Quarantine Clean Up Crew?

[ched03]

I was under the impression that you should quarantine anything going in your DT.  But, I see recommendations for people to add CUC to a tank to fix various problems.  This has me confused.  Are they suggesting to buy CUC and add them immediately to fix the problem?  I was planning on quarantining my CUC before putting them in my DT but now I am questioning whether I need to or not.

[Daniel91]

Well, while diseases such as ich can be introduced with almost any livestock addition, even CUC, most people buy a CUC because there is an immediate/ongoing need for it.

 

Therefore it would not make logical sense to quarantine even if it’s by far the safest thing to do. Again, it’s a risk you just have to take.

 

Edit; I don’t even know if a CUC could survive an Ich treatment...

[ched03]

7 minutes ago, Daniel91 said:

Well, while diseases such as ich can be introduced with almost any livestock addition, even CUC, most people buy a CUC because there is an immediate/ongoing need for it.

 

Therefore it would not make logical sense to quarantine even if it’s by far the safest thing to do. Again, it’s a risk you just have to take.

 

Edit; I don’t even know if a CUC could survive an Ich treatment...

That makes a lot of sense.  🙂  Thanks!

[DaveFason]

18 hours ago, ched03 said:

I was under the impression that you should quarantine anything going in your DT.  But, I see recommendations for people to add CUC to a tank to fix various problems.  This has me confused.  Are they suggesting to buy CUC and add them immediately to fix the problem?  I was planning on quarantining my CUC before putting them in my DT but now I am questioning whether I need to or not.

I would not worry about it. In the 10+ years I have been reefing that is the last thing that has caused an issue. 

[SkiCatTX]

I was also wondering about this. I know very few people do it, but I have seen crabs and snails come with quite a bit of stuff on their shells. I have also read all about people who have not quarantined their fish and coral for 10 years or more and never had an issue...until they did and lost everything...

 

Assuming you WANTED to quarantine, or treat, a delivery of CuC, what would you use? Are there any chemical treatments that would be safe or crabs, snails, other? I imagine you could scrub them, hopefully many at a time, maybe roll them a bit in a kitchen cleaning sponge with no soap? Taking a toothbrush or equivalent to 100+ little shells would be quite a job... 🙂

 

However, likely I imagine the best solution is to go ahead and put a new delivery into a clean QT, no fish, maybe put a small "dirty" rock from one of your tanks in, but little else. They will clean that up quickly and recover, then continue cleaning each other. Likely, if they were shipped, this has already begun. In a few days (hours?), all their shells should be clean. Also, may want to do crabs of different sizes and snails in a separate tank, or with divider, or the crabs may kill all the snails since they have nowhere to go or hide other than clean glass and plastic.

 

If you want to keep them in QT for a bit longer, just keep moving a small rock or ball of algae from another tank into the QT. Just don't put those rocks back until the end of the QT, clearly, or you will defeat the purpose of the QT...

 

Just me rambling, curious what others think.

 

[TravelerBob]

so, great question and topic.  I am just finishing the setup of a 310 gallon display tank.  I have not introduced anything live to the tank yet with the exception of copepods.  I introduced 1 bottle into the DT and 1 bottle into the 75 gal sump (+ phytoplankton).  I was also curious as to whether or not to quarantine the CUC...  I wonder if ich would survive in the display tank if there were no fish yet??  Doesn't ich need to eventually get a host fish to survive?  If you had just a CUC in the tank and they initially had ich, wouldn't that eventually fall off within 72 hrs, try to reproduce in the tank and then find a fish host?  If all you had were CUC, would the ich still be able to survive?  I don't know the answer - hoping somebody else does?  If the ich can survive, then maybe it is best to QT the CUC???  I am less concerned with hitchhikers and other things and much more concerned about introducing ich into a very large display tank that will eventually house many fish.  Thanks!!

[mcarroll]

Having a better understanding on why fish get sick will help.  

 

Presence of ich isn't the real problem, it is coincidence.  Could be ich, could be anything else too.  Even many of the fish's own natural microbes are opportunistic when conditions turn bad.

 

The crucial parts are the fish itself....and the overall conditions.  With a healthy fish and good conditions, there will never be disease.

 

Healthy Fish

The complication is that you can get fish that are already compromised....sometimes already with an outbreak of something.

 

As long as the fish you get appear to be healthy, give then a (dechlorinated) freshwater dip for 10-15 minutes, and then put him in the display (if purchased loca) or the observation tank (if purchased sight unseen). 

 

FYI, I wouldn't bring home a fish that didn't appear healthy....that's just asking for trouble.  (And why online orders are a crapshoot...you don't know they picked a good one in the first place, you don't know how it was handled before or during shipment, etc.  Too many unknowns.  Purchase local whenever possible.)

 

Healthy Conditions

To keep conditions good, do not rush adding fish.  Wait until the tank has matured and has some algae, some cleanup crew, and some corals.....ALL OF WHICH SHOULD BE ADDED SLOWLY....just one (or at most a few) at a time.  Up to a month of wait in between additions will all you and the tank to catch up to the changes that come with each addition....and allow you to react and make any necessary changes BEFORE anymore livestock is added.

 

Another thing to keep conditions good is to keep fish stocking density on the low side....that's counting fish size AND fish temperament.  A dotty back (thanks to it attitude) has space requirements far in excess of its tiny size, just for one example.  Most fish have some aspect of their being that requires special consideration in terms of space or in terms of the rest of the tank's population.

[TravelerBob]

Excellent feedback - thank you!!

 

[AcanSkywalker]

Keep your cuc quarantined seperately, (preferably in a seperated location), for at least 72 days, this way any ich that may have been present will have died off lacking a host. And yes, ich can actually travel through the air.

[mcarroll]

On 10/12/2021 at 12:07 AM, AcanSkywalker said:

Keep your cuc quarantined seperately, (preferably in a seperated location), for at least 72 days, this way any ich that may have been present will have died off lacking a host. And yes, ich can actually travel through the air.

 

That is sketchy info....  IMO, supplement with books and other resources.  Really should be the other way....anchor your learning on books and other sources and supplement with info from online sources like nano-reef, etc.

 

72 days is an arbitrary number to use....research says it can easily be higher or lower depending on actual conditions, so don't bank on 72 very hard if you have a confirmed infection.

 

Also, weak unhealthy fish (=compromised immune system) are always susceptible to something, even if ich and velvet aren't present...the list of potential likely pathogens is long...it only starts with "ich" and "velvet".

 

Plus "ich" and "velvet" aren't really the worst pathogens – just the most common.  Arguably "ich" and "velvet" are the easiest ones since we know a lot about them, they are treatable and avoidable, and we can see them with our naked eyes.  For crying out loud they can even be targeted with high-power/low-flow UV and (micron-)filtered from the water during an outbreak....simple! 😉 

 

Also "ich" (really Crypto.) does not travel through air.  There are bogus claims out there that "velvet" (really Amyloodinium) does.  But in actual reality "velvet" does not either.  Someone drew incorrect conclusions from a research paper abstract (which is only a summary) rather than reading the whole article, which stated the opposite.  If you want to read what it takes to move a dino cell from one body of water to another one, I think you'd be pretty surprised at how much effort the researchers had to go to.  Bubbling air stones in an open fish tank doesn't do it....and none of us will even allow that little amount of turbulence into our tanks (we use powerheads or other means that don't generate "loose" bubbles)...and most of our tanks are well-covered.  All because the salt spray from aeration makes an enormous mess....this mess from air bubbles in salt water is what led to the invention of the protein skimmer back in the 1960's....it's just an enclosure for the bubble stream to contain the mess resulting from simple aeration!)  So no movement through the air under our circumstances.  (Cross contamination from things like nets or your hands/arms is 1000x more likely and 1,000,000x more realistic if you want to worry about something.

 

The odds of a healthy non-fish (eg cleanup crew) even coincidentally hosting a fish parasite are low...like hitting the bad lottery.  CUC in stores aren't even kept with for-sale fish typically, and that's the only real potential source of fish pathogens.   (If the store is smart anyway.)

 

So much mythology around fish health.  

 

P.S.  I wonder how @ched03's tank is doing now?