Disease transmission.

This is a post I wrote a long time ago on another site. I ts might be a little dated but I taught its still has a little merit.

Hi guys.
This is just a post by me regarding my theory on Disease tramsmission.
It is not factual based and does not use any research from anybody else. It is just a theory That I came up with from my own experience and a few things that other aquarists agree on. A lot of you will be totally oposed to it, and some will take an intirely different view from mine.
Hope is enlightens some of you and gives you something to ponder.



There is a lot of debate wether diseases and bacterias are already present in fsh tanks. I don`t think its there in the water. My theory is that fish carry them to some degree. If you have a tank with established fish they will have there own diseases but are immune to them. They are not sick they just carry the disease in some form. Its like when white Europeans first went in to the Rain forests. They wiped out thousands of indigenous natives because these people had no immune system to the diseases the Europeans carried. Its the same with fish. Your fish are ok and them suddenly you put a new fish in and he gets sick. He has got a disease from your fish because he had no immune system to the diseases your fish carried.It does not always mean that the shop sold you a sick fish, the fish probably got sick because your own fish were carriers of a disease/bacterial infection. They might never get sick themselves or ever show any signs of illness.
When all the fish gets sick it can be because a new fish or stressed fish gets sick and the disease is allowed to multiply and spread. By then its too strong a dose for even normally immune strong fish to fight off.
Thats why when you buy new fish(especially discus) you qaurantine them for up to six weeks and don`t use any equipment ie. hoses algea scrappers from one tank to another.
After that period you sacrifice a discus from your own stock and put him in the quartine tank and see if any gets sick. If your own fish gets sick then all your own fish will probably get sick too and if the new fish get sick you know that they have no immunity to diseases or disease your own fish have.

Interesting article on the subject on pfk:

www.practicalfishkeeping.co.uk/pfk/pages/blog.php?blogid=22

Fair play Conor. Its about time somebody started up an Irish fish forum.
We are scattered all over the net. May it grow form strength to strength. 8)

Hi Harry,

Well, my discus have all died together the same day. Bizarre. They started swimming head down - for a day, then died all of a sudden.

Nothing new was added to the tank, although I now have tons of snails where I used to have none. I got a cutting off a friend a while back, and there were obviously egg on it.

I suspect some parasite in the snails killed them.
The thing is, all the other fish -> rummy nose tetras, spotted black plec & my ten year old female thomasi is still fine - even in the hot discus water!
www.thecichlidgallery.com/a.thomasi.htm

So a marine conversion here we come. I have no probs with the marines at all - I use the berlin method:

www.berlinmethod.com/overview.html
I need to save first, no money left

Oh, and a ton of credit goes to Darragh Sherwin for this site.
My original idea revolved around mailman type mailing lists. I even made one, but no-one was interested. It seems thats more a techie (Linux/UNIX) thing

Sounds like a virus to me. I heard of a guy who`s discus started spinning and just died. He lost all his fish.

Personally if I was to keep discus again I would have a bare tank and no plants or substrate and definitely no catfish.

Next discus I get will only be wilds.

if i was a fish i'd hate to be in a bare shiny tank .... but then again maybe id just hate to be in a tank!

Yeah, me too, I love seeing them swim around the place between the plants.

Previously I had a small hospital tank - which was bare. The fish were not the least bit bothered by the lack of decor.

Which bring me to something - the symptoms seemed to co-incide with some uneaten food which was trapped (well hidden) between the long leaves of the "floating" plants. So possibly a bacterial infection due to rotting food? But why only the discus that get sick? Why nothing else?

Why all of a sudden with barely a warning sign? Fins were all erect, and they were feeding! Bizarre. So thats me and discus over. They seem to live for 2 years at a time, then just die mysteriously. Oh well, c'est la vie.

:o

I incorrectly said Dave instead of _Darragh_ (Sherwin) above. (oops)
I have corrected the "anomalie"

Not trying to be smart in any way Conar but they could have been weak and got Columnaris and died very guickly. Weak fish seem to die very quick.

I appreciate all your suggestions guys (Harry).
freshaquarium.about.com/cs/disease/p/columnaris.htm

Hmm, those symptoms were not really present, they simply stuck their heads downwards -> one buried himself in the gravel bed! :o