Thanks for the link to the ANGFA site. It looks like it will be impressive
work, though I haven't been able to access any of the information you
referred to. I'll keep trying.
Chris
_____
From: r_m_l at yahoogroups.com [r_m_l at yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Dave
Wilson
Sent: Tuesday, September 06, 2005 5:18 PM
To: r_m_l at yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [RML] Myco inquiry
Hello Chris,
When collecting rainbows it becomes obvious that some like it down on the
floodplain billabong that tend to be heavily planted with sometimes very low
oxygen levels and others like fast flowing well oxygenated waters. I can
only give observations about the fish here in the NT but there are about a
dozen species of rainbows. ANGFA members have started a database
accessible from the ANGFA web site http://www.angfa.org.au it is only
early days yet but is expanding. There is information about water quality
for many species from many different locations. It will give you an idea
of what north Australian species do well in the heavily planted billabongs
and which ones are more suited to high oxygen fast flowing shaded creeks.
Steve Brooks and I surveyed Wonga Creek last year, the results are on the
database with photos.
I have been sending wild caught rainbowfish to the NT Berrimah Vet labs for
examination since 1992 and to date none have come up with TB although there
are many other nasty diseases about. One lot of small fishes from Adelaide
River floodplain late in the dry season were carrying six different disease
causing organisms.
Cheers
Dave
On 7/9/05 5:03 AM, "CR Brightwell" <marinesci at verizon.net> wrote:
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]
<r_m_l at yahoogroups.com%5d> 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
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