regardless of the backlash or what people think of me I share every aspect
of my hobby from fish dying to trials and tribulations within it and this has
encouraged many others to do so as well but I think everything is a learning
experience and it's always humbling as well today's video isn't going to be any
different let's start from the beginning On February 18th I received a large
shipment of fish in that shipment I've received 18 Vita I know it's pronounced
vieja I like to say VJ leave me alone oh but one or two arrived fine of course
there were some torn fins maybe a little of ammonia burn some of them were a
little listless but over the coming few days they settled nicely into the
aquarium on January 23rd I aired that video and shared with you guys for the
first time that shipment of fish as you can see from that order these guys were
doing perfectly fine nothing was wrong with them nothing apparent nothing
external or anything indicating any sort of sickness illness parasite or pathogen
now you guys will also remember each racking system they're actually
connected at the bottom at the sump but I'm always advocating quarantine on
isolating new fish for anywhere between four and six weeks the benefits of the
subs that I'm using is if you guys remember me setting them up I was able
to connect them with a PVC pipe if I cap that PVC pipe off it creates two
individual subs and I can run these aquariums on separate pumps and they
become individual systems and that's what I did in order to keep these
systems separate during the first thirteen days of keeping these fish
I noticed nothing wrong with them whatsoever and closely monitoring the
systems however on that thirteenth day I was barking by my wall room tank and I
noticed they were covered with thick my mind was boggled how did they get this
it how did they get a problem like that in the first place but no other tank had
it these systems are just as separate as being side by side so I had to rewatch
the footage and what I noticed what I was doing was every time I would release
one of the fish to their new aquariums I tossed the net
down they're essentially cross contaminating the aquariums now when it
comes to cross contamination and adding new fish you never add the water from
your quarantine aquarium to a fresh aquarium you never add the water from
the shipping bags to your fresh aquarium simply because if the fish aren't
exhibiting external parasites maybe they dropped off in the bag and you could be
cross contaminating the water that way cross contamination can be as easy as a
net now I'm not sure if some of the water dripped off the net and got in the
aquarium or if I ended up using it in this tank eventually completely
forgetting what I was doing of course when you were adding new fish you got so
many things on the go lighting audio-video you're trying to capture so
many shots educate and talk throughout it things can get a little hectic but
the thing was is that the WHA group had pick and these guys never experienced it
at all there was no signs of it on any one of these fish and I spent almost an
hour one day truly examining these guys up-close trying to figure out if any of
them actually had it I think that perhaps one or two of the fish might
have had some ik on them and come off onto the net I got it into the tank
below and it basically exploded within the tank the thing I want to point out
though is that I didn't notice anything until thirteen days later some people
quarantine a fish for just a few days is absolutely ridiculous it for example is
temperature dependent we're gonna get dive into that in a little bit but it
just goes to show that just because the fish looks okay for the first few days
or even a couple of weeks doesn't mean it doesn't have anything and in my case
it took two weeks for this parasite to appear after the first the next day it
got even worse the fish were just absolutely covered in it just the wall
Roux though none of the tetras actually had any and I must admit and I have to
be completely honest I haven't had to deal with it for about twelve years now
so seeing it again for the first time in over 12 years was certainly a shock to
me but it's a simple reminder that anybody is susceptible to this
regardless of your experience or who you are in the hobby it can affect you so in
today's video I want to talk about how I treated it what
it really is and you know some of the things that we can do to prevent it in
the future so on the first day I noticed the ick the second day February 2nd
which was actually my birthday it got even worse on the third day I don't even
know if there was a fish left in this tank it looked like it was just balls of
X swimming around but fortunately my fish were healthy and were able to
withstand such an infection however because it was so severe my typical
treatment for it when I only see a couple of spots wasn't going to work in
this case but like I said I haven't experienced it for so many years that
all the ick notification that I did have was simply expired it wasn't any good
anymore typically it only lasts for a couple of years the type that I use so I
ordered some pic online the first sign I seen it now I don't care what brand of
it medication I use I'm looking for two ingredients malachite green in formalin
and the one that I came up with on Amazon was Cordon Rick ik+ I've never
used it before but it has the ingredients that I find are the most
effective in treating severe cases of it so I bought a bunch of bottles now we're
gonna get into how I treat it and what the steps were well I guess we should
first talk about the life cycle of it and when we can actually kill it in
order to treat it we first have to understand it though because it cannot
be killed at any given moment luckily it does have a very simple life
cycle and we can almost control it like I said it is temperature dependent the
warmer the water is the faster the life cycle is going to be treatment can take
days or depending on the temperature if it's much lower it could take weeks to
treat however our temperatures of about 84 degrees Fahrenheit and up the life
cycle of it is about four days it always starts off by you seeing it all over the
fish sometimes it's just a few spots on its body but a large it's usually going
to be on its fins this is the easiest place for it to actually attach to this
the softest tissue what it's doing there is feeding off of the fish
while it's feeding it's creating a cyst over top of it that makes it impossible
to treat with medication so you guys might know that you can't treat it while
it's on the fish and sometimes your fish might even be carrying it like I think
some of the video work but it just wasn't appearing on the outside of the
fish it do prefer to attack the gills and the mouth the inside of the mouth of
the fish first sometimes fish will even give it away that they have pick by
flashing or rubbing up against surfaces and your clearing but that doesn't
always mean that they have it it could be an irritant in the water but it is
also an irritant and potentially causes secondary infections but most
importantly what happens with ick and why it is so deadly is the fact that
it's feeding off the fish leaking in a weakening weakening it over time plus
since its attacking the gills it could literally suffocate the fish which is
the most common problem or the most common cause of death with it while on
the fish it's called a tro font when it falls off the fish that's called a
toment all these names are gonna be pretty much
useless you don't need to remember it but them but there's just simply
interesting now here's the scary part remember when I said it was literally
feasting off the fish and we can only see maybe 20-30 infection areas on the
fish when it falls off it forms something on your aquarium floor called
a toe mite and this is where the ick is actually multiplying itself into the
hundreds or even thousands from there this thing explodes releasing all of
these they're on switch become free swimming and can attack the fish to
summarize it attacks the fish it eventually falls off multiplies at the
base of your aquarium explodes and those all of those baby ex explore the
aquarium looking for new hosts your fish only at this point can we actually kill
the ick this is when it becomes most effective I suppose you could kill it
around here and here but this is when it is most effective this is when we're
trying to kill it we have two benefits here one we can kill it at this stage to
the ick at this stage only has about 48 hours to find its new host before it
dies anyways this is why it gets worse and worse
over time you might only notice a few dots at first but once that falls off
you think you're in the clear it's going down to the bottom of your aquarium
multiplying into the thousands exploding in your aquarium essentially and
attacking your fish coming back with a vengeance
but like I said we can effectively control that life cycle that I just
showed you with temperature of the water the lower the temperature the slower
that lifestyle cycle is gonna take the higher the temperature we increase - the
faster that's going to go that said this is what I did I first noticed the ink on
February 1st on the 2nd I slowly started to raise the temperature by the fifth I
had the aquariums temperature up to 88 degrees Fahrenheit this is the day I
received my medication however when you are raising your temperature of this to
this magnitude you got to worry about two things one can the species of fish
that you're actually keeping withstand those types of temperatures a lot of the
times it's simply no sometimes they can depends again on the types of fish
second thing is when water becomes more warm it raloo it loses the ability to
hold as much oxygen as cooler water so we have to ensure that the aquarium
maintains and not oxygen in it to support life I do this by adding in an
air stone now a lot of you guys will know air stones don't add oxygen to the
aquarium the bubbles are simply rising too fast to dissolve in the water column
that doesn't add bubbles at all the bubbles do drag water from the top tube
due to suction and circulate the aquarium at a lot of times that's why I
have them in the tanks but when they release when they reach the surface of
the aquarium those air bubbles burst and when they burst they create a ripple in
the aquarium when you have hundreds or even thousands of bubbles doing it at
the same time you're creating a lot of waves at the top and what happens is you
are creating a larger surface area at the top of your aquarium which allows
for greater oxygen exchange the release of carbon dioxide then replaced with
oxygen now at this point the fish are actually void of all if the ick has
already felt off I'm racing against time at this point I know I
have maybe two or three days to get the medication in the aquarium and
effectively treat it I start off though by draining 50 percent of the water and
siphoning that gravel what I'm looking to do is to remove all of that egg that
fell to the bottom of the aquarium and is now multiplying into the hundreds or
even thousands you're never going to remove it all because to the human eye
you're never going to see it after I've done my 50% water change I filled the
aquarium back up and I add the appropriate amount of medication based
on what the bottle tells me to do I don't add it and dump it all into one
place though because some of this can all at once if you dump it onto a fish
for example and when you are putting your hand in healthy fish will try to
come up and think you're going to feed them so I like to dump a little bit in
the sump and let the pump circulate it I also like to dump a little bit in the
aquarium above the water bubbles and wherever I can get it to circulate the
most so it doesn't have a negative impact on any one fish the very next day
I perform the same thing I do a water change once again I'm siphoning the
gravel I'm doing about about a 25 percent water change at this point and
then I reMed acade now for a severe infection like this I was doing this in
the morning and then doing it again at night and I did it for two weeks as of
today I'm still treating the aquarium however the water temperature is slowly
going back to what the temperature of the room is and if you remember I heat
the room not individual aquariums so in order for me to heat this tank I did
have to add a heater to the aquarium to maintain higher temperatures than the
rest of the area in order to cool it back off some water changes and of
course just removing the here is enough all through this time I didn't lose a
single fish everybody's healthy the the tetras especially are tend to be most
susceptible to medications like this didn't lose a single one all the water
which tend to be one of the biggest babies in the hobby such a big sensitive
fish none of them lost none of them they're all still eating everything's
fine and of course the viga are doing fantastic as well
so clearly quarantining your fish is absolutely beneficial you could use
anything from a Rubbermaid tote to a spare aquarium I've shown you guys how
to do the do-it-yourself method in the in the past using a sterile light
container with a do-it-yourself sponge filter it could be as simple as that
quarantine should typically last anywhere from four to six weeks although
in the future I'm going to show you a video on how I expedite that to about
two or three weeks you see the problem with this entire gallery is that it's
gone smoothly all except for a few bumps here and there but my problem was with
with importing so many hundreds and hundreds of fish with no problems that
was never faced with any issue other than needing to quarantine and my
quarantine process is to thank for the health of these fish however I'm kind of
glad this happened simply because I don't want all of this to look as simple
as it is and me just constantly bringing in fish and adding them and having so
much success I don't want to lead anybody any false hope that you can do
this as well of course I'm going to experience problems I'm just happy it
kind of happened so how can you truly prevent it in the future well there's
nothing you can truly do if the fish is actually carrying it however if you only
notice a few spots on the fish a lot of the times bumping up the temperature and
adding salt to the aquarium is enough to kill it and that's typically my code too
however I know so many newer hobbyists add salts to their aquariums anyways
I've never understood that all you're doing is building up an immunity to some
of the parasites that can't with sand salt so when you do have an issue and
you start increasing salts it does nothing to them however in this
situation the it was just too severe I had to jump to medications and
medications and chemicals there's not something I like to pour in my aquariums
blindly so regardless of where you get the fish how much experience you have if
you've had all kinds of success with a certain type of fish and have never
experienced any issue my suggestion is this one get your head
out of your butt and quarantine your fish properly anyways especially if your
YouTube or promoting the way we're keeping fish and spreading the facts
that you only need you know to quarantine fish for three or four days
because in your experience they didn't need any more wild caught fish are
arguably one of the most infectious fish in the Hobby because they are coming
from the wild usually infected with internal parasites as opposed to
external internal parasites in bigger fish taking tremendously longer to make
show their head as opposed to smaller fish of course the smaller fish do
have smaller bodies and show their signs much sooner than a larger one but I love
the example here that I had these fish for two weeks before any signs of
anything actually happened which then cements my claims and saying you need to
quarantine your fish for four to six weeks minimum and you know I'll admit
having new fish and needing to quarantine them for four to six weeks
sucks you want to take them and add them to your new aquariums I've only ever
done that if they were the only fish going into that aquarium meaning that
they're not going to have the opportunity to infect any already
existing fish within the aquarium with that sound I guess I'll close this video
off with stating the simple fact that quarantine is one step too many -
becoming a successful Aquarius and actually enjoying your fish instead of
continuously losing them and stressing over them oh I also want to mention that
the big fish deal is in a few weeks that's in Maryland I'm being I'm gonna
be there again for the third year in a row I'm going to be doing a talk there
I'm gonna leave a link in the description below also the Colorado
event which is in like less than two weeks away still has tickets available
I'll leave a link to that in the description as well I hope to see many
of you guys at both events you know what the scariest part to this entire
situation is that this one case of pick could've potentially wiped out this
entire gallery of fish if I didn't practice proper quarantine procedures
and keeping all of my things separate of course I slipped up here and made a
mistake and I paid for it luckily I was able to treat it but I
just kind of want to point out that something that simple could have
literally wiped out hundreds of fish worth thousands and thousands of dollars
based on me not thinking you should do quarantine as often as you should or you
know getting lazy or rushing something just to make a video quarantine is the
utmost important to me I don't care if you guys lose your minds over the fact
that you want to see the new fish that I just got it it's in quarantine and it's
staying there until it's completely healthy and I'm sure that's gone through
the four to six weeks YouTube views everything else can wait