Do you have ich? Let's talk about that.

[OregonGrownReef]

Do you have ich (or other various diseases/pests) in your tank? If so, do you trade corals with other people or sell your corals? If yes to that question, do you inform them that your tank is infected? I'm not trying to rag on anyone. This is a safe discussion. Not everyone has the space or the concern to quarantine. We all started out with a diseased tank. I'll be the first to go.

Hello, everyone. My name is Nate, and I have ich/vermetid snails in one of my tanks. My other 2 tanks are disease/pest free and will remain so. I have traded corals to other hobbyists out of my plague tank, but only to those I know have issues in their tanks. 

 

Another question: If you go through the trouble of quarantining and prophylacticly treating fish for diseases, do you also only buy livestock (i.e. corals, fish, inverts, macroalgae, etc.) from vendors or hobbyists you know are disease/pest free (or as close as possible)? 

Another another question(?): Do you quarantine your corals for the same reasons as above? 

 

BONUS: Let's see if we can get the guys from@CuttleFishandCoral @UPSCALES to speak up. Of course, I don't mean store practice, but from when you first started in the hobby.

 

BONUS BONUS (okay, this is getting ridiculous): Post your favorite pic you've taken of your tanks. 

[Micah]

You should have started that post with "trigger alert". Because most people have a warped view of what quarantine actually means or what "I have ich" means.

[EMeyer]

For whatever its worth, I don't consider vermetid snails a pest. As far as I can tell theyre ubiquitous in the hobby but have never been a problem in any of my tanks. The kind of suck when you poke yourself on them, but bristleworms have caused me 1000x the pain over the years. 

If we're gonna call any animal hitchikers a pest my money is on bristleworms (which I hate but also consider ubiquitous and inevitable)

 

(Not to take away at all from your main question, we probably all consider ich a problem and don't want it in our tanks!)

I think I'd agree with your premise that the presence of ich should be disclosed. I don't have ich in my tanks either symptomatically or based on eDNA sequencing. One of my display tanks does have uronema present without any fish deaths, and ich and velvet are both also detected in some samples, but I've never detected them in mine. If I found a known parasite like that in my frag tanks I'd probably feel like I had to disclose it or stop selling frags from that tank til it was cleared up. 

Edited July 8, 2020 by EMeyer

[spectra]

Hmmmmm do you have ich well of course I do I have an achilles tang.................. I run a UV but still see spots every so often............no other fish show any signs and everyone eats like a pig......

[Bevo5]

You can certainly choose to live with whatever unwanted pests you want in your tank, but I think it would be pretty low-rent to not to at least tell someone if you're selling a frag or fish or whatever. I think a general rule of thumb would be that if you're wondering if you need to tell someone about something, you probably should. 

I didn't QT much the first time around and after the tank crashed while trying to go fallow, I decided everything would get QT'd moving forward. So now I've got two QT tanks and everything goes in. Inverts get 30+ days (which might not even be enough), and fish go as long as they need with at least 30 days of copper. So anything I buy from a fellow hobbyist would go in there regardless.

 

 

[OregonGrownReef]

12 hours ago, EMeyer said:

For whatever its worth, I don't consider vermetid snails a pest. As far as I can tell theyre ubiquitous in the hobby but have never been a problem in any of my tanks. The kind of suck when you poke yourself on them, but bristleworms have caused me 1000x the pain over the years. 

If we're gonna call any animal hitchikers a pest my money is on bristleworms (which I hate but also consider ubiquitous and inevitable)

 

(Not to take away at all from your main question, we probably all consider ich a problem and don't want it in our tanks!)

I think I'd agree with your premise that the presence of ich should be disclosed. I don't have ich in my tanks either symptomatically or based on eDNA sequencing. One of my display tanks does have uronema present without any fish deaths, and ich and velvet are both also detected in some samples, but I've never detected them in mine. If I found a known parasite like that in my frag tanks I'd probably feel like I had to disclose it or stop selling frags from that tank til it was cleared up. 

What one doesn't consider a pest, another spends a month or more quarantining a coral to make sure they aren't introduced into a tank. I'm not one of those people in regards to vermetid snails, but there are people who do that. 

My thoughts exactly. I'm currently going through the slow process of either purchasing pre-quarantined/prophylacticly treated fish or doing that myself and it's taking me forever to get what I want for 2 tanks. I wouldn't want to buy any livestock from someone who has a fish disease in their tank. I also wouldn't want someone to think they don't need to disclose just because they've had ich or what have you for 5 years and all of their fish are fine. It's like having HIV and not telling someone because you're not having a flare-up. Of course if I really wanted to be 100% positive, I'd also quarantine all corals for 3 months. 

[OregonGrownReef]

10 hours ago, spectra said:

Hmmmmm do you have ich well of course I do I have an achilles tang.................. I run a UV but still see spots every so often............no other fish show any signs and everyone eats like a pig......

Is that something you'd disclose to someone when trading or selling something from that tank? Not saying it's wrong to do so, but that person should be aware in case they've taken the precaution to attain a disease free tank. (or as close as possible to disease free) 

[OregonGrownReef]

10 hours ago, Bevo5 said:

You can certainly choose to live with whatever unwanted pests you want in your tank, but I think it would be pretty low-rent to not to at least tell someone if you're selling a frag or fish or whatever. I think a general rule of thumb would be that if you're wondering if you need to tell someone about something, you probably should. 

I didn't QT much the first time around and after the tank crashed while trying to go fallow, I decided everything would get QT'd moving forward. So now I've got two QT tanks and everything goes in. Inverts get 30+ days (which might not even be enough), and fish go as long as they need with at least 30 days of copper. So anything I buy from a fellow hobbyist would go in there regardless.

 

 

I've been burned one too many times with a disease I was managing and then I'd put in a new expensive fish ($300 golden rhomboid wrasse) and 4 months later it winds up dead. I'm not adding any more fish to my diseased tank. I'd remove the fish I currently have in there, but I'd have to tear everything down and I'm not in a position space wise to set up 2 more qt tanks. I've gone through the trouble of setting up 2 disease free tanks. That's where all new acquisitions will go once they've been treated. 

[OregonGrownReef]

12 hours ago, Micah said:

You should have started that post with "trigger alert". Because most people have a warped view of what quarantine actually means or what "I have ich" means.

I wouldn't say people's view of quarantine is warped, just different. For me, a proper QT isn't just sit and watch for a disease, but prophylacticly treating the fish. Cupramine, praziquantel, and metronidazole soaked foods are what I use. At some point they get a freshwater dip. 

 

Of course, I do agree with the thought of "I had ich once, but I haven't seen it in 'x' months and all my fish look fine" is a warped view in believing your tank is ich free. Just because you don't see it doesn't mean it isn't there. 

[OregonGrownReef]

Come on guys and gals, show me those tanks too! 

[spectra]

1 hour ago, OregonGrownReef said:

Is that something you'd disclose to someone when trading or selling something from that tank? Not saying it's wrong to do so, but that person should be aware in case they've taken the precaution to attain a disease free tank. (or as close as possible to disease free) 

Well havent traded many corals in a while and none since the fish was introduced to the tank. I have no issues telling someone but also hope they dip the coral as who knows what you get even if you think you have a pest free tank.....

[Micah]

In the past, my quarantine method was to wait for things to go wrong and just assume I have ich/live with it.   Ich management.   Starting this new tank, however, I've decided to take it seriously and do the full quarantine/medicating/etc.  The humblefish method.   

Fish: Treated for 7-20~ days on prazi (wrasses/etc need a longer ramp up/down).  Then treated for 14-30 days on therapeutic levels of copper power (again, wrasses/other sensitive fish need more time to acclimate to copper)

Corals/Snails/Rock/Clams/Etc: 76 days in Fishless QTs

Anemones: 16 days in fishless QT

Shrimp/Crabs/Etc: 76 days or 16 days + first full molt

I have a full physically separated fish quarantine consisting of two 20gallon talls with drains to the house waste plumbed in separated from themselves with a partition.   I have a separate 20g cube fishless coral/invert QT as well. 

 

 

If anybody else wanted to set up any quarantine setups, now is the time.   Petco is having their dollar-per-gallon sale at the moment.  Head on in and get yourself a couple 20gallon tanks. I have some HOB's to pay it forward if @Gil&Fin doesn't want them back. 

[pdxmonkeyboy]

I have been through the ringer with "trying" to QT and then getting burned by a single slip up on my end.  "oh, this persons tank is clean". The reality is these days that it is safe to assume that EVERYTHING from a pet store has at least SOME kind of pest.  I mean the aquatic pet trade is basically one big whore house without even a baby wipe around.  They do there best to limit things and obviously CF is one of the cleanest outfits around but no pet store can QT everything. 

Let's see the things I have had in my tanks.. ich..velvet..euronema,  aptasia,  AEFW, , fire worms, vermetid snails, and that algae you have to treat with fluconozole. I have not had bugs or acro spiders. The eggs and reproductive stages of these things are simply too small not to miss from time to time. 

I got my tang collection ich free after two years, then added some anthias without a QT and velvet broke out.  I just put everything in my display tank and absolutely carpet bombed the tank with chloroquine phosphate.  So that will take care of ich, velvet, maybe the euronema, and every form of invertebrate. I set up a 40g breeder to QT all my corals and bought a desk top magnifying glass with led lights off of amazon to inspect the corals once a week.

 For the amount of money we spend on our tanks it just seems absolutely ridiculous not to QT everything.  The "observation" QT people are pretty dense in my book...oh, you have xray vision and can see a fishes gills?  I'm just being silly though, I'm sure ich wouldn't attach itself to a fishes gills...it's not like gills don't have a slime coat and water is constantly passing over them.

If I had a small tank without much invested I would probably wouldn't take it as seriously.   But my DT is absurdly large and dealing with pests would be an epic nightmare. 

Cheers. 

 

[pdxmonkeyboy]

1 minute ago, Micah said:

In the past, my quarantine method was to wait for things to go wrong and just assume I have ich/live with it.   Ich management.   Starting this new tank, however, I've decided to take it seriously and do the full quarantine/medicating/etc.  The humblefish method.   

 Then treated for 14-30 days on therapeutic levels of copper power (again, wrasses/other sensitive fish need more time to acclimate to copper)

 

ask your doctor if chloroquine phosphate is right for you!  Seriously, copper is brutal on fish 😞 

I also have a 20 gallon tank with Lid! free for anyone that wants it.  I posted it before and nobody was interested.  I took a 20 gallon long to the dump last weekend...

 

[Micah]

2 minutes ago, pdxmonkeyboy said:

 I mean the aquatic pet trade is basically one big whore house without even a baby wipe around.

Pretty sure I need this on a t-shirt or something.

 

 

[Micah]

Just now, pdxmonkeyboy said:

ask your doctor if chloroquine phosphate is right for you!  Seriously, copper is brutal on fish 😞 

I'll have to do that, at least for the fish that can't tolerate copper at all.   So far, I've had nothing but luck with copper, so I'm reticent to change my ways - especially because the humble.fish folks have some pretty good success.  

[pdxmonkeyboy]

I know when I am at therapeutic levels my tangs really grey out. 😞    

[Micah]

31 minutes ago, pdxmonkeyboy said:

I know when I am at therapeutic levels my tangs really grey out. 😞    

I had a yellow and a sailfin in copper for 20 days at 2.5ppm with copper power they looked amazing the whole time.   I run copper+metroplex+kanaplex+furan2 all at the same time.  I think that has something to do with it.  

Another benefit of copper over CP is that I can test for copper to ensure that I am at therapeutic levels. 

[pdxmonkeyboy]

huh. My achilies looks like a ghost in copper 😞   My sailfin does as well. 

yeah that is the bummer about CP, but then again, one dose and no testing does have its benefits. 

 Call it faith based QT?  No, don't call it that actually.  

[xxkenny90xx]

Ok here we go, i don't qt at all. I have/had in my tank ich, vermited snails, aiptasia, hydroids, asterinas, uhhh what else? Lots more I'm sure.

I believe a truly established healthy system should be able to handle these things with no problems. I do sell corals from time to time and don't tell people about pests (not that I would make any attempt to hide them either). I wouldnt sell anything that i noticed a pest on though.

The fact is that if your concerned about these pests then your gonna dip or qt the things you buy from me. If you don't and you get a pest then that is your fault. 

My tank is close to 10 years old now and packed with live rock and pests just arent able to take hold. I believe its the new tanks with dry rock that get overrun with pests. 

Well thats my opinion anyways, feel free to rip me apart if you'd like!

 

[xxkenny90xx]

Oh, and im on my way to the portland area right now, who wants to trade some corals ☠️

[albertareef]

As I expected, an entertaining thread!  You could probably get as many different opinions and approaches to QT as there are reefers in this community.  I do think it is important to make sure anyone buying or trading with you is aware of known issues and ideally your approach to husbandry but, really, everyone should just assume there will be hitchhikers of some variety and treat accordingly based on their own comfort level (dip/QT/?).  While it would be nice to think everyone has the resources to implement a stringent scheme the realities are most likely going to make that impractical or at least unlikely.  Kudos to those who manage to pull it off though as it definitely takes patience and great attention to detail.

On 7/7/2020 at 7:01 PM, EMeyer said:

I don't have ich in my tanks either symptomatically or based on eDNA sequencing

This is kind of an exciting possibility as a way to monitor our systems.  What do you think the "confidence level" is with the current testing protocol and how many of the common diseases are you screening for?

[spectra]

Who does QT....................

 

 

And a FTS....................a little blue..................

 

 

[EMeyer]

12 hours ago, albertareef said:

As I expected, an entertaining thread!  You could probably get as many different opinions and approaches to QT as there are reefers in this community.  I do think it is important to make sure anyone buying or trading with you is aware of known issues and ideally your approach to husbandry but, really, everyone should just assume there will be hitchhikers of some variety and treat accordingly based on their own comfort level (dip/QT/?).  While it would be nice to think everyone has the resources to implement a stringent scheme the realities are most likely going to make that impractical or at least unlikely.  Kudos to those who manage to pull it off though as it definitely takes patience and great attention to detail.

This is kind of an exciting possibility as a way to monitor our systems.  What do you think the "confidence level" is with the current testing protocol and how many of the common diseases are you screening for?

Good question, and thats why I havent started offering the eDNA test commercially yet. Sensitivity testing is hard when diseased fish are so hard to come by. 

The eDNA test uses a universal eukaryotic marker, so it picks up everything - fish, corals, snails, etc... and parasites. I've seen all the major parasites so far in one or more samples. 

Positives are easy - if it's detected, the disease is present in the tank. Since DNA data are digital, theres little or no uncertainty about a positive result. 

The harder part is negatives -- how confident can we be about a negative result? (This is not limited to eDNA or Ich testing, false negative rates are generally higher for all disease testing)

Right now I can only say its pretty sensitive, in that it sometimes picks up parasite DNA in tanks without any fish showing symptoms. 

Sensitivity testing turns out to be hard, because either (a) diseased fish are much rarer in the hobby than I thought or (b) few hobbyists are willing to admit it when one of their fish gets disease symptoms.

[OregonGrownReef]

I love how much traffic this post got! It's so good to see that we can be active here as well. It's easy to hop on reef2reef and have that be our only source of reefing communication, but it's important to connect with those close by. I wish we had as big a reef scene here as they have in the Midwest and East coast, but I'm excited to see that there are active members here. With all of this being said, anyone interested in some Green Slimer frags or Gobstopper zoas? They're in my frag tank, which I'm treating for valonia, but it's disease free other than that. I'm down to haggle some prices. I know they're a "common" coral, but it's so gratifying to have a coral grow quickly when all others seem to take their time growing out. I'm local to Salem, but I'll meet up with you if you're willing to allow me look at your reef. (I'll wear a mask) All slimers have started to encrust and all of the cut portions now have polyps and zooxanthelae.