Washing hands.
One of the most common ways that people get sick is through contact transmission of pathogens, from those that are deadly to those that only make us sick for a few days.
This is why we are always admonished to wash our hands frequently.
Bacteria are spread this way, not just from person to person but sometimes also person to fish.
As an example, Citrobacter (
http://microbewiki.kenyon.edu/index.php/Citrobacter_freundii) is a very common bacteria found in your intestines and in also the general environment, including non sterilized water supplies. Most of the time it is actually useful in the Nitrogen cycle but it is also a potentially dangerous opportunistic pathogen that is not sensitive to just any antibiotic and has become resistant to some.It is also highly resistant to salt
Your ray may be perfectly healthy in the presence of this bacteria……but…..if the ray is stressed or wounded then its immune system can be suppressed and the bacteria seizes its opportunity with sometimes catastrophic results.
Of course the biggest stress a ray will endure is shipping and it is therefore no surprise that most problems occur soon after. But shipping is not the only stress that most of our rays go through. Temperature ( as per my rant) overcrowding, over salting or over medicating and especially insufficient water changes can all promote problems. I am not saying that this particular bacteria is causing all the problems I read about on forums, but it is a good example of why “cleanliness is next to godliness”.
Vibrio Cholera (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vibrio_cholerae ) is another even more scary example, although thankfully not so frequent in the ‘West’, it has been identified in US fish tanks from fish imported from Asia.
Wash your hands both before and after messing with your fish water and both you and your fish are less likely to get sick.
...Oh..and did I mention to change water?
