T
tigerhouse
Hi Mark, your input is much appreciated.
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M: I have always been told that it was better to feed saltwater fish, shrimp and so on to freshwater fish because most saltwater pathogens and parasites cannot survive in freshwater or freshwater fish.
V: Same here. Yes, this is about pathogen transference from feed to pet. Wednesday's concern differs though, it's about nutrition health, and I don't have an answer to that that'd be grounded in science or knowledge. Anyone?
RD.
? All I can say it seems to me that fish osmoregulation is superb and the exchange of chemicals easily soluble in water, such as salt, with the environment occurs quickly and efficiently, so shedding extra salt shouldn't be a problem even long term, but again, my feelings can be naive and off mark.
M: It takes very little salt in a freshwater aquarium to act as a tonic against numerous freshwater pathogens.
V: It seems there is no concensus on this. I've read about both good (short term) and bad (long term) effects of salting water.
M: Usually feeding unstressed goldfish that are healthy and fed are fine as a feeder for your monsters.
V: Maybe. I just happened to be against this practice because of personal ethical beliefs. Lack of personal breeding pool of feeders doesn't help either.
M: As far as decor goes I have found that PVC (sinking kind) works wonders. Easy to remove, clean and non toxic.
V: PVC pipes or other decor could work indeed in general but in our case, I listed a pretty clear and strong list of cons in my second post on page 1.
M: I would agree there could be a contaminate coming in with you water. Things in the water like high levels of calcium or magnesium will slowly kill certain types of fish over time or make other fish just feel bad and other species will not be effected at all. A full chemical analysis by a lab may need to be done.
V: It has been done by a National Analytical Lab. I know exactly what it is and is not in our well water and in our 85% RO + 15% well water mix that we drink and the fish live in. It's potable, clean water.
M: As far as pathogens go you would probably be better off talking to Dr. Kyle Farmer
http://aquatactics.com
V: Thank you for this tip. Much appreciated.
M: On a side note keeping wild caught fish actually increases the wild population. When you buy wild caught fish your purchase makes money for the local populations which incentives them to make sure there is a steady supply of that fish in their local waters to collect and sell.
V: I can see how this may or may not be. People in poor countries tend not to be concerned with conservation - either they don't know better or their priority is whether their family will be fed or hungry today. For instance they continue to fish for, kill and eat critically endangered or even almost extinct fish, e.g. Mekong Giant Catfish. I appreciate your thoughts, but I side with
jjohnwm
on this one.
M: Even though you think it is overfeeding I totally disagree. You have something going on that not only killed all your bass but a bunch of other fish.
V: Yes, sure, many things are at play. In the case of our pbass, the data collected by us look undeniable to us: precisely the more a pbass overfeeds, the less it lives. Of course, there are likely other factors at play but the correlation with overfeeding as a factor is solid. I just can't build other correlations for the lack of concrete data on pathogen levels and other elusive, latent factors. For instance, I only switched to 100% NLS pellets and started presoaking thawed fish in VitaChem 2 years ago or so. Most of our pbass in the statistical pool of 14 we started keeping long before the 2 years ago and their diet wasn't balanced, I believe. So yes, there is more going on than simply overfeeding, I agree.
M: I have been going through your videos looking at your live fish and most of the fish look pretty good except for your koi. The body shape on some of the kio concerns me. Their bellies are not robust and their bodies just seem to be little elongated with wrong curvature from the mouth to the tail. My first thought is something is messing with their digestive system causing them to look the way they do. Even if you agreed with me I am just not sure how you would proceed. You could quarantine a couple fish in different tanks and treat them but even if you cured them I am not sure they would regain a their proper shape. I would look for a more robust belly to see if a cure was working. I am still leaning towards an internal pathogen/parasite.
V: Great observation and I'd agree with you on them, except we do have about 1/2 or more of the koi look good to my eye. About 1/2 look off one way or another. Yes, some worry me as they don't gain mass and look thin and may have an internal parasite easily. Many misshapen ones are merely due to genetics, the product of artificial breeding and not culling runts, which is the norm for the koi farming in the USA.
M: On a side note I was talking to a local water guy about an R.O. system for my tanks. He suggested a water softer before the R.O. system to increase the longevity of the R.O. membranes.
V: This was considered. To make 10,000 GPD of RO water we'd spend around $500 a month on salt alone on the pre-RO water softener. That's two new XLE-4040 membranes. It is simply not worth it - can as well buy new membranes and get more out of it $$$ that way.
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Thank you for thinking with me, Mark. Much valued.
