|
| |
|
Related FAQs: Treating Disease, Marine
Diseases 2, Marine Diseases 3, Marine
Diseases 4, Marine Diseases 5, Marine Diseases 6,
Marine Diseases 7, Marine
Disease 8, Tang Disease, Clownfish
Disease, Puffer Disease,
Related Articles: Tank
Troubleshooting, Toxic Tank Conditions, Environmental
Disease (incl. Lymphocystis), Nutritional
Disease, Infectious Diseases, Parasitic
Diseases, Wound Management (/aquarists), A Livestock Treatment System,
/The Conscientious Aquarist Series:
The Three Sets of Factors that Determine
Livestock Health
|
|
|
by Bob Fenner |
Livestock varies widely in tolerance
|
Just what is disease, or its antithesis health?
|
Once at a hobbyist conference
I heard a pitch called "Fish Are Designed to Die" (Image1: Koi in
pond),
|
|
|
in which the presenter regaled us with all the reasons (parasites, poor
water quality (Image2: Furuncular condition in goldfish),
|
|
|
stress from so many
sources (Image3: Koi in rough netting),
|
|
|
nutritional deficiencies (Image4: Koran
with HLLE)…
|
|
why expensive pond fishes should not make it in captivity.
Considering all that can go wrong in the wonderful cascade of electrons which is
life, it is indeed a marvel that there is so much vitality about.
Disease is "any deviation from a normal or healthy
condition" as a definition will suffice for our discussion
here. As such there are many types of disease, with a few ways of classifying
them. Most prominent of these sources of non-health are genetic
| (Image: a
genetically tweak-mouthed Cirrhilabrus labouti), |
|
environmental, nutritional,
social factors, infectious and parasitic pathogens. As conscientious aquarists
we need to be aware of the root causes of diseases of our captive charges and do
our best to identify, prevent, and if necessary treat to cure them or reduce
their ill effects.
And there is much aquarists can and should do. Careful, intelligent livestock
selection, properly acclimated and kept in an optimized, stable environment with
its myriad factors, plus excluding and weakening infectious organisms are the
primary aspects of prevention and control of disease.
|
A very useful model/pictogram detailing the three sets of factors determining
the well being of any system is presented here (Image6: empty three sets), along
with related notes, specific action to take in successful aquatic husbandry.
Like many early idea-sets, this empirical model is a consequence of direct
observation, tremendous trial and errors, and proof by utility. I encourage you
to think deeply about this. Note the first sentence in this paragraph;
"determine" is used, not "influence", and well being of any
"system". The "three sets of factors" elucidated here are
lessons beyond a small aquatic microcosm; they are the same conditions that
determine the viability of an individual, planet or business corporation.
|
|
Factors Determining Health, The Three Sets:
The three sets of factors determining the health or well being of any aquatic
system are
1. Initial state or condition
2. Suitability of the environment
3. The presence and degree of infectiousness of disease-causing organisms
All three are separate and yet interdependent upon each other, hence the
interlocking circles of the accompanying pictograph. In the "real world" of aquarium
culture it is ideal to select for and create the best circumstances for each of
the three sets of factors; though, practically speaking, if two of the three are
realized, livestock losses are greatly minimized. By using this model in your
planning, execution and maintenance of a captive aquatic system to mentally keep
straight the most important aspects of health control and their relation, you
will lose many less organisms.
Let’s further describe and expand on these sets of factors.
1. Initial State of Health:
Your livestock’s’ initial condition is a function of its genetic
heritage coupled with its developmental history. Similar to cultural
discussions of "nature versus nurture" in our species, how can an
individual, population or species become something more than its genetic makeup?
Or discounting DNA, how important is ontogeny, the development of the one or
many of a kind? Obviously both are crucial, to have the genetic potential to
"fit" an environment, and the "lucky" circumstances
generationally to grow up and reproduce within it.
| How can you assess the initial state of health of your livestock? By study
and observation you know some species (Images: Moorish idols vs. Heniochus
butterflyfishes, source locations (Images: Choerodon (Tuskfish) from
the Philippines., Australia), sizes of
livestock (Images: Too small (2"), large (8"), about right size
(4") Saddle-Back Butterflies) are hardier/touchier than others. With
practice you will know how to pick out healthy individuals. We’ll elaborate
on this later under Aspects of Prevention & Control. |
 
|
2. Suitability of the Environment:
The suitability of the environment incorporates an amazingly large collection
of sub-factors, chemical, physical and biological.
|
A) Chemical/Physical Aspects of Environmental Stability:
Consider pH, the measure of relative acidity/alkalinity of aqueous
solutions. The pH point, fluctuation and stability influence almost all
biological reactions. A prime example is the relationship of pH, temperature
and ammonia toxicity. Elevated pH (the higher the worse), with higher
temperature, yield situations of much greater ammonia toxicity. Reciprocally,
lowering pH and temperature alleviate the poisonous affects of ammonia
|
|
ii) Alkaline/acidic reserve is related phenomena, representing a
measure of resistance to change or shift in pH. In small captive aquatic volumes it is often practical to know how much
is enough such reserve one has. Feeding too much food to too much life can drive
a pH down quickly once the alkaline reserve in a given range is exhausted.
Providing buffering action through supplementation and maintenance, especially
water changes forestall drops into lower pHs.
iii) Reduction-Oxidation, temperature, carbon dioxide, calcium, strontium….
Plus many more, could be listed as chemical/physical phenomena that have high
and low limits and a need to display some semblance of stability to permit life.
iv) Bio-Geo-Chemical Cycling Considerations… nitrogen in ammonia,
nitrite, nitrate. Indeed hundreds of "cycles" exert their effects (and
vice versa) on the life within and around them. Ammonia poisoning from
incomplete establishment of cycling is and has been the historical number one
killer of captive aquatics. It probably is number two as well, as a contributor
to other stresses that account for mortality.
|
Décor (Image: plants and gravel) is yet another aspect of the
physical make-up of the non-living environment that substantially
contributes to the health of biota. How important is the break-up of space,
hiding places, dark spots out of the light to living organisms? Critically
so. |
|
vi) Light/lighting; quality, quantity, duration and even regularity are
known to strongly effect the health of aquatic life. Photosynthesis is obviously
impossible without proper illumination (Images: planted tank, Acropora
gemmifera), fishes can be blinded over time by too much light, notably lions
(Image: Pterois volitans), but practically all livestock benefits from a
regular lighting regimen. Use TIMERS.
B) Biological Aspects of Environmental Stability:
| Population dynamics includes such ideas as order of introduction,
pecking order and crowding; all significant contributors to the
individuals living in your system. I have seen many "to the death"
fights brought on by mis-introduction of two too-similar marine angelfishes
(Images: Pomacanthus arcuatus, P. annularis, P. chrysurus). |
|
Even the act of changing familiarity is demonstrably stressful to fishes. Often a pond of koi
(Image: carp, Cyprinus carpio)
will break down with bacterial infection (Images: early onset,
Furuncular sores) on the placement of a new individual, though it was
apparently "clean" in its last locale. Observation in the wild and
in captivity points to the high degree of regularity fish life depends on in
the living and non-living components of their environment.
|
|
Sex ratio, and number of individuals (pairs, single, many) are likewise
consequential in captive systems. Think of the fancy basses of the subfamily
Anthiinae (Image: Anthias in RS). How many males to a harem? One alpha only.
The same with communities of dwarf angels (Image: Flame angel). What happens
when the number one male of a Thalassoma wrasse (Images: T.
lucasanum) group perishes? The highest ranked female becomes the dominant male
within a few weeks. How many Heniochus should be kept together? The more the merrier.
|
C) Foods/Feeding as Aspects of Environmental Stability:
The types, format, quantity, food value, frequency and method of delivery are
all important parts of the behavior and nutrition of feeding. Think how
stressful it is to you to not get the foods you prefer properly prepared and
presented, at a regular interval, nutritionally complete, in a "conducively"
pleasant consuming environment.
D) Almost Infinity:
How many more environmental criteria can you think of? Obviously this is not
an exhaustive list of contributing environmental factors, such a counting would
be vast indeed, detailing all interactions, chemical, physical, and biological,
conscious and not that each organism has with their world.
3. Presence and Degree of Pathogenicity of Disease-Causing Organisms
Absolutely no infection or parasitic disease can occur without its causative
biological mechanism. Where would black spot disease (Images: Paravortex, Yellow
Tang) come
from if not imported into a system on Yellow Tang host? Certainly not from
thin air. Specific pathogen free livestock is a dream that is near impossible to
attain, but much can and should be done to "knock off" the majority of
external parasites and weaken the rest.
| Consideration of biological agent disease principally
involves:
The number of parasitic and infectious species,
Their respective population, or load of agents per host, and
Their degree of infectiousness, or hyperinfectivity.
|
|
Having more types and numbers of parasitic and/or infectious (bacterial,
fungal, viral (Image: Lymphocystis on a Queen Angel) species on a host is
directly positively correlated with a loss of vitality and increased
mortality. Less well elucidated is the synergism of hyper-infection in aquarium
livestock. Once a biological agent problem "gets going" our
subjective evaluation of the condition switches from "chronic" to
"acute". An excellent though sad example is the occasional pandemic
of "ana aki" (Japanese), "hole in the side" or
furunculosis sores (Image: koi with ventral sore) associated with Aeromonas
bacteria. In "good" years, this condition appears as a
non-debilitating disfiguring open wound on one or a few coldwater fishes in a
pond. In bad years, many or all piscine livestock die within a few days to
weeks with massive internal bleeding.
|
 |
 |
What triggers this change in infectiousness? Is it a genetic nuance such as
this and that new strain of influenzas in humans? Is it somehow related to
that elusive sylph "water quality", the polyglot which is
"nutrition"? Poor development or a result of built-in difficulties
pre-Diaspora from the livestock’s’ common origins, i.e. a genetic
"time-bomb"?
Do you start to see the usefulness of this "Three sets of
factors" model? All three of these sets of factors are intimately tied
together in outright determining the health of your livestock. By
investigating, testing, and acting on these parameters you can strongly tilt
the balance of health/disease in your livestock’s favor.
Let’s carry this discussion along to consider specifically what you can
do to optimize each of these three sets of factors determining livestock
health in terms of
|
Aspects of Prevention & Control:
Doing the best you can for your aquatic charges in two of the three sets of
factors listed will get you by in many if not most cases. The conscientious
aquarist will shoot for all three. This lofty goal is within your grasp. Here
is an itemization of specific actions for your edification.
|
 |
1. Initial State of Health:
Selection; a/the secret of keeping healthy livestock is no mystery
at all. You want to start with the healthiest, most likely to
flourish-in-your-care individual/s. This can be a little tricky, as wild
stocks purposely disguise any infirmity (lest predators seeking the
easiest prey consume them). How can you tell how roughly the handling and
shipping has been?
|
Appearance, behavior: Knowledge is paramount here. What does a
healthy individual look like? How does it behave? Should it be "out
and about" or is skulking in the corner ala the basses like (Images: Liopropoma, Epinephelus
merra) … natural? Is the animal
curious about its surroundings, your presence? Is its bright coloring a
warning sign that it’s been cyanided?
|
|
Source: can be extremely important; the regal angel, Pygoplites
diacanthus rarely lives collected out of the Indo-Pacific ; ones from the Red Sea are quite
hardy (Images:
from both). Likewise, here again
the example of the wrasse called the Harlequin Tuskfish. It's tough when
it hails from Australia and frail from the Philippines. Ask your dealer, or better
still check their manifest/invoice for the source of your livestock.
Captive bred and preferred-places of origin are better than cheap, sick
and soon-dead livestock.
|
Feeding: is it? Though not foolproof, the fact that a captive is
feeding is a strong indication of its viability. Sufficiently cyanided
organisms rarely eat, or if they do, perish soon afterward. A feeding
response is indicative of further adaptive behavior.
Time on Hand: how long has the specimen been there? The vast
majority (99%+) of marines and more than half of freshwater livestock is
wild-caught. Generally there is a matter of days to a couple of weeks time
between its capture and your seeing it. When do most losses occur? Right
around this time, dropping off rapidly as time goes on. When in doubt as
to a purchase, wait. Which brings us to
Purchasing Techniques:
|
a. Assessing the store, personnel: how much they know, care
and practice contributes/detracts from the health of their livestock. How do
they rate? Would you put your fishes, non-fishes in their systems? If not,
then why buy from them? (Image: Wet Pets LFS)
|
|
b. The deposit & waiting game: especially for expensive and
questionable buys, putting earnest money down to "hold" a purchase
for a few days to a couple of weeks should work out as an advantage to
everyone. You for the possibility of avoiding "anomalous loss",
and the retailer for the same, plus "free advertising" of the
livestock for future purchasers.
2. Suitability of the Environment:
Here the key words are
Optimized and Stabilized; utilizing a
|
System as large as possible,
Properly set-up
Testing/Monitoring your water quality.
Utilizing appropriate Decoration/Habitat for your livestock
beyond/beside aesthetic considerations, and carefully
|
|
Observing Your Livestock
Per their health, interaction on acclimation, introduction, feeding
and
Routine maintenance, especially frequent, partial water
changes.
|
|
Patience & Moderation (Yours):
Never to discount the human factor, you’ve got to take your time in
Initial set-up. Planning, assembling, testing all gear.
Stocking. Per a scheme built around a central theme, biotope,
and compatible livestock.
Feeding. Varied foods, assuring all are getting nutrified, not
just ingesting.
Treatments. If/when necessary, which brings us to
|
3. Presence and Degree of Pathogenicity of Disease-Causing Organisms:
Once again:
|
Knowledge and intelligence on your part are requisite. What is
the root cause of your apparent difficulty? Are you really sure you are
witnessing a biological disease agent, and not just a poor
water-quality, incomplete nutrition, anti-social reaction? How are you
going to be aware of what to do? Reading (Image48: Baensch books) on the
subjects, discourse with other hobbyists, attending shows, talks,
videos.
|
| Quarantine/Dips-baths. All new livestock should be kept apart
from established stock, out of the main-display system for a good two
weeks. For collectors, transhippers, wholesalers at least routine
dipping, preventative baths should be administered to fishes and corals
(Images49,50: brown jelly infection of coral, cut marks on a
Hemitaurichthys). If this advice is followed, medications should only be
administered within a |
| Treatment Tank. Were all this so, our hobby interest would be ten
times the size and vigor, as many fewer organisms would be unnecessarily
lost, and the hobbyist discouraged to the point of dropping out. A
separate tank with filtration, heating, a cover should be available to
run in tandem with your main-display tank(s). |
| Treatments themselves are/should be a last resort. Many are quite
toxic and you would be hard-pressed to find a few retailers that would
agree that more livestock is killed by disease than by treatment. You
are treating the whole system when you administer a chemical to your
livestock; even with medicated foods (Image51: Making medicated food).
There is an order of preference in treatment modes:
Biological, as in the use of cleaner shrimps and gobies
(Images52,53: shrimp & goby) in saltwater systems.
Environmental manipulation, such as lowering specific gravity
(or adding salt in freshwater systems), changing lighting, temperature…
can be done to favor the hosts (your livestock) and disfavor their
disease agents.
Chemical Treatments must involve consideration of efficacy:
effectiveness, specificity, safety, and cost-effectiveness. As you would do with your
own health or those of other humans entrusted in your care,
investigate potential treatments before administration. Don’t simply
poor such and such in on one persons say so. Most such treatments do
little good, indeed, more often cause more harm than good (Images: Dropsical goldfish, eye "fungus",
Lymphocystis).
|
|
Per the model presented here, REVIEW the three principal sets of factors that
determine the health of all systems and their sub-sets and make a concerted,
coordinated effort to disclose the root causes of a problem. Seek to cure or
ameliorate those conditions, only lastly resorting to outright chemical
treatments; and then only knowing what you’re treating for and how.
|
Bibliography/Further Reading:
Fenner, Bob & Dave Huie. 1987. A livestock treatment system. FAMA 1/87.
Fenner, Bob. 1989. Parasitic diseases of cultured fishes: methods of their
prevention and treatment. FAMA 10/89
Fenner, Bob 1992. Copper poisoning. FAMA 3/92.
Fenner, Bob. 1993. Chlorine, chloramine poisoning; or, how I treat my
tapwater. FAMA 3/93.
Fenner, Bob 1993. An argument against "feeder" goldfish. FAMA
11/93.
Fenner, Robert 1998. Organism selection for the saltwater aquarist, pt.s 1-4.
TFH 5-8/98.
Fenner, Robert M. 1998. The Conscientious Marine Aquarist; A Commonsense
Handbook for Successful Saltwater Hobbyists. Microcosm, VT. 432pp.
Guerri, Elmer A. 1998. It’s the stress; using the techniques of
professional aquarists. AFM 3,4/98.
Halver, J.E. (ed.). 1989. Fish Nutrition. Academic Press, London. 798pp.
Hiatt, Snake. 1998. Major, macro, micronutrients. TFH 7/98
Johnson, Erik L. 1993. The insidious threat of stray voltage. TFH 7/93.
Noga, Edward J. 1996. Fish Disease, Diagnosis and Treatment. Mosby-Year Book
Inc., St. Louis. 367pp.
Steffens, W. 1989. Principles of Fish Nutrition. Ellis Horwood, Chichester,
UK. 384pp.
Watson, Thomas T. 1983. An ounce of prevention. TFH 9/83.
| |
|
