Difficult Parasaties

[schabiazabi]

Over the year I learned a lot on marine health management. I learned so much on this forum and reading books that I can say I'm a proud owner of a very healthy fish only tank. Knowing what I know today makes it very easy to have a healthy system. All you have to do is follow the best practices layed out here along with understanding each disease/parasite, it's life cycle, cures, and proper analysis. I got so good in this that I do not mind buying sick fish, healing them and have them look better than in the ocean.

That's all great, but in this greatness few months ago I found a weak spot that makes my marine system vulnerable to warm type parasites (black ich and who knows what else). Let me explain. If you were give a brand new tank with no fish in the system and the system was 100% healthy it is pretty easy to keep it healthy. You buy a brand new fish, dip it properly, quarantine it properly and a health fish will go into a healthy tank. You build your tank that way. That is what I have done, but 3 months ago I was met with an interesting surprise.

The surprise came with some live rock I purchased from 2 different places. The live rock was Tonga branch and my goal was to eventually swap my current live rock for the Tonga branches. I kept the live rock curing in a big container for about 3+ MONTHS. In that time I did not make any additions to my tank. After so much time of curing I finally decided to add few branches of the new rock. Boom. Right after that my fish developed Black Ich. It was first visible on my Yellow Tang and then it spread to other fish. I cured the problem, but I realized how little I know about warms and other related parasitic creatures that can live without a host for so long.

Live rock alone is not a problem, as from now on I submerge my new live rock in fresh water for days, and later I let it dry in the sun. Works great as it kills everything negative. The problem starts when you have a reef tank with fish. That's the gray area for me. I would not mind quarantining corals and anemones, but where is the guarantee these organisms will be parasite free after the quarantine period?

For now I dip my corals, and other marine live in Revive. Revive does not say it kills Black Ich warms, other warms, or warm egs (not sure how the reproduction happens here to be honest). On top of that I leave these organisms 48 (24 effective period) hours in a separate tank in order for the M.I. Theronts (in case they came in the water) to become ineffective. After that I blow off my corals with my tank water in order to get rid of anything hitch hiking.

As you can see I do not think this is optimal. I could not find any information on treatments that can remove these parasites from corals and inverts without negatively affecting them. Fresh water dip is very harsh on corals and inverts. Anemones and SPS are very delicate and the quarantine setup would have to be very good in order to even attempt it for longer periods of time.

On top of all this, my reef tank is almost 100% natural. It's mind blowing how many organisms (pods, isopods, copods, etc) I have at night running around. My thinking is if the good organisms were able to get in, the bad once will get in as well. Maybe they are there and I have not seen them yet.

I'm wondering what you guys think and what is your approach to quarantining other organisms than marine fish. What products, or practices you use to keep your tank warm free. Every one talks about the "white spots" disease, but very little time is devoted to warms/flukes/etc. Even this forum does not have a sticky about it. Please share your ideas. I'm interested in your approaches.

[leebca]

The problem(s) you mention are a set of things that are very low on the 'likely-to-happen' list. The Black Ich parasites are particularly cumbersome. They do not have a life cycle we can effectively interrupt in an established, balanced aquarium. Some estimates are that it would take 10+ months to get them out of a fishless system. More than likely this is really a time when the parasite has gone through so many generations that the final generation at the 10+ month time is too weak to infect.

I had my 700 gallon system up and running for 12 months before any fish were added. Few hobbyists would do this. However, there is a 'short cut' with regards to 'testing' invertebrates, live rock, corals, etc. After the proper curing and during the final curing, I have introduced fish to the curing system. After each month I check each fish under the microscope for signs of parasites. This is something that most hobbyists wouldn't do, nor would they invest the time in such an endeavor.

A step down from the above is to put fish in the as mentioned above and watch them for signs of parasites that have come along with the corals. For discovering Black Ich, you'd introduce a couple of young Yellow Tangs into the curing system. Not wanting to use the fish and then destroy them, the fish are either destined for the main tank (assuming it large enough) or going back to the LFS for finding another good home. If they display Black Ich, they are euthanized.

I don't (obviously) advocate any of the above actions. Just not something hobbyists will do; and not something I'd recommend for the possible wasted lives of fish.

Another and a bit more practical approach is to know in fact the origin of the coral, live rock, etc. that is being acquired. Much of this is collected and given a primary cure, then stored in salt water systems. They share any parasites and hitchhikers they may carry. But if this same system either at the exporter, importer, or LFS is shared with fishes, then there is an increase in fish parasites coming along with them.

This takes us back to full circle to the top -- the likelihood of these events is so low that it isn't worth much in the way of try to prevent. What you can do is be very cautious about adding these things to established aquariums. Quite frankly, I don't. Once the system is setup with live rock, substrate, etc. I don't add any of these to it. It is one reason I advocate buying all the live rock and decorations you Will need a the very start of the setup. People who 'can't afford' to buy what they want at the start should not start. They should save their money up first to buy it all at once.

Bringing live rock into an established aquarium has its risks, some of which I pointed out here: Adding Live Rock to old aquarium