Help, it seems white spot disease tp me

[ChrisRD]

Finally, if it wasn't UV that protected my fish - which were covered in crypto - what was it that did in the quadradic breeding in a closed system? If you're going to disagree that my UV didn't kill the cycle - you need to tell me what did.

The same thing that protects fish that get over a bout with ich on systems where there is no UV running. Their immune system.

Fish can develop an immunity to ich after being infected one or more times. This has been studied, although I can't say I know much about the details. My understanding is that the immunity has been shown to be temporary, thus at some point in the future the fish becomes susceptible to infection again.

Also, as Buda pointed out, you should read some of your own sources - they're not really supporting your argument. :wink:

Anyway, all that said, the UV may provide some benefit here (as well as a few others), and personally, I've never seen any negative effects from using one, so I'm not against them. I'm just against telling people not to quarantine or properly treat fish parasites and to just "strap on a UV" instead.

In some settings, like commercial holding systems, they make sense to help prevent the spread of bacteria/parasites between holding tanks, but are not a total cure within an individual aquarium (thus the loss of popularity in the home aquaria application).

 

[Anonymous]

So my fish miraculously got better - and the UV was anecdotal?

 

[Anonymous]

I think the point that is being made it that there is no down side to running a UV, but it is not a majic cure all. Even a properly functioning and maintained UV will not 100% eliminate whatever from your tank. It will help reduce the pest at best.

Personnally I have lost fish to ick while running a UV and had them survive while not running a UV. There are too many parameter to point to one source as "the" fix. Things like health of the fish, quality of tank water, severity of the infestation, etc.

 

[Anonymous]

So my fish miraculously got better - and the UV was anecdotal?

If you didn't run a systematic scientific evaluation, then yes, your experience with UV was anecdotal. The problem with determining what caused remission in fish with UV is that many times they do 'miraculously' get better. I am not going to say that your experience with UV didn't help in your case, but we also don't know that it really did help, and certainly there are enough cases of people using UV who saw no improvement to give anyone pause regarding the usefulness of UV.

Furthermore, from your first article:

Their effectiveness is dependent on the wattage of the unit, the flow rate through the unit, the age of the lamp, the volume of the water being treated, the cleanliness of the sleeve, the clarity of the water, and the decorations (potential hiding spots for tomonts) in the aquarium (Moe, 1989)

Matching a uv system to a system is not easy. Inexpensive uv solutions are fabulously underpowered, and decent units can get expensive quickly.

 

[Anonymous]

Finally, if it wasn't UV that protected my fish - which were covered in crypto - what was it that did in the quadradic breeding in a closed system? If you're going to disagree that my UV didn't kill the cycle - you need to tell me what did.

I hope you can stop talking disagreement about UV as some sort of personal attack. You think uv helps. Great. Others don't. Great. All the opinions are useful in a new reefkeepers forum.

The nature of ich is such that our anecdotal assessments make it almost impossible to determine what actually made the ich seem to vanish - which is why there are people that believe that many things, from ginger to new light bulbs to magnets, are effective against ich.

Did UV help in your system? Maybe. Is that a reason to recommend that people spend money on a uv system and hope they have it sized right? Maybe not.

 

[Anonymous]

Finally, if it wasn't UV that protected my fish - which were covered in crypto - what was it that did in the quadradic breeding in a closed system? If you're going to disagree that my UV didn't kill the cycle - you need to tell me what did.

I hope you can stop talking disagreement about UV as some sort of personal attack. You think uv helps. Great. Others don't. Great. All the opinions are useful in a new reefkeepers forum.

The nature of ich is such that our anecdotal assessments make it almost impossible to determine what actually made the ich seem to vanish - which is why there are people that believe that many things, from ginger to new light bulbs to magnets, are effective against ich.

Did UV help in your system? Maybe. Is that a reason to recommend that people spend money on a uv system and hope they have it sized right? Maybe not.

Reading comprehension comments aren't a personal attack? Please.

 

[Anonymous]

Finally, if it wasn't UV that protected my fish - which were covered in crypto - what was it that did in the quadradic breeding in a closed system? If you're going to disagree that my UV didn't kill the cycle - you need to tell me what did.

I hope you can stop talking disagreement about UV as some sort of personal attack. You think uv helps. Great. Others don't. Great. All the opinions are useful in a new reefkeepers forum.

The nature of ich is such that our anecdotal assessments make it almost impossible to determine what actually made the ich seem to vanish - which is why there are people that believe that many things, from ginger to new light bulbs to magnets, are effective against ich.

Did UV help in your system? Maybe. Is that a reason to recommend that people spend money on a uv system and hope they have it sized right? Maybe not.

Reading comprehension comments aren't a personal attack? Please.

Sure it is. IMO, you were being hostile before that comment, and the 'please' at the end of your post also comes across hostile. I also know that you know that 'he did it first' isn't a defense for your own actions.
I am not your enemy here, I am trying to encourage a discussion about the ways to treat a parasite that occurs in reef tanks in the New Reefkeepers Forum that doesn't degrade into bickering. If you have further issues about 'personal attacks' please pm me or another mod or admin. Thanks for your understanding.

 

[alirezak39]

Hey guys,
After all arguments following link may be usefull to undrestand how much we should expect from UVs.

http://saltaquarium.about.com/cs/bcorse ... 0197UV.htm

 

[Anonymous]

Can I add my personal experience with ick without offending the pilot? I really don't want to do that, since I think that there are few things hotter than a man in a uniform....

This is totally my opinion, and my experience.

Ick is an opportunistic parasite. Like in the human world, we have strep bacteria. Strep is everywhere in our world, and it can cause serious illness and mortality. Yet, most humans are able to live in our world without getting sick. Once in a while, our immune systems weaken and allow a strep villain in and proliferate and we get sick. I think of ick in my aquarium like strep in my world. When we start a new tank using live rock, we can introduce the inactive ick spores that can start to grow when a host is added to the tank. The spore can be introduced on a coral or some macroalgae or a snail. Preventing the introduction of Ick is a great idea, but I am not sure it is feasible. Of course, I am not saying to not try!

Ridding the tank of the spore is not feasible to me, either. Unless you can get 100% of the spores to travel through a UV, or some other disinfectant mechanism, they are still there, ready to grow unnoticed until they are proliferating at a rate where our naked eye can see them. Plus, the spore is on our nets, or turkey basters, our cleaning buckets, our feeding cups. Is it possible to kill every spore?

I bet my tanks' health, and all it's occupants health, on one theory: Increasing the immune systems of all the occupants, the live organisms in the live rock (natural predators of ick, maybe?), the fish, the snails, the corals, and the biodiversity that lives in the substrate.

If in this closed environment, the desirable organisms are given what they need to be healthy and blow off these opportunistic infections, what is to keep the undesirables from also getting stronger immune systems and reproducing their undesired effects?

I make their life hard, by adding natural predators. Eventually, the undesirable lose out.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysmata_amboinensis

Works for me. I do know there are many ways to kill a spore though! Too bad we can't autoclave 'em...

 

[ChrisRD]

While I am in total agreement that ich or any disease/parasite issues will be minimized via quality environment and nutrition (ie. low stress, good diet, good water quality, etc.), with strict quarantine procedures it's definitely possible to avoid introducing ich to a system. Of course, for this approach to work you have to quarantine everything wet that has come from any other system (which admittedly is a PITA! :wink: )...

It's also possible to break the parasite's life cycle without chemicals/gadgets by running an infected system fallow (no fish) for an extended period of time. With no host, eventually the parasite's life cycle can be broken.

 

[Anonymous]

True, it is possible if everything is quarantined, including snails, macro, all corals, used equipment, ect, ect.....

That would called "Best Practice" if it was in medicine.