dave w

At your marina? You party for 4 days, spill every imaginable biological waste product into the water to be ingested by clams and amphipods, then harvest the bloom of sea critters for your aquarium? Recycling at its best. Everyone has their own way of going green.

I could meet you near I-66. On Thursday night I'm staying late for dinner but Friday would be a good day to carpool.

Paul, are you coming down to MACNA?

Being from Manassas in 1968 when it was literally a one stoplight town, I resemble that remark.

I drove in today but would be happy to carpool with someone Thursday and Friday. If you're in Fairfax County and want to carpool, let me know.

Thanks to DaveS for running a tight ship and all of Tom's crew for getting the tables loaded with swag to make it easy for us. We had 4 assembly lines going at the same time and lots of volunteers to pack the bags. I had to leave with my boys at 3:15 before the child labor law enforcement inspector showed up. See you tomorrow or Thursday.

Sorry I got this message late, it is now 9:00 p.m. Monday. Would have loved to help if I'd seen it a couple days ago and could have made a plan.

I'm going to help stuff swag bags tomorrow (Tuesday) from noon for several hours, but then leave before rush hour. If anyone wants to carpool instead of take Metro, we can split the parking fees at the hotel. Just respond to this post or send me a message, I'll check and get right back to you. I can either come up I-95 from the Lorton exit or I-66 from the Fairfax exits.

I'm going to help with the swag bag packing Tuesday afternoon, starting around 1:00. I can only help for a few hours. If anyone wants to carpool and split the hotel parking fee instead of taking Metro, I'll be happy to drive. Just let me know before late morning tomorrow, Tuesday. I'm on the Rt. 95 corridor near Lorton and Woodbridge, but could also go via Fairfax and I-66 as easily.

How do you get $19 parking? Welcome to the big city. They'd charge an arm and a leg if there were an aftermarket for them.

I don't see it a hijack but it's not my thread. Paul would be the authority on that and he appears too easygoing to take offense. Why not just pick up a bottle of 5 cent gelatin capsules from the local Vitamin Shoppe or GNC, break one open and add 10 billion probiotic bacteria into whatever type of food you offer? I wouldn't recommend mixing the bacterial powder with flake food, but any wet mix should be fine. Typically these pills have ten or a dozen different types of probiotic bacteria. Unless Larry has done research to isolate just one or two types of the most effective probiotic bacteria (maybe likely that he has already done that), a general mix of a dozen types of bacteria certainly should not do any harm, should it? All dozen types in the pill are advertised to be probiotic, but sometimes health food supplements aren't always as effective as they are advertised to be. I just have no clue whether 2 or 3 specific types are more effective than the other 7 or 8 types in the pill.

Regarding the 8 year old boys, yes I can keep them on track. The part about them setting fire to the hotel was just a joke. See you in the afternoon.

Can I bring along a couple of 8 yr old boys? I.E. is the hotel's fire insurance current?

I am not an expert in the advice field but I admire the way you're going about it. I'd advertise your entire setup here and get the word out for the next couple of months. I'd like to think you can sell it all together for a reasonable discount to a new aquarist. At least the WAMAS people will spread the word about what you have, which is half the battle. However I think most people get into the hobby with a smaller tank and small budget, then let it grow over time. If you have a larger tank full of stuff, I think it's more likely that your buyer will be an existing member or hobbyist who sees an opportunity to move up. I hope you get a good price and your donation goes toward making a difference in the world's dying reefs.

I love your RO and water mixing tanks.

I would guess that it would do just fine if your homebrew turns out well. I wouldn't know for sure unless I sampled a mug of your beer. For that matter, I wonder if anyone has tried the carbonic acid of coca cola? I think the pH of that is around 3, although the sugar would make things sticky it could always be rinsed afterwards.

When you clean your containers, use an acid wash on them for better sterility. Especially if they are glass.

Paul, as you can tell I agree with most of what you say and my experience of most WAMAS people is that we are open to hear from those with much more experience than we have. I have no doubt that enriched live food will go a long way toward keeping marine fish healthy and able to fight off disease. In particular I love blackworms. Back in the mid 1980's my Block Island seahorse friend (Walt, he says he's talked with you a bunch of times) helped me build a 250 gallon fiberglass and plywood tank in his woodshed. I put in some harems of pygmy angels and they just did so, so, nothing special. Then one day I started feeding them live blackworms and within weeks they got fatter and started nightly spawning. Without doubt, something in those blackworms induced the angels to spawn. Maybe the fat calories, maybe bacteria or enzymes from the gut, who knows? But it worked. I would guess that your buckets full of amphipods have the same effect. Down here in the Chesapeake we have a lot of grass shrimp and if you have a buddy and a net you can collect hundreds in a short period of time. I haven't done it yet, but would like to do that when I get some more tanks going. And judging by the picture of your granddaughter, it looks like you have already been abandoned in a boat with a supermodel. She sure is a cutie!

Paul, as you know, the aquarium industry would make very little money with your natural method, so there is nobody in the industry to advertise or push it. It's a little like algae scrubbers. Many years ago Dr. Adey introduced them but they never took off because there wasn't an industry incentive to push it. Only in recent years has someone (I think his screen name is SDguy) been pushing the concept on forums again and it's becoming more popular. I agree that some forum people would strongly disagree with you because your method flies in the face of what they have trained on. But your 43 years of success would cause most people to refrain from criticism and at least give it serious thought. Even the most narrow minded have respect for an elder statesman like you. Personally, I agree with what you say. But to use the human analogy again, I go the natural way in my own health right up to the point that I feel REALLY sick with something and then I get straight to the doctor for emergency treatment. I know that the antivirals and antibiotics the doc prescribes will throw my system out of whack for a while, but at that point even an over-treatment is probably better than the alternative. Relating this analogy to aquariums, I think there are good reasons to stay with your natural method right up to the point that one day you (might) see ich appear on your fish and realize that an emergency is about to happen, then go the "scorched earth" method by treating every fish. In your personal experience you would say that in a natural system this wouldn't happen, and I hope you're right. But in the back of my mind I would still be prepared for an emergency. I just can't help but think that our tanks are so much more crowded than the ocean, and these loaded ecosystems are ripe for an ectoparasite to get out of hand. Another challenge to your method is the small sample size. Even with your experience, you are the only one (or one of the few) that have tried and succeeded with this method. More timid people like me would have an easier time going natural if someone like Sanjay at Penn State ran a controlled experiment with a number of identical natural tanks, then introduced crypto/ich laden fish to see if the healthy tank inhabitants make it. Although I'm not saying I don't trust your experience, I would feel more comfortable after such an experiment. It's possible that your high level of knowledge is what's keeping your tank healthy more than the natural method. One lesson I learned from reading Mike Paletta's book on ultimate aquariums -- he found a wide range of methods that were successful but every great tank had in common the fact that it's keeper was extremely smart and dedicated. Your points make a great deal of sense. It's logical that natural systems keep healthier fish and should better fight off normal diseases and parasites. With my next QT system I will try to cover both bases by keeping fish in an isolated natural tank until they eat well, but still be able to remove them for special drug treatments if it looks like they need it. You can call me a chicken and you'll probably be right. But while I like everything that you say I still have a hard time overcoming the fear of a full blown outbreak of ich.

I think this is a pretty thorough list of instructions. However may I make a recommendation? To most people, phytoplankton is synonymous with green nannochloropsis. Please don't grow nanno except as a small additive to a higher quality algae. Nanno is a "weed" phyto that grows quickly because it doesn't synthesize it's own vitamins or many complex fats. It is cheap to add vitamins but nanno is still a relatively non-nutritious phyto and few organisms grow on it (artemia and rotifers are two that do, but even their nutritive quality is not strong unless enriched by better food). On the other hand, Isochrysis is a relatively high quality phyto. It is brown instead of the green nanno. Think of the nutrition difference between the crabgrass in your lawn (0% protein) as compared to alfalfa in a farmer's field (15% protein) if it helps illustrate the difference. Generally, plants are good at creating lipids (fats) but poor at creating vitamins like thiamine and niacin. On the other hand, bacteria (like yeasts) are good at creating things like B vitamins but poor at creating fats. So a combination of the two is necessary for nutrition, just as a combination of different phytos is better than one. But if you have to start with one, don't pick nanno. Pick Iso, even though it is harder to culture. People often say that both nanno and Iso are needed because they supply different types of fats (DHA and EPA) which is correct, but that is true only to a small extent. Larvae do need both types of fats but the ones in nanno are not critical. The fats (HUFAs) in the brown ISO are critical fats. I'd say which fat is supplied by which phyto but I always forget which one has the DHA and which one has the EPA! I hope that makes things more clear rather than too much data that make things more muddy. But different alga have different fatty acid profiles. It is OK to mix in a little crabgrass with a main diet of alfalfa, but remember the relative importance of the two algas.

I've followed all your threads closely. Your methods are common sense, yet unconventional. It's hard to stay away from your posts and your sense of humor. However in an effort to try and extend the discussion a bit, can I ask you things from another angle? I think we all generally agree that probiotics are good, but which ones? I've heard good things about alicium, although I'm probably spelling it incorrectly. It is isolated from the garlic family (allium is a common garden flower related to garlic and onions). But there are dozens of probiotics out there and I have no idea which ones work best for fish. Most of the supplements are cheap and only small amounts are needed, so maybe it would be best to go to a health food store and buy a dozen different types. Would you agree? I'd also like your opinion of the best way to get the probiotics to the fish. I can think of two options. First, break open the little capsules and mix the powder directly into your DIY frozen food mash. Second, add a fine powder to your brine shrimp tank or a sinking pellet to your blackworm tray and pack them before feeding to your fish. I would guess that both methods could work. When I look up probiotics on the internet I see how innacurate the industry is. Here is a quote from a company that tested the top 30 probiotics "The tested products recorded large label claim variances, averaging viable bacteria at 206% off their stated label claims. 21 of 30 products recorded total viable bacteria at least 50% off their label claims, 7 products measured probiotic bacteria at least 100% off their claims, and 2 products exceeded a 1000% label claim variance. " It is probably unavoidable to see such wide variation. Many "health food" fads are based on folk remedies with weaker links to human health than to corporate profits. I remember 20 years ago shark cartilage was put in pills and sold by the millions. The theory was that sharks never got cancer so if you took shark cartilage pills it would magically help your cancer prevention. More recently, POM and other drinks came out with the rumor that their antioxidants have cancer prevention properties. The products earn many millions for the big food companies but there is a lag of a few years before the anticancer rumors are completely refuted. About the same amount of time to expose that things labelled as pomegranite/blueberry juice have only something like 3% of pomegranite and blueberry juice, the rest is pear and grape juice. I think there was a recent Supreme Court case about this type of labelling. OK, so I digress. To get back to the point Paul, would you recommend any specific probiotics or as a general rule mix in a bit of everything?

I like your discussion of ideas because your viewpoint is valid and not many people approach holistic fish health. The fish industry tends to be oriented toward solutions that feed money into the business (expensive new types of filters, RO/DI water, denitrators, etc). But you and I are old timers and we remember when it was even worse. I think in the 1990's or so it was recommended to sterilize and UV the water with a large array of technology. Thank goodness that live rock and bright lighting and live corals have taken over the industry in the last 15 years. And with this revolution the fish have changed to -- from dinner plate sized beauties swimming through dead coral skeletons to what we have now -- small, colorful fish that are reef compatible. Your holistic approach doesn't need a lot of expensive equipment so it probably doesn't have a proponent out there advertising in magazines. But it is a good viewpoint.

I think your theory has a lot going for it, given the amount of knowledge and research on fish diseases out there. I'm no expert on diseases because I could never afford those $300 books that are written for the aquaculture community, but it only makes sense that in a balanced environment the beneficial bacteria almost always out-compete the bad bacteria. At first I was thrown off by your assertion that QT was not good for fish, but then I realized that it is the sterile foods in a sterile environment which you put down and not the QT itself. I think your argument that if live foods are given throughout QT the fish will be more healthy and that also makes good sense. I remember something that Copps kept stressing about QT: that it wasn't necessarily meant to drug up the fish, but more to get the fish used to a new environment, to get it started eating again, and fatten it up so it can take the stress of the display tank when finally introduced. That makes good sense too. However I am a little too timid to go to the extent of "exposing fish to ectoparasites in order to build up their resistance". I'm not trying to quote you exactly because you didn't say exactly that. But in such a small and closed environment as an aquarium, with high fish load and nutrient levels, I'd be reluctant to deliberately expose fish to any of the diseases. I just don't feel comfortable yet with that idea. I may need a little more time, like your 43 years. I once explained a similar theory to my father about food. I sometimes deliberately ate food that was old on the theory that sterile food made people less healthy than keeping a variety of bacteria in the stomach, even up to the point that the body rejected the bad food. My father said "you had me---right up to the bit about food poisoning!". I guess I'm just saying that to me there's too fine a line between balancing the fish's immunity and possibly allowing ectoparasites to run rampant in such a small system.

DaveS, Having given this a bit of thought, I think I should just be available to help at MACNA all day every day that your committee needs help. For that matter, if you need another person on the committee doing legwork in the last month, please count me in on that, too. Just let me know what to do.

Get your rotifers from ebay and some rotifer food. Then you can stop making first level mistakes and start making second level mistakes! But soon enough it will work out for you. I also have a teenage daughter and would love to find mutual interests to get her off the iphone.