Ich: Finding My Truth (amidst the gazillion philosophies, schools of thought and approaches)

[aqua-nut]

They are not going to set up QT systems. We here are of the relatively few. We pay to be members of this! Most hobbyists won't, and don't care. "Fish is cheap, buy another one when I'd dies."
Again...QT your own inexpensive fish or pay the price for cleaned and conditioned livestock.

So true, Erin.

Years ago, the first time I kept SW fish, I would go to an aquarium on 6th Ave in SF Sunday mornings. They had their 'bag sale'. Fish were REALLY cheap. I couldn't keep any of the fish I bought there alive. I'm a slow learner so I went back a few times. On one trip I was talking to a fellow customer. She said, "The prices are great but the fish don't last". The tone in her voice was like she was talking about any live consumable like cut flowers. She had no expectation of them living for any length of time. It dawned on me that she was their target customer. Buy them like they are cut flowers. I didn't buy any fish that day and I've never been back!

 

[ReefLove]

As a past store owner that did have the best livestock in the Bay Area, I closed when the lease was up. I had over 7000 gals of livestock: fresh and salt. My downfall was the expense of maintaining healthy livestock. My animals were not quarrenteed per say but they were medicated for bugs and fed the finest of foods and weekly 30% water changes. It cost a lot of money!!
The best thing is to QT cheap fish. Or pay what is asked for fish that are healthy, feeding and clean.

+1 on trying it. I know it's tough and I understand the point. That said, we pay so much money for all the equipments like $500 for MP40. I would rather pay $40 for a good quality fish which is healthy and could live 10+ years.

 

[ReefLove]

ReefLove, I'm not exactly sure what you expect LFSs to do. Do you want them to QT every fish for 8 weeks? The volume of creatures they deal with would require a HUGE system of independent tanks. If you think fish are expensive now, just imagine what they would cost having been held and fed and medicated for 8 weeks by the LFS!

Even if a LFS did QT, would you trust them? I wouldn't. I'm not saying they are idiots, thieves, dishonest or cheaters. It's just in a busy operation things can be missed. Mistakes happen. I would rather take the responsibility to QT all the creatures. As is said at all frag swaps, "Assume everything here is infested with every bad thing. Treat accordingly"

Rich,
Keep up the good work. This is a great discussion and your input will keep us on the path to skepticism.

John, the point isn't that if I trust a LFS or not. I would still QT my fishes but I won't be worried to death and fish in general would be in much better condition to not have parasites and that would stop a spread up to a certain level.

I do not think it will increase the cost if you see there will be less death and more people would be joining hobby because certainly less death means cheaper hobby. Think about all medicines and stuff we spend. LFS can't just spread stuff they must do things to stop spread, take some responsibility... like change tanks every 3rd day and disinfect the tanks, start here and see if it increases the price tag and how much. If it increases price 10% then it's fine I would pay $11 instead of $10 or really good quality fish.

So a LFS has a few fish, 50 or so, in individual tanks so they don't cross contaminate. Assuming 10G/fish, that's 500 gal. of water. If the move every three days that's 5000 gal/month and at least two sets of tanks. Now there will be shop space taken up by these unsellable (QT) fish along with heating costs and the labor to move all these fish from one system to another every three days. The effort to maintain all the filters would be more than I want to even contemplate! Let's assume the LFS decides it's going to treat for Ich and internal parasites. I'd bet the EPA would not want this LFS to pour all those chemicals down the drain so they might need HAZMAT disposal. I'd guess Rich's estimate of 100% increase in cost to be a minimum. That $50 yellow tang just became a $100 YT!

At the end of this I would still QT fish. Not only because I have doubts about the LFS being able to keep all the fish free of diseases, but it also allows the new fish a rest from the stress of shipping and living in a LFS.

The sad truth is most of our fish are wild caught. They come into the supply pipeline with all the bad beasties that are in the ocean. The longer they pause in any part of the pipeline the more expensive they are going to be. Unless treated and cared for individually there will be more losses. All this will drive up the cost and drive more people out of the hobby.

No point keeping them in separate tanks as they come from same supplier and same water so what's the point keeping them separate? If they behave strangely then yes. In any case there should be some way to minimize the spread, that's what the point is.

John- Being pessimistic doesn't solve problems. I have been wrong before and will be wrong 100 more times but I try to think out of the box rather than saying something is not possible.

For the ideas- how about declaring war on ich by using UV 10 times than usual. May be that will stop spread a little bit ??

 

[robert4025]

Hey...if you guys didn't read it on the internet then you don't know what you're talking about because everything on the internet is true!

 

[ReefLove]

Thanks for your positive input Robert.

 

[robert4025]

My pleasure!

 

[denzil]

They are not going to set up QT systems. We here are of the relatively few. We pay to be members of this! Most hobbyists won't, and don't care. "Fish is cheap, buy another one when I'd dies."
Again...QT your own inexpensive fish or pay the price for cleaned and conditioned livestock.

Exactly my point, regarding training customers. It will only go so far but at the end of the day in any hobby or service, there's always going to be those folks that ignorant or are just plain out cheap.

 

[Thales]

ReefLove, I'm not exactly sure what you expect LFSs to do. Do you want them to QT every fish for 8 weeks? The volume of creatures they deal with would require a HUGE system of independent tanks. If you think fish are expensive now, just imagine what they would cost having been held and fed and medicated for 8 weeks by the LFS!

Even if a LFS did QT, would you trust them? I wouldn't. I'm not saying they are idiots, thieves, dishonest or cheaters. It's just in a busy operation things can be missed. Mistakes happen. I would rather take the responsibility to QT all the creatures. As is said at all frag swaps, "Assume everything here is infested with every bad thing. Treat accordingly"

Rich,
Keep up the good work. This is a great discussion and your input will keep us on the path to skepticism.

John, the point isn't that if I trust a LFS or not. I would still QT my fishes but I won't be worried to death and fish in general would be in much better condition to not have parasites and that would stop a spread up to a certain level.

I do not think it will increase the cost if you see there will be less death and more people would be joining hobby because certainly less death means cheaper hobby. Think about all medicines and stuff we spend. LFS can't just spread stuff they must do things to stop spread, take some responsibility... like change tanks every 3rd day and disinfect the tanks, start here and see if it increases the price tag and how much. If it increases price 10% then it's fine I would pay $11 instead of $10 or really good quality fish.

So a LFS has a few fish, 50 or so, in individual tanks so they don't cross contaminate. Assuming 10G/fish, that's 500 gal. of water. If the move every three days that's 5000 gal/month and at least two sets of tanks. Now there will be shop space taken up by these unsellable (QT) fish along with heating costs and the labor to move all these fish from one system to another every three days. The effort to maintain all the filters would be more than I want to even contemplate! Let's assume the LFS decides it's going to treat for Ich and internal parasites. I'd bet the EPA would not want this LFS to pour all those chemicals down the drain so they might need HAZMAT disposal. I'd guess Rich's estimate of 100% increase in cost to be a minimum. That $50 yellow tang just became a $100 YT!

At the end of this I would still QT fish. Not only because I have doubts about the LFS being able to keep all the fish free of diseases, but it also allows the new fish a rest from the stress of shipping and living in a LFS.

The sad truth is most of our fish are wild caught. They come into the supply pipeline with all the bad beasties that are in the ocean. The longer they pause in any part of the pipeline the more expensive they are going to be. Unless treated and cared for individually there will be more losses. All this will drive up the cost and drive more people out of the hobby.

No point keeping them in separate tanks as they come from same supplier and same water so what's the point keeping them separate? If they behave strangely then yes. In any case there should be some way to minimize the spread, that's what the point is.

John- Being pessimistic doesn't solve problems. I have been wrong before and will be wrong 100 more times but I try to think out of the box rather than saying something is not possible.

For the ideas- how about declaring war on ich by using UV 10 times than usual. May be that will stop spread a little bit ??

There are many ways to deal with ich in the COC and all of them have cost and maintenance issues. UV may (or may not) impact the ich issue (which is not as much as a plague as people seem to think), but there is no way to quantify it and it is expensive, so it is hard to recommend.

There is an easy way to deal with ich - the end user QT's all new fish. I like the idea of changing the industry, but after 15 years of trying, I don't think it is a practical solution.

 

[tankguy]

If i had a choice
store #1 has more expensive fish but survival rate is much higher due to better conditions or
store #2 has same fish but is cheaper and survival rate is much lower due to poor conditions ,
I would pick store #1 each and everytime. However I think alot of people would still go to store #2 just because of price. Ive heard people say over the years , "it was cheap I'll just go buy another one". Id rather buy once and keep the fish living longer.

 

[ReefLove]

Ok, I think I will end up doing my own research. I just don't want to kill fishes in the process. But if this would save lots of life then I will do it sooner or later. There are some good natural medications in Indian natural medicine("Ayurveda"), I will contact some people in India and see if we can do some research, I will also meet some people when I go to India next time. This is very old science and it can cure most of the diseases by only useing natural stuff. So hopefully I might find some things that can help speed up QT process.

My final point on this topic is that- LSF's should be educated more on this, I understand that small LFSs can not afford resources to do 100% QT process but big stores can at least be more responsible and control the spread of the ich. TAKE RESPONCIBILITY !

 

[Coral reefer]

at the end of the day in any hobby or service, there's always going to be those folks that ignorant or are just plain out cheap.

I don't appreciate you talking about me like that Denzil!

 

[robert4025]

I don't see what your point is, Reeflove. How and what exactly are you trying to "educate" the LFS? Do you think this is a new issue that just got discovered? You are beating on a dead horse that been beaten to death for years. LFS owners are not as stupid as you think....most of the time anyway...lol.

Although I do appreciates your honesty in trying to do the right thing for the animals that are soon to be in your care, you don't need to be so harsh or rude about threatening the LFS with withdrawing their license and whatever repercussions you stated earlier. By making such comment, you made it like store owners should take all the responsibilities while you already know the chain of custody starts all the way from collection, to wholesales, retailers, and then you. You can't surely expect us to take ALL the responsibility, do you? If so, there wouldn't be an LFS for you to go.

You are very ignorant about the cost of maintaining a fish store. And there's nothing wron with that as many hobbyiest do. Shoot, when I took over the shop, I didnt know any better either. What we're selling are not commodities and so therefore the thought process shouldn't be the same. Just because we buy a fish for a dollar and sell it for $10 doesn't means its all profit. Even the best fish store average at least 35% in overhead. Thats before including your normal lost on live stock. Add that to something call profit and you can see how expensive a fish can get. Once you add the cost of procurement, shipping, demand and supply, and lost, and etc. you'll end up in cost that are out of the range of many people already.

Just for the record, I have tried the QT of fish before selling them. I did it for a whole year. At the end of the day, the process proved to be more stressful for the fish due to the volume, and the final cost became too unrealistic so I was forced to abandon that.

 

[rygh]

Note that there are several service companies in the bay area that
advertise they they will QT fish for you, and sometimes even give 1 month guarantees.
In case you do not have time/equipment/ability to do it yourself.
In theory, a LFS could provide the same service.

The problem there is finding someone you trust and respect to do it right.

 

[robert4025]

Note that there are several service companies in the bay area that
advertise they they will QT fish for you, and sometimes even give 1 month guarantees.
In case you do not have time/equipment/ability to do it yourself.
In theory, a LFS could provide the same service.

The problem there is finding someone you trust and respect to do it right.

That's what the whole issue boils down to. Theoretical vs. practicality. In theory, there are many things in this industry that could of, would of, or should have done differently. But, we don't live in that theoretical world. Or are we?

 

[Thales]

Ok, I think I will end up doing my own research. I just don't want to kill fishes in the process. But if this would save lots of life then I will do it sooner or later. There are some good natural medications in Indian natural medicine("Ayurveda"), I will contact some people in India and see if we can do some research, I will also meet some people when I go to India next time. This is very old science and it can cure most of the diseases by only useing natural stuff. So hopefully I might find some things that can help speed up QT process.

That is exactly the thinking that has made treating Ich such a mess. Alternative medicine like Ayurveda (which is not science) is not medicine and just because people have been using it a long time doesn't mean it actually works. Post hoc ergo propter hoc is a very powerful fallacy. The article that I posted a link to earlier goes into this in some depth.

I know people really want to believe this stuff, but there is no credible evidence that it works.

 

[bookfish]

Alright I can't resist...
First of all let's discuss the reality of laying the responsibility at the feet of the LFS. There simply aren't enough people willing to pay the premium price that would have to be charged by a store that fully QTs their livestock. To do this properly would require many times as much space and the costs would be huge. If you want a LFS to hold all fish for a full 8 week QT instead of selling the fish once it's eating, looking and acting right, you're definitely looking at many times the cost for each fish. While some BAR members might pay that price, the store would soon be out of business.
Unless you impose this standard (i.e. that there is a 'clean', disease-free system which is the only place animals are sold from) then the testing is somewhat irrelevant as new fish will keep bringing in fresh parasites.
I also want to say that I care a lot about about my fish and if you go online, advising me to try something because you think it might work (which you haven't proven but somehow you forget to mention that) then you're taking a lot of responsibility on yourself. When I give advice to people I am very careful to be clear about what is proven, what is anecdotal and what is speculative because I take responsibility for my advice. Just repeating anecdotes doesn't make them true.

"But the problem is, that "proven no 100% link" is then used to say it is useless in all cases.
Which is wrong."

And there's so much wrong with this statement I can't even begin. LOL!!

 

[BAYMAC]

+1 to rygh. Catalina's are a subtropical fish, but, let's face it, 60-70 degrees in a reef tank is cold. Again, matter of thriving vs. surviving. How do you know that "she" has finally reached her limit in stress? Water is too warm and she's in the overflow. I don't care if you QT or not, any stress like that can cause illness or crypt. I mean, doesn't crypt live on the fish in the gills anyways? It only attacks when the host gets too stressed and their immune system is low?

I went thru crypt (ich, I use them interchangeably even though I know they're different). With my fish and they were miserable = / Like someone told me in my thread: if they eat, feed the hell out of them and keep up on water changes. Also, Jim mentioned to me that beta glucan helps bolster fish immune systems. I wholeheartedly agree with this after using a feeding regime of food soaked in garlic, beta glucan, selcon and vitachem. My freezer is also almost totally dedicated to fish food xD they eat better than we do, but I believe the variety and vitamins help. I tend to swear by beta glucan and garlic. Beta glucan does seem to help their immune system, and the garlic, when fed enough, seems to act as a natural repellent; ie you take garlic pills when living in Alamaba for long enough, the mosqitos tend to avoid you. This is what we did as kids and it worked great! I apply that theory to the fish and it seems to have worked well for me. I hope this helps you a bit. Start fortifying their food and doing huge water changes or take them all out and run fallow for 2-3 months.

I ran my reef tank for over 5 years at 72- 74 F. If you look at NON SURFACE temps, quite a few reefs we get out stuff from is not in the upper 70's/lower 80's.

 

[robert4025]

Alright I can't resist...
First of all let's discuss the reality of laying the responsibility at the feet of the LFS. There simply aren't enough people willing to pay the premium price that would have to be charged by a store that fully QTs their livestock. To do this properly would require many times as much space and the costs would be huge. If you want a LFS to hold all fish for a full 8 week QT instead of selling the fish once it's eating, looking and acting right, you're definitely looking at many times the cost for each fish. While some BAR members might pay that price, the store would soon be out of business.
Unless you impose this standard (i.e. that there is a 'clean', disease-free system which is the only place animals are sold from) then the testing is somewhat irrelevant as new fish will keep bringing in fresh parasites.
I also want to say that I care a lot about about my fish and if you go online, advising me to try something because you think it might work (which you haven't proven but somehow you forget to mention that) then you're taking a lot of responsibility on yourself. When I give advice to people I am very careful to be clear about what is proven, what is anecdotal and what is speculative because I take responsibility for my advice. Just repeating anecdotes doesn't make them true.

"But the problem is, that "proven no 100% link" is then used to say it is useless in all cases.
Which is wrong."

And there's so much wrong with this statement I can't even begin. LOL!!

I couldn't either. At least your first response was more civilize than mine... :bigsmile:

 

[ReefLove]

Ok, I think I will end up doing my own research. I just don't want to kill fishes in the process. But if this would save lots of life then I will do it sooner or later. There are some good natural medications in Indian natural medicine("Ayurveda"), I will contact some people in India and see if we can do some research, I will also meet some people when I go to India next time. This is very old science and it can cure most of the diseases by only useing natural stuff. So hopefully I might find some things that can help speed up QT process.

That is exactly the thinking that has made treating Ich such a mess. Alternative medicine like Ayurveda (which is not science) is not medicine and just because people have been using it a long time doesn't mean it actually works. Post hoc ergo propter hoc is a very powerful fallacy. The article that I posted a link to earlier goes into this in some depth.

I know people really want to believe this stuff, but there is no credible evidence that it works.

Haha, you need to get your knowdge up to date. It is science and proven over and over again. But western countries don't want to accept it. Go to India and check.

 

[rygh]

Note that there are several service companies in the bay area that
advertise they they will QT fish for you, and sometimes even give 1 month guarantees.
In case you do not have time/equipment/ability to do it yourself.
In theory, a LFS could provide the same service.

The problem there is finding someone you trust and respect to do it right.

That's what the whole issue boils down to. Theoretical vs. practicality. In theory, there are many things in this industry that could of, would of, or should have done differently. But, we don't live in that theoretical world. Or are we?

I need to clarify the idea:
A LFS could offer a "special" service, where the customer buys a fish and pays extra for QT service.
A bit like paying for custom installation of cabinets you buy at home depot.
Not something that would be done on all fish or for all customers.
Optional, so no effect on normal sales.
That QT could be done in back rooms, under shelves, or even off site.
So not really pie in the sky theoretical.
Quite doable in the real world. But I have no idea if it would actually make money.