Nasty bacterial issue

[Imp]

Hey, just looking to see if I can get some ideas from someone. I've exhausted my efforts trying to figure this out. I'm running a commercial system, and have had major issues with fin and tail rot, a little dropsy, a pattering of ich and a little fungus. Mostly the issues are the fin and tail rot. Currently the system is running at a pH of 7.8, 0 nitrite and ammonia, nitrates 30, temp 78. I've tried treating the issue by heavilly dosing with Quick Cure (general medication), to no real effect. I'm not sure where this mess came from, or how to get rid of it. thoughts? Isolation seems impractical, but is rapidly becoming a necessity.

Imp

 

[cholula]

I run a UV sterilizer and dose with melafix.

 

[Magician2899]

I agree with cholula, once everything goes away, I would keep the uv sterilizer going, especially if it is a commercial setup.

 

[Imp]

Actually, I am running UV sterilizers, which is one of the reasons I'm confused. I'm thinking of trying the melafix, though. My only concern with that is the carbon, since it's not something easilly removed from the equation.

 

[colesea]

Drop your temperatures. When I was in retail and ran commercial systems, I found that temps of 72oF-74oF were much better and less stressful on already crowded fish, and kept bacterial growth to minimum.

Water change as much as possible. UV sterilizers, unless really well maintained and the bulbs replaced every six months are completely useless in large systems. There is a certain ratio of water that must past the bulb at a certain rate, and on most large systems, the UV units are too small to handle the whole volume of all the tanks, so you're only getting partial UV anyway. Some is better than none though, but after six months I unplugged them and did without.

Remove dead as often as you see them, minimally once a day, but anything that dies has to be taken out. Lots of fish disease are past on by canabilism. Keep all tanks understocked.

What type of commercial systems, retail, wholesale, or aquaculture? Medicine for food-fish is completely different from medicine for ornamentals. If you want food-fish/aquaculture medicine, try your local university for their marine/aquatic departments, they will have the most up to day regs and medicines.

For wholesale/retail systems, you're pretty screwed unless you can isolate tanks and quarintine all new arrivials or treat sick fish individually. To maintain the whole stock healthy is to be on top of the system 110%. The primary thing is to prevent spread with proper sanitization of nets and equipment, and having clean filteration units. The larger your bio-filtration unit, the less carbon you need, and the cleaner water conditions. Try for bio-towers if you have the space for them, with skimmers.

I found that a strong dose of Rid-Ich (formalin/malichite green) upon arrival of new fish, and then another strong does 48hrs afterwards kept the amount of death down. I didn't have any luck with melafix because it is too expensive to use retail on large systems, and it smells to high heaven! If bacterial fin rot and fungus are the worst you have, consider yourself lucky.

Ich can be battled by 1) lowering your temps and stabilizing them, and 2) adding a little extra salt to the systems. Water changing fequency, such as the day before any new shipment also helps shipment-stress fish not get the disease.

Dropsy happens. Be grateful it is the 1 or 2 random fish. If you start getting multi-species dropsy or a whole tank and system comming down with it, then you might as well remove all the fish and bleach the whole infected system.

Certain species of fish, such as guppies, just suck and always come in weak and sick depending upon who you are recieving them from. Neons also have their own quirks, sometimes you have a good batch, sometimes not. Keep long finned fish away from known nippers, better isolated to their own tanks, and just, well, accept the fact that in the industry, you are going to loose fish and have disease, it sucks, but it happens.
~~Colesea

 

[Imp]

Won't lowering the temp that far be stressful all on its own? I've been combating an argument from a collegue that raising the temperature would help. She thinks that raising the temperatures to 80-82 would be optimal to prevent issues, whereas I thought the oxygen depletion would be more stressful than any benefit you would get from it. I didn't think 72 to 76 would be good though.
It is a retail system. Approx 2000 gallon, dilution vessel with twin carbon vessels, a micron, fluidized bed, oxygen tower (not running well but I'm working on rigging something) and 18 bulb 40 watt sterilizers. The sleeves on the bulbs are clean. Actually, I thought that might have been my first problem, since algea and snails and so on have crept up a bit, but they're all working (even changed out a third of the bulbs) and they're all clean.
The ich and dropsy are more incidental than chronic, I thnik. Largely the problem seems to just be fin and tail erosion, primarilly in some of our more sensitive cats (pangasius), silver dollars, oscars and so on. The meds I used were based more on methylene blue than malachite green, but again, it had little effect. I've had difficulty because large dosing usually nukes the cats.
I've inherited all of this recently. Before September I was basically a non aquatics kind of guy. I've found that since I've taken over running this system, I've had to try and learn a lot no the fly. Things had been going well until about three or four weeks ago when this started up from out of nowhere. I'm not sure if something came in with our fish (and no, quarantine would unfortunately not be possible) or if it's something I messed up on.

Imp

 

[wayne at home]

I've no experience with retail systems, but if you've got creeping problems with snails, algae, and bacteria you could go for a series of massive water changes, or you might have to break the whole admn thing down. Have you tested for nitrate,phosphate,doc with an electronic tester - don't try to use a hobyist test kit, not reliable enough. What size tanks are you serving, how much substrate in each? You might want to try a bundle of BIG water changes, and removing almost all the substrate (nutrient trap). You should also post this over to wetwebmedia for more experienced opinions and other options
And , my pet peeve, why sell pangasius - you know they'll die horrible deaths in a few months.

 

[Imp]

Nitrates are around 30, but that's with a liquid kit and not an electronic tester. As for the substrate, less than an inch (barely enough to cover the bottom of the tank) in most cases, roughly 15 gallon tanks. My water changes are automatic and constant (300 gallons a day, I believe). My greater fear with doing more massive changes has been the temperature drop that will accompany it.

Imp

 

[wayne at home]

Well if you're moving that much water a day, but still have nitrates of 30 somethings acting as a nutrient trap. If you really have very little gravel it's not likely to be that..... do you hoover the gravel, or frequently disturb it. Does much crap come up?
I had similar problems in a big home aquaria I had, random bacterial problems despite 'perfect' water till I broke the tank down and stripped most of the gravel out. No plants (?) - you don't need more than a very thin cover.
What do wwm say - they have much commercial 'combat experience'

 

[colesea]

Retail systems have high nitrates. Gravel in display tanks will trap it, bio-towers will produce it, pre-filter media and floss produce it. The best way to handle nitrates are large volume water changes as frequently as possible, with gravel vaccuuming of your display tanks, as well as any filter sump if debris are in there. out of 200 gallons I would say do 20 gallons about twice a week, or 40 gallons once a week. You shouldn't have much of a temperature issue if you juggle your water to appxomate tank temps. I've had tanks drop as low as 68oF during water changes without detramental thing happening to the fish. But you shouldn't have your ingoing water on strictly cold, but juggle your tap to warm it. If you don't have a hot water faucet on your water, scream bloody hell.<G>

If you can get away with it, remove the gravel from the display tanks. That will definately make clean up easier and cut down on disease/nitrates. Unfortunately most retailers want gravel because it makes the display tanks look "pretty" and encourages sales. Also, unless you vaccuum almost every day, non-gravel display tanks do look a bit grungy after a week as stuff is visible on the bottom.

I love snails in tanks. Personally I cultured as many snails in my tanks as possible. They kept algae to a minimum and did clean up after the fish. Most folk loved to see the snails and were fascinated by them. Regulars would ask for them, and I'd give them what they could pick out for free. Population was kept in check by weekly water changes, but I would also use them to feed my loaches, puffers, and cichlids as well, picking them out of population explosion tanks and simply feeding them to snail-eating fish. My clown loaches always seemed to stay heathier for the snails in their tanks and added to their diet. Very few fish diseases are incubated by snails, so don't worry about that. I never had one snail-born disease in my tanks. I also could judge when the tanks needed an overhaul because if I didn't see a whole lot of snails in them, I knew nitrates or something else was up.

There are all schools of thought about the temperature issue, and you will have to shift though all the advice and research to come up with what works for you. It is of my opinion that since high temperatures 1) rob the water of O2, and 2) increase the metabolism of the fish, making them "hyper" active, that it is more stressful on them to have an 80oF tank than a 74oF tank. Also I found that the fish acclimate better to lower temps upon arrival. Think about it. Fish get shipped in plastic bags in styrofome boxes. Those boxes insulate worth crap, and the fish are down to room temp (or even freezing winter temps) by the time they reach your store. Now you float them in an 80oF tank? Temperature shock. Floating them at a lower temp is healthier for them and less of a shock. Also, when you sell the fish, you put them into a plastic bag. Now most purchasers are not going to have a styrofome cooler heated to tank temp to transport those fish home in. Now you're tanking a nice warm fish and putting it in the cold out-doors for the way home. Again, drastic temp shock.

Stable temps are difficult, but they are the key to preventing ich.

High temps also help bacteria to grow faster and spread more quickly. Bacteria love 1) wamth, 2) dark, 3) moist places. A warm fish body in warm water is a perfect place for them. Uping temps on tanks with disease really only work on tanks that have no fish in them, because then you are cycling the life-stages of the disease faster and eliminating the host. As long as disease has a host, you won't get rid of it with high temps, and you only stress your fish out more.

Cats and chemical treatments are difficult. If possible, keep your cats on an independant system from the fish you are treating. If you just inherited the units, what you might want to do is shut down one unit a week (provided the manager lets you), and do a bleach on it, re-cycle, then move the fish back into it and bleach another. Bleaching is the only way you will be 100% positive that there is nothing in those tanks except what you introduce to them. Take out all the bio-media in it and house it temporarily in another unit so you don't destroy your biofiltraiton.

A lot of prevention can even be simply seperating the fish properly. Use one unit for all the hearty fish, another for fish that are medication sensitive, another for your aggressive fish. Mixing and matching tankmates properly can help reduce disease and facilitate easier treatment.

Fish will arrive with all sorts of nasty things on them, from argulus and anchor worm, to TB and stuff you've never seen before. If the fish seem not to be healthy in the bag, don't put them in your tanks. I used to write-off anything that looked remotely suspicious as sick. Then see if the manager would let you set up even just a 15 gallon q-tank in the back room (after a year of whining I finally got one) to treat them. There will be sick fish for no earthly reason except they decided to get sick that day.

TetaPress publishes a wonderful book called =The Manual of Fish Health=. It should be your bible.
~~Colesea

 

[Imp]

We used to have basically no gravel, apparently, but since then things have changed. From what I've been told, they used to keep the temp at 82 and never had problems, though I find it difficult to believe.
Can the bacteria be cropping up because of a biofilter crash? I'm still not finding ammonia or nitrite levels, but the biotower (possibly due to the medicating) seems to have died (a recent discovery). I thought the biofilter merely handled the nitrogen cycle, not unwanted bacteria.
What kind of system did you run, Colesea? I don't find it often that I hear from people with experience like that.

Imp

 

[colesea]

Medication can and will kill bio-towers and bio-wheels, and you can experience minor to major crashes depending upon how large the die-off was. Medication is not selective, it kills good and bad stuff with equal vigor. You only hope that the bad stuff dies faster than the good stuff. That is the key with medicating tanks, you must stick to strict regiem and use the proper medication for the proper disease, or else you can do serious damage.

Bacteria is bacteria, wanted or unwanted. Plants are wildfowers in the field, but weeds in a cultivated garden. Bio-towers can host unwanted disease and bacteria just as much as the good stuff. Thats why if disease becomes a chronic issue, then you should seriously bleach everything and start over. Most healthy fish kept in stable environments do build up an immunity to the diseases in their tanks. So while there is disease in the system, the fish have a natural immunity to it and do not get sick. But when the fish are stressed, as is often the case in retail, their immune systems go to hell and they get sick from the stuff in the tanks. Especially new fish who have had no opportunity to develop an immunity to the system they were introduced to. Certain species are also just sensitive to different diseases.

I had Marineland retail systems (go to Marineland.com to see the actual set ups) I was pretty lucky. Lots of LFS have jury-rigged systems that are falling apart and only understandable to the person who constructed it. Not to say that I didn't reconstruct the Marineland systems to work for my particular habits and preferances, but they were pretty sturdy, very basic, and simple to figure out if you knew a thing or two about plumbing. But they did not take care of themselves. We had freshwater and marine units. And I had co-workers who could not help themselves to messing with my tanks, which was a major source of stress. I'd leave everything perfect when I left that night, and come back the next night to an amazing array of issues because people were careless and insensitive, then my manager would yell at me for the place being a mess.

So glad I don't work retail anymore. I miss the fish, and I miss some of my regulars, but I don't miss the cranky people and managers who are morons.
~~Colesea

 

[Imp]

Well, temperature is back down to 78 (someone had cranked it to 81 a few days ago), and I've spent some time looking at the fish. I'm not sure if the issue is gone or not, but it would seem that the fish are either not getting worse or getting better. They still look ratty, but the fins don't have the white fringe to the edge anymore, so I think it's just a matter of regrowing.
My biotower, somehow, has misplaced all of its media. I swear it was there before, and I know that it's been doing what it's supposed to, but there simply isn't anything in there now. I can't begin to understand, but I've got new stuff to restart.
The system I'm running is made by a company in California. Quite impressive, except that it's an older model and it's more computerized than is practical. many of the parts have either been replaced or need it, which has now become my duty. Just getting an understanding of how it works has been a chore, not to mention that everyone who works for me has a different take on how it should be set and operated to make it work the best.
You know, retail has its ups and downs. I don't mind the work, but I don't like a lot of the ignorance shown by customers in general, and the bias shown by enthusiasts in particular. I don't know how much of it you experienced, but I find people don't regard the LFS with much respect. I have a completely new understanding for the difficulties involved in maintaining the kind of volume of fish that a large retailer has to cope with.
So, you didn't find a lot of problems with ich when you were running things cool like that?

Imp

 

[colesea]

No, not a whole lot of ich problems at all, unless the fish came in with it in the bag, in which case those fish never hit the display units, and went strait to the 15-Q (a jury rigged set up with reconstruct parts I created from the returned "damage" pile<G>). I would see Ich when the manager refused to get me Rid-Ich on the store order. After about a month of not having the rid-ich, the silver dollars got ich. At that point I really just used a whole lot of marine salt as much as I dared where it wouldn't hurt the fish but would still be propholatic against the ich. Or if I went on vacation, usually I'd come back to completely crapped out systems and a broad-spectrum of illnesses from neglect.

Again, ich isn't so much caused by the temperature itself. Keeping the temp stable, even at a cooler setting, is better than having temps jumping all over the place. Watch how warm/cool your store gets with the heat/AC on, those temps will affect your tanks as well. You might have to crank the unit heaters up to 81oF to maintain 76oF water temp if the store itself drops to 34oF night-time winter temps with no heat on, or when the AC kicks in during the summer. Then you'll have to adjust again as the heat comes on during the day, or turn the heaters off completely in the summer if your store will roast.

Water is very slow to heat or cool down. That's why sometimes not having heaters in the tanks at all can be a good thing. Fish can handle gradual temperature fluccuations, like day/night temp differances. It is the extream temps they can not (such as a minus 11 wind chill factor that puts ice in the sumps). The trick is, find a temp you like, then don't fiddle with it. Whatever you are comfortable with the tanks being.

I treated a whole lot of stuff with just plain aquarium salt. Oscars with bacterial infections, a handful of salt to their tanks twice a day. Goldfish with slimy membrane, added salt. Livebearers that just didn't seem to be perky (especially black mollies), put a handful of salt in their tanks once a day. Didn't have to treat the entire unit, sometimes if you just keep on top of an individual tank, you can treat those fish. You just have to remember that one tank is getting diluted, so you have to repeat treatment more often then you would on an independant tank.

First rule is, never, never, NEVER put your wholesaler water in the units! The fish come in a bag, usually with blue tinted water. That blue stuff is an anestetic(sp?) used to de-stress the fish for transport. It will also carry and harbor all the disease your wholesaler has in their water. Having no choice, I had to use float acclimation instead of a nice drip, so I would float the bags with rolled down tops for about 30mins, taking a scoopful of shipment water out of the bag, dumping it down the drain, then replacing it with a scoopful of water from the tank, as often as I could (I would go from one tank to the next and do each bag once before starting again at the begining).

Once I was certain the blue tint was gone and the fish were given a good once over to make sure they were "Okay" (no ichy spots, breathing normal, swimming, not lying on the bottom of the bag dead), then I would pull the bag out, pour the fish gently into a net I had across a bucket, then put the fish in the tank from the net. For marine fish, you can do a freshwater dip at this stage before you put them in your main units to make double sure you got the icky stuff off. For freshwater fish, you can use a formalin dip, but like I mentioned before, once all my fish were secure in my units, I would simply hit the entire unit with a cupful of Rid-Ich to 200 grallons. Repeat Rid-ich again the next day, remove the dead as necessary.

Be careful though, certain species of fish should never be handled in a net!! Many marine fish, Pictus cats, plecos, clown loaches!! They have spines or barbs or sharp fins that will get entangled, an marine fish may even have specialized scales (such as angelfish) that literally stick to the net. For fish that can't be netted, pour them into another platic bag (such as an in house transport bag), that has had holes poked into it for drange. I would roll the bag over a drinking cup to keep it held open while pouring the fish into it.

When I was in retail, everything was by the seat of my pants. I tried to do everything the "right" way, but after awhile gave up because the demands on my time were just unbelievable. If it wasn't a customer wanting me to read Axelrod to them, it was the manager needing the truck packed out, or a bird that needed hand-fed, and I took care of the reptiles too since I was the only one who knew how. If I only had to work with the fish, just the fish, and do nothing but fish, I would've been happy. I could've even taken the occasional abuse from an ignorant customer. But I was the only animal-knowledgeable person in my store, so I was pulled in all directions.

Then there were people who just, had to mess with my tanks. Co-workers who would put the wrong fish togeter, who couldn't clean up the water they dribbled all over the place, who didn't know how to close a tank lid, or hang a net back up, or wipe down a counter....That was my utter pet peeve. I ain't old enough to be no 15 yr old's mother, so sure as hell wasn't going to clean up after one.

Then there was corporate, which I had several good rows with. Wouldn't get me new UV bulbs because it was too expensive. Wouldn't give me petty cash to buy fresh foods with (I would buy reptile veggies and fruit with my own cash). Would give out fish tank "plan-o-grams" that made absolutely no sense because they would want to place bottom dwellers in top tanks where they couldn't be seen, or put neons in with angels, or mix Africans and South American Cichlids on the same unit in the same water chemistry...I could go on and on.

I hope your experience is much better than mine was. It's not that people don't regard LFS in particular with no respect, it is people regard retail employees in general with no respect. Trust me, I work now in Target (no fish at all), and I get the same treatment. Because you work in retail, you are part of the lowest caste in society. You are the servant of servants, of people who have no one left to abuse for the injustaces of state sales tax and ecconomic fall-out. You work for the company that sets the prices and sell the product they can't do without, therefore you are just as much at fault in the minds of the customer, for their dissatisfaction with life in general.

It used to get to me, because I cared alot for the fish and really wanted people to be happy with a fish tank, and to really prove that not all LFS were created equal. But now when someone gets snotty with me, I just smile sweetly and walk away. It is not my problem they are unhappy. They can go take it out on customer service. Dude, those are people I admire, I couldn't do what they do all day.
~~Colesea

 

[Imp]

Sounds like we work/have worked in a similar establishment. I won't name my employer for fear of persecution. <g> Suffice it to say, I know of those battles. I'm dealing with the oldest system in the company, and it seems the headaches just pile up.

I'm not partial to netting. I try and drain as much water out of each shipment bag as I can, but I don't like the idea of physically handling stressed fish. And I would love to be able to acclimate the fish the way you describe, but I generally get approximately 20 boxes (to 40) of 6 to 8 bags each in weekly, and by the time I get them all put away, and deal with the customers who just have to have that new fish that isn't done acclimating yet, I end up spending hours. I've often wished that we could do the receiving outside of business hours.
Got the tower up and running yesterday, which is a bit of a relief. Just a couple more things to fix. I think the bacteria have mostly gone away, or at least the fish are looking much better. Maybe it was something that came in with a shipment, I'm not sure.
I'm in a similar situation as yours. I am now in charge of an entire department, including small animals, reptiles and fish as well as all the supplies. the only added irritation is I am dealing with people who are either irresponsible or who are convinced that I know absolutely nothing and am therefor not worthy of listening to. Not only do I get little respect from the customers, as is the norm, but I get a fair bit of disrespect from my employees. I'm sure if I was just more of a jerk it would all be solved, but... I just try and learn as much as I can instead.
And to think, I was an optician before all this!

So now I'm setting up a 29g with two Aquaclear 150s to house 3 Brichardi, 3 knight gobies, a ram an eel and a ropefish that a customer abandoned on our counter. Trying to figure out what I'll put with them...

Imp