RE: [RML] Myco inquiry

CR Brightwell (marinesci at verizon.net)
Tue, 06 Sep 2005 15:33:51 -0400

Messages sorted by: [ date ][ thread ][ subject ][ author ]
Next message: fiestacranberry at webtv.net: "RE: [RML] Myco inquiry"
Previous message: Gary Lange: "Re: [RML] Myco inquiry"

------=_NextPart_000_004D_01C5B2F8.6296F120
Content-Type: text/plain;
charset="us-ascii"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

Thanks for taking the time to write such a lengthy response Gary, I
appreciate it. You were right, it's Tanner, not Terry, that I was referring
to; I've contacted him to inquire into the stocking of this tank. As it
sits, the tank has over 450 individual plants, including Microsorum,
Barclaya, Crypts (various types), Glossostigma, Nymphaea, Micranthemum,
Eleocharis, Aponogeton, Rotala, and Riccia. Lighting is about 3 wpg (10K
metal halides), pH is 6.7, GH and KH are approximately 4.

I didn't mean to be melodramatic re: the myco, just a victim of hearing so
many people screaming about it throughout the hobby. You would think with
the number of times I tell hobbyists to take everything they read on the web
with a grain of salt I'd know better. I work in marine aquaria daily and
often have exceedingly dry skin as a result, so being up to my arms in water
containing some degree of myco is something I want to minimize. Looks like
I'll be wearing gloves in the water.

In case you're interested, I'm looking at stocking the tank with M.
bosemani, M. lacustris, M. trifasciata (Wonga Creek and Snake Creek), M.
herbertaxelrodi, C. bleheri, and Millenium rainbows. Just saw the parva,
will add that to my list.

By the way, I'm the head of product development at Kent, so I use Botanica
on the tank! :-)

Chris

_____

From: r_m_l at yahoogroups.com [r_m_l at yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Gary
Lange
Sent: Tuesday, September 06, 2005 2:59 PM
To: r_m_l at yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [RML] Myco inquiry

I took a quick look on Aquabid and I didn't see anyone/handle or otherwise
named Terry selling rainbowfish. Tanner, Rarefish at lax has good, uncrossed
fish. He also lists a large variety of rainbowfish so you can find just
about anything you need. Buy enough and you can just request a airport to
airport shipment to lower your shipping costs. Whatever you do make sure
you pick up some M. parvas and G. doryity (Jaiguim variety) as they are very
nice and fairly new fish.

Mycobacterium problems. Myco is everywhere, it's in the dealers tank. If
your dealer brings in anything from the far east he also has the ability to
carry on the disease. The East's sloppy and crowded breeding and raising
habits plus the overuse of antibiotics has created fish that you should
really watch and quarantine for a long time. You'll see TB in tetras and
livebearers too, not just rainbowfish so if you are cutting out bows you
better avoid these too. I haven't heard of it hitting large central
american cichlids so you could always keep those in your heavily planted
tanks :-) Wouldn't that be fun!

It's how you manage Myco which will determine whether your tank will get hit
or not. If you have fish with active infections then there is a <chance>
that you can get it. If you're immuno-compromised then I wouldn't keep a
fishtank. Otherwise you really don't have a problem if you don't work in
your tank with a lot of open cuts and such. If you avoid active fish
infections you keep these odds to a minimum. You have a much better chance
of being involved in a car accident or getting lung cancer if you smoke than
you have of getting fish TB. When you're thru with playing in your tank,
don't forget to wash your hands with soap and water, something you should be
doing anyway.

Avoiding fish TB in your tanks. There has been a lot of misinformation on
the subject of TB and rainbowfish, on this list and elsewhere. It seems
that he who shouts the loudest gets heard the most on the internet and
sometimes on this mail list. If you want to take that advice go ahead, but
you'd be better off letting those cichlids munch on your plants instead. I
think that someone like myself who has been constantly keeping rainbowfish
for 20 plus years now, now at 80+ tanks, I probably have a little bit more
experience with the subject and how to avoid TB or how to control TB.

First of all, guarantine any fish that you want to add to your tank for
about 30 days. Even fish that seem clean could develop TB due to the stress
in shipping. I think I would also wash any plants well and put them in a
quarantine tank for at least a week. I know sometimes that it's difficult
to set up a Q tank that will keep plants alive w/o causing algae problems.
Delicate plants can sometimes have a lot of problems. That's a start but
not necessarily the end to avoid TB in the first place. Once you have the
fish in place you need to avoid the "stressors of rainbows". Stress factors
(no particular order) include: #1 Too high of a temperature - keep it under
82, 77-79 is great. #2 Avoid pH swings - don't overuse CO2 in the planted
tank. If you have a low buffering capacity (< 3KH) then buffer your water
with bicarb or something if you want to use CO2. Keep your CO2 in a
moderate range instead of adding the maximum amount. Bows use a lot of O2
and if you really push it you can stress them. Remember the higher the
temp, the more O2 needed to keep the same amount of mass swimming forward.
#3 and really the most important: perform Quality water changes. The
editor of TFH has a nifty little talk that he does on water changes. Just
going thru the math with his Excell tables shows that really anything less
than a 50% water change will eventually lead to the buildup of waste and
"stuff" in the aquarium. We can measure some of that "stuff" like nitrates,
which are bad for bows. My "scientific" observation for this is when my pH
is fine and everything else seems fine but my nitrates are high my fish
don't seem as happy or healthy. When I drop that nitrate load with several
back to back large water changes then they are much healthier and happier.
You don't have to observe that too many times to know that the quality of
life for the fish has improved. There may be other factors and other
unmeasureable waste buildups that we can't measure easily that also stress
them. You know almost every stream I saw in New Guinea and even the two
trips I made to Australia, the water was free flowing and the fish were
getting 1,000 % + water changes per minute! Now we, who have been keeping
bows for awhile know that aussie fish seem a tad more resistant to TB than
the NG fish. Maybe that's because there is a more constant water flow in
the NG streams and those fish are less able to cope with the stress of poor
water quality. I think it's hilarious that people try to promote "natural"
as a method where they perform little or no water changes when mother nature
herself performs massive water changes that few of us could or ever want to
duplicate.

I do keep rainbowfish in a large (7' - 210 gallon) planted, highly lit (3
watts/gallon PC) + CO2 tank. I do have active growth on my Rotala macrandra
and my Didiplis diandra so my tank actively grows reasonably difficult
plants and isn't just a monoculture of Val, amazon swords and java fern.
When you hear about people performing less than optimal water changes and
claiming great results, ask and see if they actually grow any difficult
plants or whether their methods merely promote the growth of the "weedy"
plants. I do add Seachem's phosphate, and N and potassium and Tropica
Master Grow to put on a real show of plant growth. Even w/o over doing the
CO2 my plants do give off a lot of O2 and the fish are healthy. By avoiding
stress factors your rainbowfish can naturally resist any myco that they
might come in contact with. To break down a tank, bleach and clean tank and
gravel to remove myco is really just wishful thinking. You eventually have
to add back plants and other fish. You can avoid sick fish or potential TB
carrying plant (on the surface of the leaves, not implying that the
bacterium is growing on the plant) but you can never know for sure. So
avoid stressing the fish and you'll avoid TB.

Gary Lange

CR Brightwell <marinesci at verizon.net> wrote:

Hi All - I have a general question about myco in rainbows. I'm setting up a
heavily-planted 180 gallon tank and would love to stock it with rainbows,
but I must admit to some degree of apprehension because of the recent
chatter about this deadly disease. In short, I'll have my hands in the tank
quite a bit for pruning so I don't want to be exposed to the disease myself,
and I don't want to invest considerable money in the fish if the scenario is
that if one gets it, the rest are likely to die. Also, the prospects of
having to tear the tank apart and bleach it after I've worked so hard to get
it into order are not welcome. Any thoughts? FWIW, I was considering
getting my fish from Terry (aquabid).

Thanks for your time and consideration.

Chris

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
http://mail.yahoo.com

SPONSORED LINKS

Fish
<http://groups.yahoo.com/gads?t=ms&k=Fish+ponds&w1=Fish+ponds&c=1&s=16&.sig=
gnlnAj8mwlyC_M-tkOM67A> ponds

_____

YAHOO! GROUPS LINKS

* Visit your group "r_m_l <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/r_m_l> " on
the web.

* To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
r_m_l-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com
<r_m_l-unsubscribe at yahoogroups.com?subject=Unsubscribe>

* Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo!
<http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/> Terms of Service.

_____

------=_NextPart_000_004D_01C5B2F8.6296F120
Content-Type: text/html; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

<head>
<meta http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=us-ascii">
<meta name=Generator content="Microsoft Word 11 (filtered medium)">
<o:SmartTagType
namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" name="country-region"/>
<o:SmartTagType namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags"
name="City"/>
<o:SmartTagType namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags"
name="place"/>
<o:SmartTagType namespaceuri="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags"
name="PersonName"/>

<style>

</style>

</head>

Thanks
for taking the time to write such a lengthy response <st1:City w:st="on"><st1:place
w:st="on">Gary</st1:place></st1:City>, I appreciate it.  You were right,
it’s Tanner, not Terry, that I was referring to; I’ve contacted him
to inquire into the stocking of this tank.  As it sits, the tank has over
450 individual plants, including Microsorum, Barclaya, Crypts (various types),
Glossostigma, Nymphaea, Micranthemum, Eleocharis, Aponogeton, Rotala, and
Riccia.  Lighting is about 3 wpg (10K metal halides), pH is 6.7, GH and KH
are approximately 4.<o:p></o:p>

<o:p> </o:p>

I didn’t
mean to be melodramatic re: the myco, just a victim of hearing so many people
screaming about it throughout the hobby.  You would think with the number
of times I tell hobbyists to take everything they read on the web with a grain
of salt I’d know better.  I work in marine aquaria daily and often
have exceedingly dry skin as a result, so being up to my arms in water containing
some degree of myco is something I want to minimize.  Looks like I’ll
be wearing gloves in the water.<o:p></o:p>

<o:p> </o:p>

In
case you’re interested, I’m looking at stocking the tank with M. bosemani,
M. lacustris, M. trifasciata (Wonga Creek and Snake Creek), M. herbertaxelrodi,
C. bleheri, and Millenium rainbows.  Just saw the parva, will add that to
my list.<o:p></o:p>

<o:p> </o:p>

By
the way, I’m the head of product development at <st1:country-region
w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Kent</st1:place></st1:country-region>, so I use
Botanica on the tank! J<o:p></o:p>

<o:p> </o:p>

Chris<o:p></o:p>

<o:p> </o:p>

<div>

</div>

From: <st1:PersonName
w:st="on">r_m_l at yahoogroups.com</st1:PersonName> [<st1:PersonName w:st="on">r_m_l at yahoogroups.com</st1:PersonName>]
On Behalf Of Gary Lange 
Sent: Tuesday, September 06, 2005
2:59 PM 
To: <st1:PersonName w:st="on">r_m_l at yahoogroups.com</st1:PersonName> 
Subject: Re: [RML] Myco inquiry<o:p></o:p>

</div>

<o:p> </o:p>

<div>

I took a quick look on Aquabid and I didn't see anyone/handle or
otherwise named Terry selling rainbowfish.  Tanner, <a
href="Rarefish at lax">Rarefish at lax</a> has good, uncrossed fish.  He
also lists a large variety of rainbowfish so you can find just about anything
you need.  Buy enough and you can just request a airport to airport
shipment to lower your shipping costs.  Whatever you do make sure you pick
up some M. parvas and G. doryity (Jaiguim variety) as they are very nice and
fairly new fish.  <o:p></o:p>

</div>

<div>

<o:p></o:p>

</div>

<div>

Mycobacterium problems.  Myco is everywhere, it's in the dealers tank. 
If your dealer brings in anything from the far east he also has the ability to
carry on the disease.  The East's sloppy and crowded breeding and
raising habits plus the overuse of antibiotics has created fish that you should
really watch and quarantine for a long time.  You'll see TB in tetras
and livebearers too, not just rainbowfish so if you are cutting out bows you
better avoid these too.  I haven't heard of it hitting large central
american cichlids so you could always keep those in your heavily planted tanks
:-)  Wouldn't that be fun!  <o:p></o:p>

</div>

<div>

<o:p></o:p>

</div>

<div>

It's how you manage Myco which will determine whether your tank
will get hit or not.  If you have fish with active infections then there
is a <chance> that you can get it.  If you're immuno-compromised
then I wouldn't keep a fishtank.  Otherwise you really don't have a
problem if you don't work in your tank with a lot of open cuts and such. 
If you avoid active fish infections you keep these odds to a minimum.  You
have a much better chance of being involved in a car accident or getting lung
cancer if you smoke than you have of getting fish TB.  When you're thru
with playing in your tank, don't forget to wash your hands with soap and water,
something you should be doing anyway.  <o:p></o:p>

</div>

<div>

<o:p></o:p>

</div>

<div>

Avoiding fish TB in your tanks.  There has been a lot of
misinformation on the subject of TB and rainbowfish, on this list and
elsewhere.  It seems that he who shouts the loudest gets heard the most on
the internet and sometimes on this mail list.  If you want to take that
advice go ahead, but you'd be better off letting those cichlids munch on your
plants instead.  I think that someone like myself who has been constantly
keeping rainbowfish for 20 plus years now, now at 80+ tanks, I probably have a
little bit more experience with the subject and how to avoid TB or how to
control TB.  <o:p></o:p>

</div>

<div>

<o:p></o:p>

</div>

<div>

First of all, guarantine any fish that you want to add to your
tank for about 30 days.  Even fish that seem clean could develop TB due to
the stress in shipping.  I think I would also wash any plants well and put
them in a quarantine tank for at least a week.  I know sometimes that it's
difficult to set up a Q tank that will keep plants alive w/o causing algae
problems.  Delicate plants can sometimes have a lot of problems. 
That's a start but not necessarily the end to avoid TB in the first
place.  Once you have the fish in place you need to avoid the
"stressors of rainbows".  Stress factors (no particular order)
include:  #1 Too high of a temperature - keep it under 82, 77-79 is
great. #2 Avoid pH swings - don't overuse CO2 in the planted tank.  If you
have a low buffering capacity (< 3KH) then buffer your water with bicarb or
something if you want to use CO2.  Keep your CO2 in a moderate range
instead of adding the maximum amount.  Bows use a lot of O2 and if you
really push it you can stress them.  Remember the higher the temp, the
more O2 needed to keep the same amount of mass swimming forward.  #3 and
really the most important:  perform Quality water changes.  The
editor of TFH has a nifty little talk that he does on water changes.  Just
going thru the math with his Excell tables shows that really anything less than
a 50% water change will eventually lead to the buildup of waste and
"stuff" in the aquarium.  We can measure some of that
"stuff" like nitrates, which are bad for bows.  My
"scientific" observation for this is when my pH is fine and
everything else seems fine but my nitrates are high my fish don't seem as happy
or healthy.  When I drop that nitrate load with several back to back large
water changes then they are much healthier and happier.  You don't have to
observe that too many times to know that the quality of life for the fish has
improved.  There may be other factors and other unmeasureable waste
buildups that we can't measure easily that also stress them.  You know
almost every stream I saw in New Guinea and even the two trips I made to
Australia, the water was free flowing and the fish were getting 1,000 % + water
changes per minute!  Now we, who have been keeping bows for awhile know
that aussie fish seem a tad more resistant to TB than the NG fish.  Maybe
that's because there is a more constant water flow in the NG streams and those
fish are less able to cope with the stress of poor water quality.  I think
it's hilarious that people try to promote "natural" as a method where
they perform little or no water changes when mother nature herself
performs massive water changes that few of us could  or ever want to
duplicate.  <o:p></o:p>

</div>

<div>

<o:p></o:p>

</div>

<div>

I do keep rainbowfish in a large (7' -  210 gallon) planted, highly
lit (3 watts/gallon PC) + CO2 tank.  I do have active growth on my Rotala
macrandra and my Didiplis diandra so my tank actively grows reasonably
difficult plants and isn't just a monoculture of Val, amazon swords and java
fern.  When you hear about people performing less than optimal water
changes and claiming great results, ask and see if they actually grow any
difficult plants or whether their methods merely promote the growth of the
"weedy" plants.  I do add Seachem's phosphate, and N and
potassium and Tropica Master Grow to put on a real show of plant growth. 
Even w/o over doing the CO2 my plants do give off a lot of O2 and the fish are
healthy.  By avoiding stress factors your rainbowfish can naturally resist
any myco that they might come in contact with.  To break down a tank,
bleach and clean tank and gravel to remove myco is really just wishful
thinking.  You eventually have to add back plants and other fish. 
You can avoid sick fish or potential TB carrying plant (on the surface of the
leaves, not implying that the bacterium is growing on the plant) but you can
never know for sure.  So avoid stressing the fish and you'll avoid
TB.  <o:p></o:p>

</div>

<div>

<o:p></o:p>

</div>

<div>

Gary Lange 
 
CR Brightwell
<marinesci at verizon.net> wrote:<o:p></o:p>

</div>

Hi All – I have a general
question about myco in rainbows.  I’m setting up a heavily-planted
180 gallon tank and would love to stock it with rainbows, but I must admit to
some degree of apprehension because of the recent chatter about this deadly
disease. In short, I’ll have my hands in the tank quite a bit for pruning
so I don’t want to be exposed to the disease myself, and I don’t
want to invest considerable money in the fish if the scenario is that if one
gets it, the rest are likely to die.  Also, the prospects of having to
tear the tank apart and bleach it after I’ve worked so hard to get it
into order are not welcome.  Any thoughts?  FWIW, I was considering
getting my fish from Terry (aquabid).<o:p></o:p>

<o:p> </o:p>

Thanks for your time and
consideration…<o:p></o:p>

<o:p> </o:p>

Chris<o:p></o:p>

<o:p> </o:p>

<o:p> </o:p>

<o:p> </o:p>

</blockquote>

__________________________________________________ 
Do You Yahoo!? 
Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com <o:p></o:p>

</body>

------=_NextPart_000_004D_01C5B2F8.6296F120--

Next message: fiestacranberry at webtv.net: "RE: [RML] Myco inquiry"
Previous message: Gary Lange: "Re: [RML] Myco inquiry"