow tang. It's made me physically ill. In 30 years of fishkeeping I have never lost this many fish, even when I worked for a LFS we never had these kind of losses. Nothing like watching a bunch of helpless animals die in your care. Makes me want to quit. It's funny how fondly you look at this hobby when you step away from it, when in reality the vast majority of this hobby is stress and frustration.

Uronema is difficult to identify, it masquerades under secondary symptoms until it is too late. My conclusion is after the fact, based on all the evidence of all of the loses so far. I'm sure I have a whole second quarantine tank full of fish to watch go down now! One pictilis anthia is dead this morning already.

I would have felt better about myself if I had just flushed $1100 down the toilet

 

[Maritimer]

Uggh, that's awful . . .

I've heard of some success with Metronidazole - got any around you can try with?

~Bruce

 

[Rick.45cal]

Uggh, that's awful . . .

I've heard of some success with Metronidazole - got any around you can try with?

~Bruce

Yeah, metronidazole+kanaplex didn't slow this stuff down at all. (They did reduce the symptoms of secondary infections, particularly the redness)

If I would have realized early enough what I was dealing with I would have tried a formalin bath and treated the tank with formalin and acriflavin, on top of the metronidazole and Kanaplex. It might have helped, but I think the chances are pretty slim still.

 

[Maritimer]

There are words ...

but this is a family-friendly forum.

~B.

 

[mcarroll]

Uronema is nearly untreatable, systemic infections are nearly untreatable and both carry a nearly 100% mortality rate.

Did some browsing....have you already bumped into
"Environmental factors and chemical agents affecting the growth of the pathogenic marine ciliate Uronema nigricans"?
http://www.int-res.com/articles/dao/36/d036p213.pdf

Interesting treatment results – check out Figures 3 and 4, for example.

Also, check out this paragraph from page 217: (emphasis mine)

"A direct temperature effect on the ciliates may be marginal as the probable permissive temperatures established by this study are in the range of 10 to 25°C. It is probably pertinent that ciliate densities are very sensitive to changes in bacterial densities. Thus, variations in total bacterial load or, in proportions of different bacteria, due to a change in temperature would logically impact on the ciliate population by affecting their food supply. Even though Uronema spp. are bacterivorous, they are also opportunistic pathogens and may become histophagous (Lom & Dykova 1992). Changes in bacterial diversity or load in cooler temperatures may represent a scarcity of food for the ciliates and result in the typical ciliate response to starvation, which is rapid cell division with a subsequent decrease in cell volume, rapid motility and swarming behaviour (Fenchel 1990).Thus, in the absence of sufficient bacteria, tuna may be preferentially colonised during the colder months of the year (water temperatures less than 18"C),especially as their Internal body temperature will be above ambient (Brill et al. 1994) and they may be immuno-compromised by confinement and possible nutritional deficiencies as noted by Munday et al. (1997)."​

Seems like they could potentially be lived with.

As long as they remained bacterivores you'd never even know they were there. Who knows, they might even get out-competed and die out.

Something I read somewhere else said the #1 most significant determinant for the makeup of microbial communities is salinity. Keep your salinity stable and don't let the tank starve....that should do it to keep these guys in bacteria-eating mode!

I'm sure Uronema is a nightmare in a retail or wholesale setting where the system is constantly in flux and very often salinity is being purposefully crashed and raised over and over again – these guys would just want to eat flesh all the time (histophagous...had to look that one up)!

 

[Rick.45cal]

I've been consulting Humblefish via PM. The top tank is definitely getting broken down and bleached. I am going to continue treating the bottom one with Met and kanaplex, watch and see what happens.

 

[HB AL]

Man that's some horror stories. Well today is day 6 of the introduction of the new member of the family. I'm gonna go ahead and let the cat outta the bag, he is now allowed by my yellow tang ( the bully) To venture a little bit from the corner, not far but a good sign, he also continues to eat like all the rest of the fish and at this point is desease free along with everyone else, i guess i got lucky once again. The new fish is a........ " PURPLE TANG " here's a pic while eating.