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

[Blue Z Reef]

On 7/11/2020 at 6:08 AM, EMeyer said:

Sensitivity testing is hard when diseased fish are so hard to come by. 

 

You been to Petco bro?????? 🤣

[EMeyer]

7 hours ago, Blue Z Reef said:

You been to Petco bro?????? 🤣

So you would think! Its all fun and games til you actually start visiting petcos looking to buy fish with symptoms. I find lots of unhappy fish in shitty tanks, but no fish with clear symptoms (e.g. white spots). 

But I imagine petco moves a lot of fish, probably I just have to keep going back. 

The bigger surprise has been learning that no hobbyist anywhere in the Pacific Northwest has experienced any fish disease symptoms in their tanks in the past year

[Blue Z Reef]

So you are looking for known (visible) disease to test water and confirm you can identify the ich (or other) disease through testing?

 

My fish had ich earlier on this year. Over the course of 2-3 months of feeding with Selcon/Garlic soaked frozen food plus adding a UV sterilizer, the ich slowly disappeared. I haven’t seen it for several months now. I’m sure it could still be present but the fish are eating well and haven’t had issues since.

 

@EMeyer wouldn’t the testing be problematic when looking for things like ich that depend on the parasite being in a certain stage in its lifecycle to be free swimming (and thus be able to be potentially sampled from the water column)? Just seems like to get a clear picture if your tank had something or not it would need randomized/regular testing over the course of a few weeks to give an accurate picture.

[EMeyer]

Thats an important question. But actually the test relies on eDNA - environmental DNA in the water itself. A large fraction of my data comes from fish, snails, crabs, and corals, none of which make it into the sample. Just their DNA  Turns out aquarium water is full of DNA. 

(What I am describing here is different from the standard microbiome test, which relies largely on intact bacterial cells captured on the filter)

But yeah, sensitivity and positive controls are my main challenge. The test itself is pretty easy. I'd like to take a fish with known symptoms, put it in a tested and confirmed disease-free tank, then sample the water and detect the parasite. Easy peasy except for the part where I need to get my hands on a fish with a disease.

 

[albertareef]

5 hours ago, EMeyer said:

Thats an important question. But actually the test relies on eDNA - environmental DNA in the water itself. A large fraction of my data comes from fish, snails, crabs, and corals, none of which make it into the sample. Just their DNA  Turns out aquarium water is full of DNA. 

(What I am describing here is different from the standard microbiome test, which relies largely on intact bacterial cells captured on the filter)

But yeah, sensitivity and positive controls are my main challenge. The test itself is pretty easy. I'd like to take a fish with known symptoms, put it in a tested and confirmed disease-free tank, then sample the water and detect the parasite. Easy peasy except for the part where I need to get my hands on a fish with a disease.

 

If it weren’t so expensive I would suggest just picking up a couple of powder brown or powder blue tangs - guaranteed ich magnets. I am only sort of kidding on this as they have always been the first to show visible infection in any tank outbreak I have had. Gave up on keeping them anymore even though they are beautiful fish. I will let Brian fight that fight @pdxmonkeyboy and just come see them in his tank. 👍

[EMeyer]

Good idea. Powder browns are only $20 at the wholesaler right now, maybe I should grab a couple. 

[pdxmonkeyboy]

@EMeyer  i have water that had velvet in it...

Edited July 16, 2020 by pdxmonkeyboy

[OregonGrownReef]

Hey there! It's been a year, but I managed to achieve TWO disease free* tanks. I put the asterisk because it turns out that uronema is extremely difficult to eradicate, and I believe one of them had uronema at one point, but only in some anthias that I paid good money to have quarantined. It's never reared it's head since. The other is disease free 100%. Because of my success with these tanks, I'm upgrading my infested tank to a custom 150 build from Glasscages. All of my fish will go through quarantine, all corals will be cut from the rock and frags will be made and qt'd. I'll remove all of the undesirable pests, namely vermetid snails from the rock and run the rock fallow for 3 months. I have a ton of other dry rock I can use, and I'll use some, but there's no point in wasting perfectly aged live rock. The disease free tank I posted pics of earlier in the thread is doing great now. I actually have a bunch of zoas up for sale if anyone is interested. I have a sale thread up on reef2reef, but I don't know if I can post links from there or not. Since we're all relatively close, my prices are negotiable since I'm not having to worry about crazy shipping/material costs. 

 

[OregonGrownReef]

On 7/27/2021 at 6:58 PM, OregonGrownReef said:

Hey there! It's been a year, but I managed to achieve TWO disease free* tanks. I put the asterisk because it turns out that uronema is extremely difficult to eradicate, and I believe one of them had uronema at one point, but only in some anthias that I paid good money to have quarantined. It's never reared it's head since. The other is disease free 100%. Because of my success with these tanks, I'm upgrading my infested tank to a custom 150 build from Glasscages. All of my fish will go through quarantine, all corals will be cut from the rock and frags will be made and qt'd. I'll remove all of the undesirable pests, namely vermetid snails from the rock and run the rock fallow for 3 months. I have a ton of other dry rock I can use, and I'll use some, but there's no point in wasting perfectly aged live rock. The disease free tank I posted pics of earlier in the thread is doing great now. I actually have a bunch of zoas up for sale if anyone is interested. I have a sale thread up on reef2reef, but I don't know if I can post links from there or not. Since we're all relatively close, my prices are negotiable since I'm not having to worry about crazy shipping/material costs. 

 

I'm sure a couple of you saw it, but I made a sale thread on here as well. I discounted a lot of them from the reef2reef thread because we're all local. It's almost expected to get better deals locally, and I don't want to break that tradition. If you're interested, feel free to check it out and pm me. I am going to be at the meeting coming up in August if anyone wants to pickup there.