I already posted this someplace and I figured I would also put it here where no one will see it so I won't get yelled at because I am to old and just wouldn't care.
I was just perusing this forum and the amount of "sick" fish threads is mind boggling. I really hate to see so many beautiful fish that we take from the sea and allow them to die. It should not happen.
Of course if you read any of these many pages of this thread I feel it is "all" because we are failing to get our fish immune from even the simplest diseases.
Of course I am going to try to propose a plan. My entire thing is about fish health and I have been a sponge sucking up information about this while I am looking at my fish, and they are looking back. The reason I want to get into this a little now is because in a couple of days I had some shoulder surgery (for the fifth time) and I have to type with my feet so I want to start this. The other reason is that I have been sitting here looking at my fish and noticing that virtually all of them just look extremely healthy as they always do. On a very healthy fish you can clearly see a fluorescent looking sheen on every scale. Each spine on every fin should also be perfect and most fish have vibrant, shimmering colors on their fins. We all know there should be no torn fins, spots, Tattoos or bar codes. Healthy fish sometimes do hide but that is a species thing and all fish should be eating and eating with gusto like I do when I am eating linguini and clams like I had last night.
Also, very important if you have any paired damsels, wrasses, pipefish, gobies, cardinals, dragonettes and a few others, they should be pregnant or they just laid eggs and your fish should "never" get sick. So, those things, to me are the criteria of a healthy fish.
Now I am going to hear, "Yeah, but we can't do that because it is to hard". Yes you can as it is very easy and probably cheaper than what you are now doing. (I am sure you are also losing fish before their normal lifespan)
I think that unless you are a Noob you can easily do this so Noobs go and watch Kelly Ripa. Maybe she put on a couple of ounces. It will also be much easier if you have a running, tank. I didn't say cycled because that is a silly thing. There is no such thing as a just cycled tank. We hear all the time things like "my tank finished cycling last night at 2:15 so I added 17 pieces of SPS, a dogfaced puffer, ribbon eel and a Moorish Idol because he was eating brine shrimp and they are all laying on the bottom, texting and breathing hard while the SPS looks like Emu poop".
The truth is if you cycled your tank with a dead or bowlegged shrimp, then your ammonia readings went to zero, that means your tank has enough bacteria in it to process one bowlegged shrimp and nothing more.
A tank continues to "cycle" through out it's entire lifespan as bacteria grow and die according to the load. I added an orange spotter filefish to my tank 3 weeks ago so the tank had to grow enough bacteria to process the wastes from that one fish.
Anyway. If I had a "cycled" natural tank with a little age on it, (and hopefully a little algae) I would buy a couple of fish. Not the most expensive fish I could afford to impress the Supermodel who just moved in next door, but something fairly hardy like clownfish, wrasses, bleenies etc. I would add those fish "without quarantining them". Remember this is my plan, Humble has his. Right after the fish hit the water I would feed them the proper foods. Not flakes, not pellets and God Forbid, no freeze dried anything. The absolute best first foods are live blackworms or white worms. "Live" is the key if you can get it. If you can't get it, it will still work but live is best. Along with the live food you need something that was fresh not very long ago like clams. I buy live clams, freeze them and shave off pieces. If you live in Nevada, Arizona or Tunisia, I don't know what to tell you because you need to get live bacteria into those fish and get it in there at "every meal". I am sure you can get some type of fresh (kind of ) clams in the mid west even if it is frozen. You don't want something that was frozen during the last ice age as the least time the thing was frozen, the better as we are looking for live bacteria. In Lieu of clams you can use (and I do) LRS foods which move quickly off the shelves and have bacteria in them. Never use foods that say "Irradiated to kill harmful pathogens". Leave the harmful pathogens in there. We are trying to keep our fish immune from harmful pathogens and if their immune system doesn't know what a harmful pathogen is, it won't work and your fish will die the first time they are subjected to harmful pathogens, or Rap music.
I realize the things I am saying go against everything we know about fish so if you find someone who has been doing this longer than me, listen to them. And so will I. But they may drool on you or cough up some funky looking green stuff because I "cycled" my tank with trilobites. I also realize I am not the God of fish tanks unless they have reverse undergravel filters which are state of the art.
I am trying to "teach" this stuff the best way I can while trying not to sound like a know it all, (Although I feel I know it all
)
If you think I am nuts, senile, amnesiatic, or a "know it all", go with the Noobs and watch Kelly Ripa as I think she is still on. (I actually like her but I like all pretty girls, I mean fish, I like all pretty fish)
The other reason I am trying to convey this information (and I say this a lot) is because for some reason my fish "never" get sick. My 25 year old fireclowns, mandarins, pipefish, hippo tang, copperband etc all live in my tank up to their apparent lifespan and never get sick. Why is that? IT IS BECAUSE OF THE LIVE BACTERIA IN THEIR GUT THAT THEY GET EVERY DAY. How hard is that?
OK, it is also because they have not been quarantined and are continually exposed to those harmful pathogens that are removed from all dry foods and a lot of frozen foods.
I sincerely do not want to see fish dying in anyone's tank. Mine never do and I am not that smart, just good looking.
I "think" it is due to the fact that my fish are full of live gut bacteria and are exposed to those pathogens on a regular basis. Remember the rest of the fish you are putting in this make believe tank also come with their own pathogens. We want these pathogens and the fish need them as their immune system evolved right along side them.
A fishes immune system is a huge part of a fishes biology and uses an enormous amount of it's calories. Remember the slime is a major part of it's immune system and that slime is water soluble so it constantly washes away. The fish has to constantly replace that slime because that's where most of it's antibodies are. Re-read my first post here so I don't have to type it again.
You can't turn off that immune system but you can turn off it's ability to repel parasites. A fish is well equipped to repel parasites, but only if it is exposed to them so we need a thriving parasite family living in the tank.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. Don't faint, it is true. Don't you get flu, measles and tetanus shots? Why do you do that? You do that so your immune system recognizes those diseases and you don't get them.
OK I am done for now.
This is my only medication. It was made in Brooklyn and I probably got it in the 70s. It is copper and formalin, I use it if I get a fish for free from a LFS that is getting last rites and I doubt it will live ten minutes.
I can cure parasites in a day with this and quinicrine hydrochloride (I think that's how to spell that) but that is the only time I would need a medication. I also think hypo is silly as that takes a few weeks to work and a parasite can kill the fish in hours. But that's just me.
