- Today, the eradication method of parasites.
What does it actually take to achieve this?
Today's video, you will be able to decide
is this for you?
Starting with number one,
this actually needs to be done from day one.
- Yeah, and that doesn't necessarily mean
that you gotta tear down the tank and restart it.
You can actually pull the fish out,
and if we leave it fallow for six to 11 weeks,
you can actually just start over as if it was day one.
- The important part here is if you're going to say
I am not going to do either one of those things,
no matter what you say, you can check out right now,
and watch the next video on how do I manage
the fact that they're either gonna be in there,
or most likely will be in there.
Number two, you are going to perform a form of quarantine
on all of the fish.
- Yeah, you know, the process of doing it,
it's either gonna be a medicated QT in a tank like this,
or there's another one that you could do
with the tank transfer.
But either way, it's gonna involve some sort of medications.
With tank transfer, you're likely gonna be
doing medicated dips, and then medicated quarantine tank
where it's actually set up.
You won't have to do as many dips,
but we will be doing them as well.
But it's gonna be a little bit more all-encompassing.
- We're definitely not doing observation here.
We are going to assume that all of these fish
have parasites, and we're gonna get them off.
Number three, you're gonna have to fallow QT
all the coral that goes into it if it's a reef tank as well.
What does it mean?
- So that means you're gonna set up a separate tank
that's just for coral, no fish.
Ideally, you're gonna leave the coral in there
for 76 days.
There's a little bit of a gray area
where you can put them in at different times,
if you're gonna rinse the ones,
and keep track of which ones went in when,
but best practice is definitely just to do a batch 76 days,
do another batch 76 days, and so on and so forth.
- Eradication takes a totally different level
of attention to detail.
The best practice here is what you should follow
when you're doing eradication,
which means 76 days, put the coral in there,
let it sit there the whole time.
It will effectively starve off.
Don't add more coral in the middle,
or it will reset that timer as part of best practice.
Number four, the story is building.
You have to fallow QT 76 days every last snail,
every last crab, every last shrimp.
- Yeah you know, unfortunately all those things
can still carry fish parasites, particularly ich.
The assisted stage of it,
it can live on the carapace of all those crustaceans,
and it's just like adding a piece of rock,
or a frag plug, or anything like that.
- Number five, this might be getting kind of old,
but you're gonna have to QT every last drop of water.
No drops of water can transfer from one tank to another.
- Yeah, I mean the thing that I always say
is if it's wet, it needs to be quarantined,
or in some way prevented from cross-contaminating.
One of the things I actually like to do
is once I take a fish from QT,
I'll put it into a separate bath,
just for five, 10 minutes,
rinse it in between to mitigate that amount
of water transfer.
- Yeah, I mean it's so easy to mess this part up.
You put your hand in something.
You get a text from your buddy,
and then you put your hand in the other,
and you forgot.
Right?
So you just have to follow this at every last stage,
best practice is every last drop of water.
Number six, the gold standard man is tough.
The system actually has to be six to 10 feet
from any other system.
- Yeah, you know unfortunately the free swimming
stage of the parasites, they're incredibly, incredibly small
which means they can actually aerosolize
and actually move through the air to another tank.
Another great thing to do is maybe keep it
in a separate room, because I can't tell you
how many times I've been doing a water change,
or moving a fish, and the fish is splashing,
flinging water across the room.
Something to think about.
- Yeah, so six feet if you have almost no air movement
in the room, 10 feet is suggested if you have--
- A blowing fan or something.
- A fan in there, yeah.
But yeah, I mean five micron is like dust.
It will aerosolize and can travel.
So yeah.
It can't be within six to 10 feet
of any other system that has fish in it.
Number seven, all that said,
this is actually really easy for a single fish-only tank.
You have one fish-only tank in your house,
there's no reason not to do this.
- Yeah, you know there's a lot less opportunities
for transmission, not doing inverts,
not doing the corals.
It's really just QT the fish,
and then when you're bringing them
from QT to the display tank,
then you rinse them off before they go in there,
and it should be pretty straightforward from there.
- Yeah, I mean you don't have all the complications
of corals, and the desire to add another coral,
and another day to you went to your favorite
Reef-A-Palooza, came home with four corals.
You don't have all those complications,
and in fact, if I want to add another fish,
man, all I gotta do is set up another one of these
small quarantine tanks, do the process,
and I can add it in a few weeks.
There's no reason not to do this
if you have a single fish-only tank in the house,
it's absolutely possible, totally reasonable to do.
Number eight, for a reef tank, you are a rare bird
if you choose this method, man,
because it takes a lot of work.
I mean, to do it perfectly all the time for years,
every last coral that goes into the tank,
this is a difficult commitment to make.
- Yeah, I mean the easy way to go about it
is source coral, where they have them
in fish-less systems.
A lot of times when corals are coming in
they go to wholesalers that don't sell fish.
Or get them from places that farm the coral,
and the fish that went into those systems
weren't quarantined properly first.
Those are all types of things you can ask your retailer
before you buy.
- To be honest, I haven't ever seen anybody
that has marketed this as such,
and if they did it, they would probably market it.
- It's a new avenue.
- Yeah, but if this was in a farm
that didn't have any fish,
and it was just coral in there,
I would market the hell out of this,
because this is perfect for the person
that wants to practice eradication,
wants a source of sustainable coral
that also doesn't have parasites on it
guaranteed because there's no fish in this facility.
Otherwise, you are going to quarantine every last coral
from here all the way on out.
There are absolutely people that do it.
I will say, though, that a lot of the people that do this
do it for other reasons as well,
meaning they don't want little red bugs in the tank,
they don't want coral parasites, they don't want nudies--
- Aptasia.
- They don't want aptasia.
There are other reasons to do this,
but this is an exercise of extreme patience,
and it is going to be rare.
- Yeah.
- Number nine, this is a sad, sad moment.
It's even if you make it through all that
practicing eradication, you should also practice
parasite management, because all of this is imperfect.
- Yeah, you know, again, we're dealing with live things,
and it's just impossible to predict
how they're gonna behave,
how they could potentially get transmitted.
I mean, this could be something so simple
as you touched your quarantine tank
in the morning, and then you went out for lunch,
you went and did some other things,
and then you put that same tank, or same arm,
or hand, into that tank without washing it first.
It's just, there's so many possibilities for exposure.
It's just.
- That really does mean, through all that effort,
you said this is for me.
I can do this.
We have to accept that we're all human,
and we all make mistakes,
and you really never know if even somebody else
in the household could have touched something,
and then touched another thing.
- Really a good method for getting rid of that problem
of oh, I put my hand in that tank.
Use gloves.
They actually do make disposable gloves
that go all the way up to your shoulder.
It's an easy fix.
- I find gloves actually are a reminder
of don't do anything.
But in that case, you still want to practice
management, meaning diet, parasite population control,
a bunch of other things that we'll hit on
in the next episode.
So that's what's coming up next.
Disease and parasite management.
Assume it's in there, right?
This is probably the area where we can find
the most progress for the hobby.
This is the thing almost everybody can do,
probably only 10% of people are doing really well,
meaning somewhere between that 10 and the 90
with the eradication over here,
we're going to find all that progress,
and eventually work our way to that gold standard
as a hobby playlist right here.