Doing some research on cyanide fishing, need help!!

[PeterIMA]

The main thrust of the paper by Hall and Bellwood (1995) was a histological study of changes in the lining of the anterior intestine in damselfishes exposed to cyanide then sacrificed to determine the damage to the cells lining the intenstine. The experiment we discussed concerning the mortality resulting from cyanide, stress, and strarvation would never have been published by itself because of the lack of replication. It is interesting, but arguing about it gets us nowhere.

Peter

 

[StevenPro]

Steven,

I take issue with the highly critical way you wrote your paper. You imply that cyanide does not do long-term damage by trying to discedit David Bellwood's FAMA articles in 1981. One of the assertions that he made was that cyanide destroyed the lining of the stomach and anterior intestine. Late (Hall and Bellwood 1995) he showed that the degeneration of the cells lining the anterior intestine was due to cyanide exposure.

The Hall & Bellwood paper says no such thing. To quote,

"When administered as anaesthetic doses, cyanide appeared to cause no detectable reduction of the mucosal lining of the anterior intestine of P. coelestis. Neither the thickness of the mucosa nor the mucosal surface area changed as a result of the cyanide treatment. Likewise, it did not appear to have any marked effect on post-treatment mortality rates. These results as surprising given the widespread reports of high mortality rates and feeding disorders in some marine aquarium fishes, both of which as usually attributed to the use of cyanide during capture.

Bellwood (1981) concluded that the reduction on the mucosal lining of both the intestine and stomach observed in his experiment was caused by previous exposure to anaesthetic cyanide. However, the results of the present study suggest that the effects observed in the intestine may have been a result of starvation and that the effects seen in the stomach were possibly due to stress."

Steven, Why did you ignore the findings by Dempster and Donaldson and by Bellwood that showed damage to the liver, kidneys, spleen, heart, and brain? Why just focus on the anterior intestine?

You brought up the stomach and anterior intestine and made claims that are simply false, which I pointed out. As to the other articles, I did not find the early Bellwood articles very compelling. Bellwood himself later disputes his earlier article in his later paper. As to the Dempster & Donaldson work, I did not go through the trouble to track down a hobby article that is well over 30 years old.

 

[PeterIMA]

Steven, Dempster and Donaldson were scientists with the Steinhart Aquarium. You are just admitting you did not do your homework. I did not focus just on the intestine-you did that in your paper. My judgement that there is long-term damage to the liver, the heart, kidney, spleen and brain was documented by Dempster and Donaldson. Herwig documented in FAMA damage to the liver. Bellwood 1981a,b confirmed these findings with both histology and with radioactive tracers. Dixon also documented damage to the livers of rainbow trout. The intestine thing is a red herring that you focused on. I covered the whole gamut of effects my reviews (that you did not bother to obtain and read).

Peter Rubec

 

[PeterIMA]

Steven, I made a typo in stating that Hall and Bellwood showed that the degeration of the intestine was (not) due to cyanide exposure. I corrected the posting soon after I made it. We both agree that Hall and Bellwood found that the degeneration of the mucosal cells in the anterior intestine was NOT due to cyanide exposure. So, yes my original statement (a typo) was false.

Peter

 

[StevenPro]

I did not focus just on the intestine-you did that in your paper.

No, I focused on the research out there regarding cyanide and marine ornamentals. The Hall & Bellwood paper examined the intestine and I discussed that.

I covered the whole gamut of effects my reviews (that you did not bother to obtain and read).

In addition to what I referenced, I have and read:

Rubec et al "Cyanide-free net-caught fish for the marine aquarium trade"

Rubec et al "Trends Determined by Cyanide Testing on Marine Aquarium Fish in the Philippines"

Rubec & Cruz "Monitoring the chain of custody to reduce delayed mortality of net-caught fish in the aquarium trade"

Rubec & Pratt "Scientific Data Concerning the Effects of Cyanide on Marine Fish"

As well as other papers by other people. I simply chose not to reference them as they were not experiments. I focused primarily on experiments done on cyanide and marine ornamentals.

I get the impression that this is your biggest issue, that I didn't give you enough credit in my article. If that is the case, get over yourself.

 

[PeterIMA]

Steven, I am not on an ego trip. If you had read the review paper that I wrote in Marine Fish Monthly, it would have helped. I disagree with your narrow interpretation that pushes the idea that cyanide has no long-term effects. While I agree that other factors like stress and ammonia also contribute to delayed chronic mortalty through the chain of custody, if is not correct to conclude that cyanide has no effect on mortality. It also has a big effect on corals and should not be condoned.

Peter Rubec

Rubec, P.J., 1986. The effects of sodium cyanide on coral reefs and marine fish in the Philippines. Pages, 297-302, In: J.L. Maclean, L.B. Dizon, and L.V. Hosillos (eds.), The First Asian Fisheries Forum, Asian Fisheries Society, Manila, Philippines.


Rubec, P.J. 1987a. The effects of sodium cyanide on coral reefs and marine fish in the Philippines.
Marine Fish Monthly 2(2): 7-8, 17, 20, 27, 34-35, 39, 44, 46-47,
and 2(3): 8-10, 14, 24, 44, 47.
(A longer version of the Fisheries Forum Paper).

Cervino, J. M., R. L. Hayes, M. Honovitch, T. J. Goreau, S. Jones, and P. J. Rubec. 2003. Changes in zooxanthellae density, morphology, and mitotic index in hermatypic corals and anemones exposed to cyanide. Marine Pollution Bulletin 46: 573-586.

Rubec, P.J., V.R. Pratt, B. McCollough, B. Manipula, J. Alban, T. Espero, and E.R. Suplido. 2003. Trends determined by cyanide testing on marine aquarium fish in the Philippines. Pages 327-340, In: J.C. Cato and C.L. Brown (eds.), Marine Ornamental Species: Collection, Culture & Cultivation, Iowa State Press, Ames, Iowa.

 

[PeterIMA]

Steven, Perhaps I have been too critical of your paper. The latter part of the paper is quite good.

Peter

 

[clarionreef]

Despite killing coral habitat, if cyanide fish collecting improved the health of the fishes concerned....It would still be unsustainable, unsupportable, wrong and illegal.
Its an environmental habitat issue first and foremost...an issue that determines the capacity of coral reefs to feed the people living off them....not a health issue for pet fish.
If damage to the gill filaments and the intestine were actually less then reported, would it matter so much?
The deletion of living coral cover from the reefs is a hundred times greater importance, How can this debate become so trivialized as to be cast in terms of wether or not the hobbyist interests were best served?

And this little qualifier is a hoot...."Its stress...not cyanide that kills the fish...."
This assumes that one has had fair experience with both events.
And if squirting a fish in the face with poison is not a stress...what on earth is it?
The casual use of such flippant semantics suggests a predetermined need to exonerate the trade from blame...a trend that should increase as hobbyists play on the internet and imagine themselves to be blameless for their own subsidy and support of the cyanide trade.
The prevalance of cyanide use was and is greater then you want to believe.
If peck and posters can't find it all on their screen, it doesn't mean much...only that other like souls didn't spend much time in the water with fish collectors either.
A guilty trade and industry is never that eager to expose its inconvenient truths.
It should have gone away by now....but thats another story.
Steve

 

[Shawn Wilson]

I don't think it's fair to accuse anyone in this discussion of being pro-cyanide. There are clearly no benefits to the practice, and the detriment to the environment is indisputable.

The crux of the debate here is the extent of the long term damage, and whether it has been proven scientifically. I am looking forward to reviewing the studies that Peter has offered to send me, as the 1981 Bellwood study was severely limited to three fish and no control group. Bellwood is the first to admit the shortcomings, and for that reason, he made a more concentrated effort in 1995.

I'm not a scientist, but as a person who has worked in the trade for 30 years, I can assure you that 116 test subjects of one species isn't enough to establish a sound control group. It is not uncommon to receive an order from the Philippines and divide a half box of damsels (approx. 116 fish) into 10 different (10 gallon) tanks (16 in each group). It's not uncommon to lose 10% of the fish over a two week period (the duration of the 1995 study), but this will not be reflected in even numbers of mortalities in each tank. Perhaps 4 would die in one tank (25% mortality), and six in another (37.5% mortality), while some tanks would have no losses (0% mortality). I don't see how a cause and effect can be drawn from this kind of study. One could just as easily place different coloured gravel in each tank and compile a chart of the results. Perhaps a ban on green gravel could finally be levied as a result.

Damsels may also be a poor subject fish. One would expect to find a greater impact with more laterally compressed species such as Chaetodon sps. and Centropyge sps., as they have a lesser amount of body fat to protect their organs.

Bellwood commented in the 1995 report that he had great difficulty keeping any of the collected fish alive initially. This is understandable, considering that he was trying to keep newly collected marine fish in a new system with no disease treatment protocol. I don't know what kind of facilities he had at his avail in Kenya, or the extent of his knowledge of fish husbandry and disease diagnosis and control, but there is an art to sound fish health that comes with practice, not theory.

A more reliable study could be conducted in a net-caught wholesale facility. Over the course of a year, thousands of fish kept in a sound environment, could be monitored and recorded as a control group. A more substantial number of test fish could be exposed to cyanide in smaller batches throughout the year. This would render a more accurate portrait of the long term mortality rates of cyanide-caught fish.

Tracking mortality isn't enough to measure the ill effects of a toxin. Necropsy holds a more telling tale, but we must be able to qualify these examinations somehow. If we are to look at this using the scientific model, we need to be critical of the methods used. If a fish necropsy yields liver damage, we must be able to satisfactorily eliminate vibrio anguillarum, icthyophonus, trematodes, and toxins such as copper, before we can assume cyanide as the chief causative agent.

The overall impression I got from Steven's article, was that we need to focus on the most significant causative factors of poor fish health, and address them accordingly. I didn't read it as an attempt to deny the possibility of long term ill-effects of cyanide exposure. I think it was a fair summary without prejudice, as the studies he sited failed to prove with a reasonable certainty that the long term ill-effects were measurable.

Cyanide poisoning isn't an industry secret that hobbyists are unaware of. It's very much in the media, with an overwhelming number of articles out there on the subject, and rightly so.

My frustration lies in the lack of articles addressing the need for better decompressing practices, the use of shipping aids such as Kordon's Ammquell and Novaqua, cospecific segregation to limit disease transmission and aggression, Quarantine, and prophylactic and therapeutic drug therapy. The knowledge and tools required to execute these practices are few and far between.

 

[Anonymous]

very well said

 

[PeterIMA]

Mr. Wilson, You seem to be blaming mortalities at the retail level and in hobbyists tanks on diseases and parasites. Perhaps that is what you have been dealing with. But, Dr. Jerry Heidel (DVM) and his co-workers from Oregon State University have done necropsies and post-mortem examinations of fishes imported from the Philippines and other countries to Sea Dwelling Creatures (SDC) in Los Angeles. In his correspondence with me he informed me that diseases and parasites while present to some degree were not the most important factors. Water quality in the bags and probably stress appeared to be the most important. The URL provided earlier in this thread indicates he is now involved with measuring stress hormones in imported fishes.

In the end, I think they will find that all factors (stress, ammonia, cyanide, disease, starvation, other water quality factors) need to be dealt with through better collection (nets), holding, transportation, and prophylactic methods.

Can Eric Cohen with SDC or Dr. Heidel comment on their research findings?

Peter Rubec

 

[PeterIMA]

"

I don't think it's fair to accuse anyone in this discussion of being pro-cyanide. There are clearly no benefits to the practice, and the detriment to the environment is indisputable."

The crux of the debate here is the extent of the long term damage, and whether it has been proven scientifically. I am looking forward to reviewing the studies that Peter has offered to send me, as the 1981 Bellwood study was severely limited to three fish and no control group. Bellwood is the first to admit the shortcomings, and for that reason, he made a more concentrated effort in 1995.

REPLY-Actually there were two papers by Bellwood in 1981. The 3 fish mentioned only dealt with the second study (Bellwood 1981b) using radioactive tracers. There was enough replication to get an idea where cyanide concentrated in the tissues.

Likewise, in the first study (Bellwood 1981a) the small number of replicates does not invalidate his findings that there was damage to the liver, heart, kidney, spleen, and brain tissues of the fishes examined using histology (Bellwood 1981a). The fact that others have found similar findings supports this (eg, Dempster and Donadson 1974, Herwig 1981, Dixon 1986). I should mention that Bellwood did his research in Australia. He used damselfish caught with nets obtained from Kenya for his test and control groups.

His interpretation that degeneration of the cells the mucosal lining of the anterior intestine was due to cyanide exposure (Bellwood 1981a) was later demonstrated to not be due to the direct effect of cyanide (Hall and Bellwood 1995). They suggested that there may be an indirect effect of cyanide on the brain that induces the fish not to eat.

I'm not a scientist, but as a person who has worked in the trade for 30 years, I can assure you that 116 test subjects of one species isn't enough to establish a sound control group. It is not uncommon to receive an order from the Philippines and divide a half box of damsels (approx. 116 fish) into 10 different (10 gallon) tanks (16 in each group). It's not uncommon to lose 10% of the fish over a two week period (the duration of the 1995 study), but this will not be reflected in even numbers of mortalities in each tank. Perhaps 4 would die in one tank (25% mortality), and six in another (37.5% mortality), while some tanks would have no losses (0% mortality). I don't see how a cause and effect can be drawn from this kind of study. One could just as easily place different coloured gravel in each tank and compile a chart of the results. Perhaps a ban on green gravel could finally be levied as a result.

REPLY-The number of fishes in the two control groups was less than 116. That it the total number of damselfish used in the mortality experiment. If you think of each group as a block in a statistical experiment, which yields one percentage mortality number, you can see that there was no replication of the control and test groups. Hence, it is not possible to do statistics to test for significant differences because there is no variation in the data. The data is indicative that other factors like stress and starvation also were important in addition to cyanide.

Damsels may also be a poor subject fish. One would expect to find a greater impact with more laterally compressed species such as Chaetodon sps. and Centropyge sps., as they have a lesser amount of body fat to protect their organs.

Bellwood commented in the 1995 report that he had great difficulty keeping any of the collected fish alive initially. This is understandable, considering that he was trying to keep newly collected marine fish in a new system with no disease treatment protocol. I don't know what kind of facilities he had at his avail in Kenya, or the extent of his knowledge of fish husbandry and disease diagnosis and control, but there is an art to sound fish health that comes with practice, not theory.

REPLY-I think you are trying to divert attention away from the study and its findings. However, I would agree that if there had been more replication with the mortality experiment, that chance mortalities would not be an issue.

A more reliable study could be conducted in a net-caught wholesale facility. Over the course of a year, thousands of fish kept in a sound environment, could be monitored and recorded as a control group. A more substantial number of test fish could be exposed to cyanide in smaller batches throughout the year. This would render a more accurate portrait of the long term mortality rates of cyanide-caught fish.

REPLY-I should note that I have submitted 4 proposals to the Pet Industry Joint Advisory Council (PIJAC) from 1987 to 1990. We proposed to look at the mortality issue and to evaluate the stress issue through histological studies and through examination of stress hormones under controlled experimental conditions. One proposal was submitted in conjunction with the New England Aquarium. We also proposed to collaborate with Dr. Peter Thomas at the University of Texas on the stress hormone study. These proposals and others to evaluate uptake and release rates for cyanide were not funded by PIJAC. It is a little too convenient for people like yourself (in the trade) now to suggest that the science is inadequate, when the trade has never financially supported any scientific research on these questions.

Tracking mortality isn't enough to measure the ill effects of a toxin. Necropsy holds a more telling tale, but we must be able to qualify these examinations somehow. If we are to look at this using the scientific model, we need to be critical of the methods used. If a fish necropsy yields liver damage, we must be able to satisfactorily eliminate vibrio anguillarum, icthyophonus, trematodes, and toxins such as copper, before we can assume cyanide as the chief causative agent.

REPLY-The experiments previously mentioned published in the aquarium literature and in the scientific literature had control groups. For example, Dempster and Donaldson experimentally dosed fishes with cyanide that were captured off of California (where cyanide is not used) and compared them to fishes that were not dosed with cyanide. They found tissue damage in the test fish and not in the control fish. They then examined fishes imported from the Philippines and found similar tissue damage to what they had found with the California test group. Likewise Bellwood and Dixon in their research were able to conclusively show that the tissue damage they observed using histological studies was induced by cyanide exposure and was not caused by copper, or the disease agents you discussed.

The overall impression I got from Steven's article, was that we need to focus on the most significant causative factors of poor fish health, and address them accordingly. I didn't read it as an attempt to deny the possibility of long term ill-effects of cyanide exposure. I think it was a fair summary without prejudice, as the studies he sited failed to prove with a reasonable certainty that the long term ill-effects were measurable.

REPLY-So, Steven Pro selected a limited number of studies that did not prove long-term effects of cyanide exposure and you then conclude that there are no studies that do prove it? That does not mean that studies demonstrating long-term effects do not exist.

I would agree with Jaime Baquero that cyanide is harmful. It does not need to be proven again. There is a vast amount of literature to show that cyanide is a very toxic chemical done with a variety of living organisms including birds, mammals, fish (mostly freshwater), invertebrates etc. The mechanisms are well known. Cyanide impairs the electron transport chain of enzymes in the mitochondria of living cells associated with cellular respiration. It is not surprising that it also affects the zooxanthellae of corals since these are believed to have evolved from the same types of cells that gave rise to mitochondria. Hence, the same enzyme systems are affected here as well (although the function of zooxanthellae is more to do with photosynthesis).

Cyanide poisoning isn't an industry secret that hobbyists are unaware of. It's very much in the media, with an overwhelming number of articles out there on the subject, and rightly so.

REPLY-So, why is it that people like yourself are trying to make it sound like cyanide is not a problem? Why are there people writing articles in the aquarium hobby literature stating that cyanide is no longer a problem? It is too convenient to sweep the problem under the rug and now claim it does not exist. The problem did not go away. The Indonesian and Philippine governments do not share your complacency.

My frustration lies in the lack of articles addressing the need for better decompressing practices, the use of shipping aids such as Kordon's Ammquell and Novaqua, cospecific segregation to limit disease transmission and aggression, Quarantine, and prophylactic and therapeutic drug therapy. The knowledge and tools required to execute these practices are few and far between.

REPLY-Decompression and proper packing and handling practices were part of the original net-trainings that Steve Robinson introduced into the Philippines in 1983 and documented in FAMA articles. The MAC appears not to be applying these methods in their present trainings.

I would be interested to learn how many exporters in the Philippines and Indonesia presently add chemicals like Amquel and Novaqua to shipping bags. Some do, but my guess is very few.

As far as prophylactic treatments for diseases, most exporters and importers use copper in their facilities to control Amyloodinium and Cryptocarion. I am aware that some exporters use freshwater dips, some use malachite green and some use formalin dips. I doubt that many exporters use medications to deal with internal problems like Vibrio, or internal parasitic worms or protozoa. The importers and retailers should apply these treatments. Most of these methods are published and are available.

 

[clarionreef]

Mr Wilson,
Obviously no one would ever admit to being pro-cyanide.
Thats like admitting to being pro-war or pro-whaling.
It never happens.
What does happen is that de-facto support of wars and whaling [ and cyanide collecting] never stop.
As we all know in real life, it behaviour that counts, not a type written position.
The de-facto support and tolerance of a cyanide trade long after its expose is troubling to all observers beyond our trades inner circle.

The perrenial threats to shut down the trade have less to do with splitting hairs over histological reseach on fish guts but rather histological damage to living coral cover and collection sites.
Cyanides effect on coral habitat has been a focus of research and the results were not good.
I myself lived with cyanide fisherman for a few years so I am obviously tainted on the subject. The fisherman themselves were the keenest observers on the effects of their activity and what they knew is still yet to have a fair hearing as no one ever hears from the fisherman from this country.

Whatever level of activity we tolerate as a trade looks bad....and trying to convince ourselves of our lack of culpability...not so hot either.
You want to hear that poisoning fish with cyanide is not as bad as previously thought??? What kind of mission is that? You gonna sleep better? Feel less guilty?
Lack of decompression, ammonia, bag burn, heat, O2 depletion, collapsed bags in shipping, the all encompassing term we call stress???
Sure....but those events did not kill 100 year old coral heads day after day.
The issue was and remains mainly an environmental one.
Ignoring and avoiding the environmental problem will not make it go away.
Steve

 

[Shawn Wilson]

Mr. Wilson, You seem to be blaming mortalities at the retail level and in hobbyists tanks on diseases and parasites. Perhaps that is what you have been dealing with. But, Dr. Jerry Heidel (DVM) and his co-workers from Oregon State University have done necropsies and post-mortem examinations of fishes imported from the Philippines and other countries to Sea Dwelling Creatures (SDC) in Los Angeles. In his correspondence with me he informed me that diseases and parasites while present to some degree were not the most important factors. Water quality in the bags and probably stress appeared to be the most important. The URL provided earlier in this thread indicates he is now involved with measuring stress hormones in imported fishes.

In the end, I think they will find that all factors (stress, ammonia, cyanide, disease, starvation, other water quality factors) need to be dealt with through better collection (nets), holding, transportation, and prophylactic methods.

Can Eric Cohen with SDC or Dr. Heidel comment on their research findings?

Peter Rubec

It's a "which came first, the chicken or the egg" scenario. The umbrella title of "poor conditions" can be used to describe each (poor health) causative agent experienced in the chain of custody.

Poor conditions cause mortality but only through the subsequent symptoms. For example, a fish may die from liver necrosis caused by intestinal worms, which are in turn caused by poor conditions. There is little to gain in placing blame in an area where we (currently) have little influence. A pro-active approach of starting a treatment regimen of piperazine, or ivermectin, or pratziquantel, or as a last resort an orthophosphate such as Dylox. It may be too little, too late, but it's our most efficient remedy at hand.

Long term lobbying against negligent practices throughout the chain of custody, is a vital cause, but it does little in the short term for the fish in your tank.

One could write letters to GE asking them to make light bulbs with filaments that last 10 years, but it would fall on deaf ears. A more pro-active approach would be to expend those resources on changing the light bulb, and exploring avenues for better quality, rather than complaining in the dark.

I have reviewed hundreds of necropsies conducted on ornamental marine fish, at the University of Guelph, here in Ontario, Canada. While many conducted on DOA shipping mortalities indicated ammonia damage to the gills, PH or osmotic shock, or oxygen deprivation to the brain, the ones conducted on DAA (dead after arrival) indicated the usual suspects of mycobacteria marinum, gill flukes, saprolegnia & phycomycete fungus, trichodina, ichthyophonus, oodinium, cryptocaryon, and a variety of other bacterial, fungal, and parasitic infections.

These necropsies were carried out in the mid eighties when cyanide use and every other imaginable horror was rampant in the trade. I don't know if they were testing for the presence of residual cyanide or damage resulting there of, but there was no menton of it in any of the reports. To my (limited) knowledge, cyanide has a short chemical chain, and it leaves little or no traces after initial exposure. This is why it was selected as the poison of choice in so many mystery novels. I had a Lamotte cyanide test kit back in those days, but I never found a measurable amount in the water, mucous, or organs.

We are up against a tough battle in the management of fish health. We need to asses the damage, and use our limited resources wisely, and concurrently on all levels. Your efforts, among others, in the field of policing & guiding collection practices, is commendable, but not to the exclusion of the other issues.

The industry needs to educate the final consumer and retailer of the option of having fish with a better head start. The transshippers in LA that offer to good to be true prices, are sucking in small retailers that are pressured by the constant quest for cheap livestock. These cheap fish come at a high long term cost as the extra shipping stress takes its' toll.
Companies like SDC that offer tanked (acclimated) fish and veterinary care give the fish a good head start.

Aquarium supply etailers have created price wars that have driven down the cost of operating a marine tank. Unfortunately, this has put pressure on livestock dealers to follow. Hobbyists need to be made aware that the shortcuts taken to create these initial savings, have high long term economic and environmental costs.

I buy most of my fish direct from the country of origin, but I'm willing to pay more for certain fish from SDC, as I'm assured of receiving healthy fish in realistic quantities. It affords me the luxury of buying 6 healthy Flame angels, rather than a more short sighted, irresponsible approach of importing 6 boxes of questionable fish from a guy on the beach in Hawaii. Buying from transshippers is penny wise and dollar foolish. Buying acclimated fish from a local wholesaler with good husbandry and disease control & treatment practices, is economically sound and environmentally renewable.

The other effort the industry needs to make is to offer the medications that retailers and hobbyists need to complete the acclimation process. Laws governing the trade of antibiotics and chemicals make their sale prohibitive. As a result, we are left with pepper and garlic offered by shady companies. Aquatronics had a good line, while they were around, but they didn't have the big advertising budget of less effective product lines. It would be nice if a manufacturer of well researched, quality products like SeaChem offer a line of effective medications. I'm not talking about any new innovations, just a source for the treatments that already exist.

It would also be nice if a line of nano tanks were created, designed to be used as acclimation and quarantine vessels. The simple presence of such a unit on the market would encourage hobbyists to follow QT & HT (hospital tank) practices. A dosing pump could be incorporated to slowly introduce display tank water to the acclimation (nano) tank.

A happy marriage of hobbyists money and manufactures products is the best (motivated) method of overhauling the industry.

 

[Shawn Wilson]

Mr Wilson,
Obviously no one would ever admit to being pro-cyanide.
Thats like admitting to being pro-war or pro-whaling.
It never happens.
What does happen is that de-facto support of wars and whaling [ and cyanide collecting] never stop.
As we all know in real life, it behaviour that counts, not a type written position.
The de-facto support and tolerance of a cyanide trade long after its expose is troubling to all observers beyond our trades inner circle.

The perrenial threats to shut down the trade have less to do with splitting hairs over histological reseach on fish guts but rather histological damage to living coral cover and collection sites.
Cyanides effect on coral habitat has been a focus of research and the results were not good.
I myself lived with cyanide fisherman for a few years so I am obviously tainted on the subject. The fisherman themselves were the keenest observers on the effects of their activity and what they knew is still yet to have a fair hearing as no one ever hears from the fisherman from this country.

Whatever level of activity we tolerate as a trade looks bad....and trying to convince ourselves of our lack of culpability...not so hot either.
You want to hear that poisoning fish with cyanide is not as bad as previously thought??? What kind of mission is that? You gonna sleep better? Feel less guilty?
Lack of decompression, ammonia, bag burn, heat, O2 depletion, collapsed bags in shipping, the all encompassing term we call stress???
Sure....but those events did not kill 100 year old coral heads day after day.
The issue was and remains mainly an environmental one.
Ignoring and avoiding the environmental problem will not make it go away.
Steve

I'm not trying to prove that cyanide has no long term negative effects. The scope of this discussion for the last two pages has been the interpretation of Bellwoods studies and Steven Pro's representation them.

Apparently the study in Waterloo meets the criteria of long term damage, but I haven't read it yet.

You are correct, a "support our whales" bumper sticker does very little for the cause, as we are judged by our actions, not our pretensions. I have made it clear in each of my posts, that I make every effort to assure that I deal only with responsible sources. Admittedly, I have little knowledge of the practices used in the chain of distribution. I can only measure the quality of the livestock that I receive and cast my consumer vote for the company that offers the best quality. Pricing isn't a factor in the equation. Good quality will always bring the best economic benefits.

 

[PeterIMA]

Mr.Wilson, I commend your last posting. I agree that there are a number of problems causing fish mortalities. I would like to know who did the post-mortem studies at the University of Guelph. I have not seen this published.

You are also right about the problems described with transshipping. This does result in low-quality low-cost fish that die in retailers tanks.

I have developed a tablet that we have been evaluating that has various chemicals in it. We have been evaluating its use in plastic bags under actual shipping conditions with encouraging results.

I like your other suggestions about propholactic treatments and quarantine methods. This is an area where written protocols can be created and distributed to those in the trade. This may be an area where the MAC could be effective. Unfortunately, the MAC Standards were never refined as user-manuals to support better collection, holding, transport and acclimation of marine aquarium fishes through the chain of custody.

Peter

 

[clarionreef]

The thread began ;


Doing some research on cyanide fishing, need help!!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I'm teaching a MACO class on marine fish husbandry, and I'm doing some research on Cyanide fishing. I'm doing a segment on obstacles that we face as marine fish keepers. One of these obstacles is of course cyanide fishing. I haven't been looped in to this area (locality data) for quite some time.
Someone please catch me up!
Are there any areas that are reliably NOT cyanide fished? Is the Philippines still one of the worst locales to purchase fish from?

The thread is environmental as well...
Sheperding a topic towards ones particular experience and pre-disposition is only natural.
This forum seems to be a trade-consumer one...and yet, when you read it from the field, its relevance seems more a producer country one. The producer country is where all the damage to coral reefs comes in.
As no one sees that or lives that experience, its seems less relevant and the topic will then drift towards something more relevant to the readers.

I think people who base their reality concepts day by day on the computer culture, will invariable come to forge opinions shaped by the contributors to the forums they visit.
Few if any fish collectors chime in and those that do tend to be American...not Filipino or Balinese.
What we may get are lots of opinions from the narrow sectors that contain lots of computer literate people who sit in front of computers all day.

Add to this the inherent bias we tend to have towards our own trades virtues;

"It is difficult to get someone to understand something if his salary is dependant upon not understanding it."
Upton Sinclair

there....and now I'm confused as well....as I'm still in this trade all the way.
Steve
I do often feel as a patriot in a very corrupt country [ ie. industry]and though I love my country, I am at complete odds w/ how it is being mismanaged.
Hence, the good news is in the potential of the country...not the current reality.

 

[Shawn Wilson]

Mr.Wilson, I commend your last posting. I agree that there are a number of problems causing fish mortalities. I would like to know who did the post-mortem studies at the University of Guelph. I have not seen this published.

You are also right about the problems described with transshipping. This does result in low-quality low-cost fish that die in retailers tanks.

I have developed a tablet that we have been evaluating that has various chemicals in it. We have been evaluating its use in plastic bags under actual shipping conditions with encouraging results.

I like your other suggestions about propholactic treatments and quarantine methods. This is an area where written protocols can be created and distributed to those in the trade. This may be an area where the MAC could be effective. Unfortunately, the MAC Standards were never refined as user-manuals to support better collection, holding, transport and acclimation of marine aquarium fishes through the chain of custody.

Peter

I started my wholesale business in 1991 in the location of a company that had been importing tropical fish into Canada since the early fifties. They had a relationship with the zoology department at the University of Guelph. Back then, the university was thrilled with the idea of having a source of fresh subjects. Whenever a strange occurrence of "unexplained death" would occur, they would send the fish off to Guelph for an answer. They were no longer doing so when I started the business.

The former owner of the business gave me boxes of necropsies on freshwater and marine fish, which I in turn handed over to a marine biologist that worked for me. He moved back to Holland a few years later and neglected to return the studies.

The difficulty in studying the necropsies, is they were rarely conclusive of an actual cause of death. They primarily pointed out the pathogens found present at the time of death.

One interesting story that was relayed to me by the previous fish room owner, was of a time that he received a number of large angels from a wholesaler in New York that came in DOA. He sent them off to Guelph, but they responded that they couldn't do certain tests as the cells of the fish had exploded from being frozen. The problem was, he never froze the fish, and they were shipped in the summer. The wholesaler in New York was obviously recycling his dead fish by putting them in the freezer so they could be retrieved easily to fill the next order going out.

Aquarium forums have limited information on treating sick fish. It's mostly "stay the course and hope for the best" advice. Little has been written since Dr. Edward Kingsfords' "Treatment of Exotic Marine Fish Diseases" in 1975.

Kordon's' breathing fish bag was an encouraging invention, but it proved to be easy to puncture and it allowed shipping water to remain at a high PH where ammonia was toxic. Ammquell would solve this problem, but I don't know how long it would be able to remove the toxic ion and nitrite would still accumulate. To my knowledge, no exporters use ammonia detoxifiers in shipping water. They ship in new water that is collected at high tide at night, when it is "cleaner". The only "shipping aid" they use to my knowledge is ice, which they use to calm large fish as they bag them.

A single product or system to treat newly acquired marine fish is a good idea. I have considered bottling my "Mr. Wilson's' Miracle elixir an Tonic" for that purpose. Kingsford's methods hold true to this day, as the diseases have changed little over the years and antibiotic exposure is very limited so there is no resistance due to mutation (a common problem in freshwater breeding facilities).

 

[PeterIMA]

Mr. Wilson,

Yes, Kingsford's book is worth having on your bookshelf. I have a copy as well. I agree that another book or user manual for retailers to diagnose fiish and invertebrate diseases and deal with acclimating fishes would be helpful.

I have done evaluations on breathing bags and agree with your prognosis. We held fish in breathing bags for 80 hours with Amquel and nitrofurazone in the water for over 80 hours in static experiments at an export facility (AMRI) in Manila. One clownfish was held in a breathing bag for three weeks (and others for lesser time periods). But as you say the bags puncture easiliy and some leak making them a problem during actual shipping.

There is a liner bag that also has breathing capabilities. But, using breathing bags inside the box with the breathing liner bag reduces the ability to exchange gases across the styrofoam box. Most airlines insist on liner bags. So, this becomes a problem.

Recently, I evaluated a new method involving breathing bags that appears to overcome these problems. More on this at a later date.

So, do you plan to market "Mr Wilson's Miracle Elixer"? The label sounds about as bad as many of the other remedies being sold by the trade. I am just asking whether you actually have something, or was this a joke?

Peter

 

[Shawn Wilson]

Mr. Wilson,

Yes, Kingsford's book is worth having on your bookshelf. I have a copy as well. I agree that another book or user manual for retailers to diagnose fiish and invertebrate diseases and deal with acclimating fishes would be helpful.

I have done evaluations on breathing bags and agree with your prognosis. We held fish in breathing bags for 80 hours with Amquel and nitrofurazone in the water for over 80 hours in static experiments at an export facility (AMRI) in Manila. One clownfish was held in a breathing bag for three weeks (and others for lesser time periods). But as you say the bags puncture easiliy and some leak making them a problem during actual shipping.

There is a liner bag that also has breathing capabilities. But, using breathing bags inside the box with the breathing liner bag reduces the ability to exchange gases across the styrofoam box. Most airlines insist on liner bags. So, this becomes a problem.

Recently, I evaluated a new method involving breathing bags that appears to overcome these problems. More on this at a later date.

So, do you plan to market "Mr Wilson's Miracle Elixer"? The label sounds about as bad as many of the other remedies being sold by the trade. I am just asking whether you actually have something, or was this a joke?

Peter

You forgot the "and tonic" part of "Mr. Wilson's Miracle Elixer & Tonic". Yes, I was joking about the name, but snake oil tactics seem to work better than honesty these days. I'm still trying to figure out how they got Dr. Nelson Herwig to endorse the Eco Aqualizer?

Were your tests using nitrofurazone conducted in the dark? Nitrofurazone is photodegradeable, and harder to absorb than nifurpironol which is also Furan-based. I have had good success with Dr. Stephen Spotte's method of using 10 times the normal dose of nifurpironol for only 20 minutes in a bath. This allows the drug enough time to penetrate the mucous layer, without degrading water quality in the holding tank. The exporter could bath the fish before bagging them and eliminate bacterial blooms and infections.

Quinine is another useful prophylactic for shipping and acclimating. It's also photodegradeable, but it remains in the fish tissue for about 10 days, which coincides with the life cycle of cryptocaryon and amlyoodinium. It also protects the fish against protozoan infection during the initial time that it takes for the fish to develop a healthy slime coat and establish a place in the hierarchy. It is this stressful period where the fish needs the protection the most.

I don't know why the aquarium trade is still using first generation antibiotics that have been around for over 30 years. There must be some new anti-malarial drugs that are reef safe protozoacides. Quinine is somewhat effective against ich, but why should we use a drug that was developed in the 17 th century and fazed out in the 1940's, when there are new anti-malarial drugs emerging every year. I could even charge the ich remedy to my family drug plan, if I claim I'm going to the tropics.

Technology is advancing slowly, but there are always new developments worth investigating. One low tech shipping procedure I would like to employ is a digital thermometer with a high and low temp memory. They are cheap enough that you could have the exporter include one in a shipping bag of each order. It would allow you to find out exactly how hot or cold it got in transit, then make efforts to correct the problem with the airline or exporter.

There were a few silly threads floating around about a "micro-bubble generator" that made it possible to keep marine fish in freshwater for a few months. The main application for the product suggested, was using it to keep marine fish and freshwater fish together. Even if this was possible, I see no benefit. Nonetheless, it made me realize that there are still lots of weird and, in some cases, wonderful innovations still to come. It would be interesting to know if the micro-bubble device could be used for something useful like reducing osmotic pressure to aid in the acclimation process. It may also disrupt the reproductive cycle of pathogens or denature their cell walls.

I remember reading about a scientist in Asia that had developed a system (drug/chemical) that would make it possible to ship fish with no water, only a layer of his magic elixer (or was it a tonic?). The process was used on goldfish from Hong Kong and eliminated fish mortality. The article was published in Pet Age or one of the hobby magazines about 10 years ago. I haven't heard about it since then, so I guess it didn't work out so well. I can't see how it would work without causing brain damage due to hypoxia.

Have there been any studies regarding the use of oyster shells in shipping water? They are a cheap, readily available resource in the countries that export marine fish. Some of the exporters in Indonesia and Sri Lanka use coconut carbon in the shipping bags. I had a supplier in Surabaya that used black coral sand with wrasse, and they arrived in much better shape than what I was accustomed to. I'm not sure if it was the buffering capacity, hiding place, biological filtration, or absorption properties, but whatever it was, it clearly made a difference.

It's difficult to tell what works and what doesn't when there are so many variables. I once found three or four live Antenna Gobies (Stonogobiops sp.) at the bottom of a shipping box that was sitting at the back of my warehouse for over three weeks. They were from The Philippines and packed with very little water or air. The water was crystal clear and the fish appeared to be perfectly healthy. Perhaps they have a greater capacity for tolerating poor water quality and starvation, due to their reclusive, tunnel-dwelling nature. They may go long periods without food if they are forced to maintain their own tunnel in the absence of an Alphius Shrimp.