Rappin' With ReefBum
Guest: Dr. Alex J. Hall, Aquatic Veterinarian
(upbeat music) - Rapping with Reef Bomb is sponsored by champion lighting and supply, Polo Reef and Fauna Marine. - Hey, what's up everybody and welcome back to another episode of Rapping with Reef Bomb. I'm your host Keith Bruckle-Lammer. So, today on the live stream I have the pleasure of welcoming Dr. Alex J. Hall. Who is an aquatic veterinarian? What's happening there Alex? - Everything's all good here. I'm very excited to be here. - Yeah, we thought we were gonna do this live at 7.30. We got on five minutes earlier because you got back from the office I guess, a few minutes earlier than expected. So, everybody out there tuning in, we're looking forward to chatting with Alex, ask a lot of questions. We're gonna go over a whole bunch of stuff. Alex practices in New York and he is interested in all facets of aquatic medicine with a particular focus on tropical fish and coral disease. His personal tanks include a 180 gallon mixed reef, a 55 gallon bubble tip and enemy tank with three additional frag tanks attached. I should have gotten you to send me some videos or pictures there, Alex, of your personal tanks. - Yeah, absolutely, they're on my Instagram. I don't post them quite frequently, but they aren't up there in the post section and the stories. - Cool, all right. So, before we kinda get into the depth of the conversation with Alex, I wanna take care of some business and thank the sponsors of this show. My sponsors are really important because they make the show possible with their support. And that means a lot since I wanna continue to bring on awesome guests to help foster a learning environment on the show. Polar reef, make sure to check out Polar Reef's new YouTube video that drops this Friday. Their team wishes everyone a happy and safe Labor Day. Keep an eye out for some upcoming YouTube videos, including a crazy Japanese koi show, fish-fed discoveries and much, much more. Make sure to subscribe to their YouTube channel at Polar Reef for video drop notifications. Champion lighting and supply besides being a place for hobbyists to purchase saltwater aquarium supplies, online champion lighting is a wholesale distributor for many popular brands. If you learn a aquarium store, or an aquarium service company, contact champion lighting through the website at championlining.com to set up a wholesale account. Bottom Marine, and I do use the Bottom Marine Reef ICP Total Test Kit, which gives a quick, accurate, easy overview of over 90 water values and reef aquariums. For macro elements of trace elements and plumes, you get a complete overview with corresponding dosage and action recommendations. You can pick up the Bottom Marine ICP test kits, as well as other Bottom Marine products at reefbom.com. So Alex, man, how did you become an aquatic veterinarian? That seems like a very unique track for a veterinarian. - Yeah, it's definitely not something they start you in vet school. I was a reefer first. I grew up reefing. My father had a tank in the house. So it's maybe I grew up doing, and I really got an interest in it about nine years old or so. Then I ended up going away to vet school, and then had some issues with my own tank. And when I started digging through the literature, I really found out there was no solution. So the problems I was having, and no one really was delving into the work of coral disease, let alone for saltwater fish disease. So when I realized there was a lack of knowledge in these areas, it really started to get me interested in pursuing that. So then I just kept doing more and more fish. And then as I came out with the refit account on Instagram, more people got behind me and were interested in what I was doing. So I was like, oh, I'm moving on the right path. So then just ended up seeing more and more tanks. And started my aquatics practice and has had wonderful clients and feedback. So it's just been more fish, more fish. And yeah, so it was just a childhood dream that slowly mixed together from my interest in veterinary medicine, and my interests in aquatics and fish tanks, and they kind of blended together. So I mean, could you venture a guess in terms of what percent of the veterinarians out there are actually aquatic veterinarians? Is it like 5%? Is it 10%? And I would say probably in the point X% of fish veterinarians, the vast majority of them are in freshwater. So it's even a smaller subset who are interested in saltwater disease and in terms of coral disease. If anyone else is interested in coral disease, I'd love to speak to them because I'm kind of alone right now in terms of interest in coral disease. Well, we could certainly talk about coral disease. So Josh Allen is wondering, where in New York do you practice it? Tri-state area, specifically New York. So mostly Long Island, I do venture out. Again, I will go tri-state area, but in most of my clients are Long Island, New York City based. Can you share some of your bigger clients? So that I can't, besides the Long Island Aquarium, I have NDs with a lot of my fish wholesalers, et cetera. But in terms of big clients, like the Aquarium, Long Island Aquarium is where I'll be quite frequently. But the other ones, I can't discourage us. So what exactly-- you mentioned fish disease and coral disease and stuff like that. What's a day in the life like we're an aquatic veterinarian? So again, it depends on the clients. Again, if I'm at the Aquarium, it's they'll have a list of the problems that they're having. A lot of times, starting-- my big thing is microscopy and microbiological diagnosis. So again, I'm the first one to grab the microscope and start trying to see what type of bacterial or protozole process is occurring. Again, it's very variable on what I'm treating. Again, if I'm treating a turtle, recently who's doing an alligator snapping turtle, full work up versus or we're having coral disease, versus we're having seahorses with buoyancy issues. So again, it's very variable, and depending on the patients that I'm treating. But again, my interests are mostly the saltwater fish and the coral. But again, even then, the saltwater fish don't have the same diseases as everyone goes, oh, immediately it's egg, or immediately they see a white spot. And they jump to egg marine velvet. But again, there's a lot of different processes that could be happening in concurrent processes where we have multiple diseases all acting at the same time. So again, I never very-- if ever-- go by just what my eye sees, and it's a lot of microbiological diagnosis. Got you, Niagara Fire. Coral, thank you so much for the super chat. So let's talk about what hobbyists can do to try to do the best to prevent disease from entering their reef tank in terms of fish disease. Obviously, setting up a quarantine tank would be the ideal solution. A lot of people can't do a quarantine just for money or for space purposes. But maybe we do this in two parts. One, what would be your advice to people that cannot set up a quarantine tank? What kind of best practices can people do that are unable to quarantine saltwater fish with their tank? Anything that they can do to-- Yeah, so again, without quarantine, things become a massive challenge. Because again, there's no way to really observe the fish. There's no way to really look for disease. Again, without a quarantine tank, it becomes your essentially going in uphill battle. Even if it's the simplest quarantine tank, it's a 10-gallon tank with nothing in it but an air stone. And regular water changes. Water comes out of your big tank, goes into the quarantine tank, and then down the toilet. That's already a huge step forward. There's no way that you buy a fish at a store. Again, it may not show any disease at that time, but then now it's stressed out. Now it's immunocompromised. You brought it home. Now whatever disease that was already on it that wasn't or was subclinical is now going to show it would come to the surface. So now you need that time to really watch. You need that time to monitor the fish. Because again, in times of stress, is the most likely times we'll see disease. So a fish can have a disease, but it's just not showing it at the time. Again, it's healthy, it's not stressed. It's able to regulate it. Now you put it in a bag. You took it for an hour drive. You took it home. Now it's stressed. And now over the next couple of days, you're going to see if that's subclinical disease. It starts to come to the surface. And if we see if it comes to clinical disease. So avoiding quarantine and reef keeping, I think, is not a great idea. Again, even if it's just a small five-gallon bucket with a heater, some an air stone, even if that's for a couple of days, if that's all you can do. In terms of ideal quarantine, I say 30 to 60 days, and a lot of people don't like to hear that come out of my mouth. Because again, they get excited. They buy a new fish. They want it to go in the tank. But it's a 60-day quarantine to really see if there's any other diseases going on. And sometimes we have viral processes that can take a while to, again, once the fish becomes immunocompromised, it can take some time for that disease from the surface. So again, I don't want a fish with lymphocystis. Again, essentially, we can think of it like a herpes in a person. So it's not going to kill you. But again, it's a blemish and it'll spread quite rapidly. It only comes out in the times of stress. So if I just bought the fish, now that fish is going to start that clock. I want to make sure, before I compromise the entire reef, that it doesn't have one of these disease type processes. So again, it's really close observation, at least for minimum 30 days. - So we got one of your clients, Paula Reef, Andrew Sandler is in the house. He says, "My doc, you got on." - Yeah, so I do work with Paula Reef. Again, we're working on some really exciting things that hopefully Mr. Sandler will discuss in the future. But again, with him, we're able to start really delving into the biological data, microbiological data, and again, get more aggressive in terms of our treatments, rather than what I call shotgun treatments. Like a shotgun treatment would be something like formalin, where it's toxic to everything. It's toxic to the fish. It's toxic to the microorganisms that are on the fish, but it's also toxic to the person administering that medication. We're trying to get more selective in our treatment, so that it's specifically pinpointing, a certain protozoa or something that we're working with. We diagnose it on microscopy. We then use medications directly for that protozoa. So we get less bystander effects and less overall resistance. - Chelly Carter, Timbie, thank you so much for that super chat comments. Don't forget to hit that like button. - Absolutely. So what would be the ideal, or let's say it's this basic quarantine tank that somebody could set up for a minimal investment. I mean, you mentioned a five gallon bucket with an air stone and using that for a couple of days, but let's go to the 30 or the 60 day quarantine scenario. What would somebody really need to have in terms of equipment? - Yeah, so it depends on what your main system is. If you've got a 300 gallon tank, you can just set up what I do at home as I set up a 10 gallon tank with a heater, a little circulation pump, and an air stone. And then I just take water directly from my main display, do like a 50% water change. It really depends on the medications I'm using at the time, 50% water change, and then just take the water that comes out of the quarantine, just write down the toilet. So again, there's no filtration on it. There's no UV, there's no X, Y, and Z. It's essentially just a bucket, but again, I'm doing water changes daily. - No, no, gang on the back filter or something. - So I'm doing a 50% water change daily, so I think that's necessarily needed. But again, if you wanted a more set up quarantine, you can always have a UV on it. You can always, again, UV gets tricky when we start working with medications, 'cause a lot of times we'll start breaking down that medication and UV will never get rid of the disease. So again, I think a lot of people, again, I know we're starting to sidetrack to UV, but I think a lot of people go, "Oh, you know, I've got ink in the tank. "I'm gonna throw a UV on it and the ink's gonna go away." The particles that are leaving the system go through the UV. The ink leaving the system goes through the UV. That means those particles will be killed. But all those particles that are within the tank, those aren't necessarily not 100% of them are leaving, so it'll never get rid of the disease entirely. A lot of times with UV, if you've got multiple tanks and you've got a UV coming on the outlet before it goes into another tank, then that can help prevent the spread of ink from one tank to another, but again, it'll never eliminate it. So again, when I'm working with my quarantines and I'm doing a lot of medications, you can't use UV with a lot of the medications, 'cause it'll break down those compounds. So again, I don't use the UV in that sense. But again, if you're using separate tanks, then again, UV is a good idea. So 10 gallon tank, you're doing 50% water changes daily. Heater, you don't need a light. - I have one for like visualization purposes, but again, it's not gonna make or break ambient light in the room as more than enough powerhead. - I just have a little circulatory pump. - And that's it, something that's it. - Yeah, so that's again, most of the time, and again, that lets me up really close observation. I know in terms of biosecurity, I know that nothing's leaving that tank other than going down the toilet. I know nothing else is being added and the thing is with the quarantine tanks, I find that people go, oh, here's my quarantine tank. And now I got bought a fish on Tuesday. And now two weeks later, I buy a new fish and I put it to the same quarantine tank. Once you put something in the quarantine tank, I don't think anything else should go in it until that fish has reached quarantine. 'Cause again, now we're introducing a new fish, which could have disease. So we either have to start quarantine over, all over again, or you wait for that, it's like an all-in-all-out system. You know, there's no inputs. - So can you put in multiple fish in that QT at the same time? - Yep. - So if you're starting at the same time, everyone's at the same time, everyone's been checked, then you go, okay, moving forward, these will all move as a group. Either pass as a group or your fail as a group. If I have, let's say, you know, as a group of five chromuses and one of them has, you know, a protozole disease, I'm gonna say all of those are condemned until otherwise. Even if they're not showing clinical signs, they're all been in contact with each other. They all have the likelihood of having the disease. And the problem with, you know, saltwater fishes, they've gotten quite expensive over the past couple of years. So now it's not worth gambling a couple hundred dollars 'cause you wanna get the fish in quicker. I'd always rather just pump the brakes, sit, let them want weight, watch, check them, especially if you've got coral in the tank. So if you've coral in the tank in terms of additives directly, that's where things become incredibly difficult. And that's something that we're working on in that polar reef is in tank treatment for some of these protozole diseases that won't affect A, the coral and B, the microbiome that you're, you know, essentially growing to help reduce the nitrates and nitrates. - So what about the protocol for meds? So are you basically doing a period of time where you're just observing those fish to see if there's any sign of disease or are you simultaneously treating with some meds? - So immediately through my, when I first got a fish, I always used something called a scale scrape. And that's essentially, I scraped the fish, look for any external parasitism. If there is external parasitism, then I immediately treat for whatever parasite that I'm seeing. So then it becomes a very specific treatment. Again, sometimes, you know, people are like, oh, they immediately go and copper. And a lot of times I think copper is stressful to the fish. A lot of times copper doesn't work for all, you know, modalities. It's not a bad idea to have a fish and copper. Again, as long as it's not a copper sensitive species. But again, with microscopy. And if we go, okay, I know that it's this species of scutiociliocyte. And I know how to treat this species that I treat specifically for that species. Again, it's trying to stem away from the shotgun treatments, where essentially I'm just gonna kill everything on the fish. 'Cause again, formalin, copper, again, those are all toxic compounds. They're just at a, you know, the level that we treat them with. It's toxic to the organisms. It's just not as toxic to the fish. - So for the average reef keeper that's not a scientist, how can that reef keeper determine whether or not there are the, you know, when you do that scale scrape? I'm assuming you're putting those scales under the microscope to examine the, you know, to see if there's any parasites. Is that something that an average reef keeper can do in terms of buying a relatively cheap microscope and being able to eyeball the, you know. - With some diseases, absolutely. With others, it's much more difficult than that. Again, if you scrape and you see fluke, again, you can go, okay, these are, I know these are fluke, or I know these are monogenes. Once we start getting down to the protozole infections, that's where things become a little more challenging. 'Cause one, the literature and pictures online to look up are fairly difficult. And there's, you know, not always consensus of, you know, the subspecies of the parasite. But again, in terms of gross parasitism, it is definitely a way to go. The nice thing about it is though, is that if you scrape and you see something that is, again, one, you have to determine, is it a commensal thing? Is it something that naturally lives on the fish that doesn't cause disease and B, or is it pathogenic? And that's the challenges. Is it something that should be there or shouldn't be there? And if it shouldn't be there, again, now, you know, okay, at least I know this fish isn't going into my display. I don't know what it is at that time, but all I know is it's not moving forward until we either A, get more information, B, get things under control. In terms of like scale scrapes, again, sometimes we go into like gill biopsies. So I'll knock the fish out. I'll take a biopsy of the gills, 'cause again, sometimes I see diseases within the actual gill tissue. So then we slowly work our way forward and we say, okay, where are these disease processes coming from? How are they changing the fishes anatomy? And what clinical signs do we see? - If you were giving advice to somebody that didn't have the microscope and didn't have that ability to kind of determine, you know, what that disease particularly was by looking at through the microscope, what would you say to somebody that wants to set up a quarantine tank would you suggest certain meds right off the bat? - So again, then at that point I'd go copper. I do like formulin for a number of reasons, but there's a number of reasons I don't. Again, it's broad spectrum and there's not really resistance to it. So that's what I do like about it. The problem with formulin is one, I think people tend to overdose it and two, in terms of the chemistry, salt water becomes more challenging in terms of dissolved oxygen content. So once we're adding formulin, we just have to be a little more careful and I would hate to see fish dying because of formulin overdose. But again, that's a really good broad spectrum. I always do well, I know that it is toxic to people. So like don't, you know, pour a bunch of formulin in your living room and then sit there and watch TV. Again, it is something that is carcinogenic and something that I do warn about. So then the next best alternative would be like copper as like a very broad spectrum, as long as it's not a copper sensitive species. I'm not a big advocate of the random antibiotic usage. I think antibiotics, you know, again, people are like immediately want to dump in nitrophores zone, immediately want to dump in chanomycin. But again, unless you've confirmed it's a bacterial infection, there should be no reason that you're using antibiotics. All you're doing is just sensitizing the bacteria that are there to the antibiotics. So again, I always confirm it's bacteria before I treat with antibiotics, whereas you don't need to confirm that it's flu-ic, some sort of protozole infection before you use formulin. There's not the same kind of risk long term. So that's where I like to, you know, keep things to a minimum unless I know what I'm treating. But again, copper formulin as broad spectrums, as long as they're treated appropriately are okay. - I guess for a hobbyist, what you can do is do an aqua biomics test, right, to see potentially what pathogens you have in terms of fifth pathogens. - So aqua biomics is really nice in theory. The problem that I've seen in the past, is this the turnaround time is a little too hard for me to really make a clinical judgment and diagnosis. Just because again, I need a lot of these times these fish are in, you know, a dire state, and you really have to start treating within 10 hours, 24 hours may even be too late. So to wait for the data may be helpful for the future, but it may not be helpful in that sense. When I'm doing my bacterial work, I do something called bacterial culture. So I actually take swabs, send it out to the lab. The lab then grows, it takes about a day. So it does, it's not as fast, you know, turnaround is like, you know, 20 minutes, but again, it takes about a day, and then they go, hi, it's this bacteria, and then they do something called sensitivity. And that's them growing out that bacteria, using different antibiotics against it, and then going, which one's the best? But while I do in the meantime, is I take swabs of that back to, or what I suspect to be bacterial samples, I then stain it with different, essentially, cytologic agents that then change the color of the bacteria, and then I use that to help me identify what class of bacteria. And then once I know, okay, it's gram-negative, it's gram-positive, I'll then empirically pick an antibiotic that is sensitive or generally good for gram-negative, gram-positive until I get those sensitivities back. So once I have the sensitivities back, then I will switch if the medication I wasn't using wasn't sensitive. Then I'll switch if it was great. The nice thing is something that we're doing at polo is that we're collecting a lot of this bacteriological data, and we're saying, okay, we're chronically seeing the species of pseudomonas, or we're seeing pseudomonas genus in general, and those are gram-negative. And then we see, oh, in the last five sensitivities, it's been sensitive to X antibody. So then we go, okay, in the future, if I see lesion that looks like that, and I go, okay, highest probability, it's this, it may not be, but at highest probability, it's this, we've seen in the past that it's sensitive to X drug, so then we start with that. And this, as the caveat with these antibiotics, is I'm not a huge advocate of the antibiotic baths. I'm a big advocate of internal disease requires internal medication. That being said, the only way to get medication into these fish is either A orally, which I don't like, because one, you have to calculate the dose that they're actually getting is almost impossible, 'cause the moment you put that food in the water, it starts to dissipate out, and did the fish actually eat the food, et cetera. So I'm a big advocate of antibiotic injections. So those injections are actually going intramuscularly or interest solomically within the body cavity. So I go, okay, I take the fish out, it weighs X amount. I go, it gets 10 migs per keg of X drug, and then I go, okay, that drug, I can measure up exactly how much I know it's getting, and it gets injected directly into the fish. - That's gotta be a tough process, though if you've got a lot of fish in a reef tank, especially since it could be a challenge to catch those fish, correct? - Well, so this isn't-- - Oh, in quarantine. - Okay. - This is all quarantine. - It's all quarantine. - All right. - This is always the first time in. - If they're already in the tank, then that's a massive challenge. Doable, as long as you don't have acros, but doable, but this is all pre-quarantine, 'cause again, once they start going through quarantine, again, we can limit a lot of these diseases. That doesn't mean that bacterial infections won't pop up. That doesn't mean that your anema won't pop up, but it severely limits the amount that we actually see. We can almost completely eradicate certain diseases by going through these steps in quarantine. - Are there certain fish that reef keeper should try to avoid because they're more prone to disease? You know, I didn't realize, but green chrome is apparently, or very prone to a particular disease. - They are the poster child for your anema. They, again, tend to carry a lot of different protozole diseases, but most often it is your anema, and that in itself is a particularly difficult protozole disease to treat. It's lethal, it's lethal quickly, so action has to be done very aggressively and fast. In terms of these, you know, chromuses, that's why, again, quarantine, 'cause then you throw in 30 chromuses, you don't notice that one of them has a huge ulcer on it until a couple of days later, and now that entire time those particles are then being released into the environment. The problem with, like, in that situation is even if you remove the fish, that your anema is still in the tank. That being said, even if you removed all the fish out of that tank at that time, there's no follow-out period for your anema. It can live off the environment, it can live off bacteria in the environment, so once it's in that tank, there is no treating it. There's nothing you can do to remove it from the same. - Yeah, unless you bleach the system and start over again, that being said, I think that your anema, and again, don't hold me by this number, is probably present in about 75 to 90% of tanks out there. - Really? - But that doesn't mean that it's clinical though. So again, it's living in the environment, it's doing its own thing, but it's only when fish become stressed. Whether that stress is because of lack of feeding, whether that stress is because overcrowding, whether that stress is fish fighting, and that stress brings it out, and that's when it really starts to proliferate. Again, if you look through your sand bed, or you look through, let's say you're overfeeding the tank, and you take some of that mysus that's been sitting at the bottom of the tank for the day, and you look under the microscope at that, you're probably gonna see some urinema particles. But again, that doesn't mean the panic, oh, everyone's gonna get urinema, 'cause again, I'm feeling, and this is purely my feeling solely on what I've seen out in the industry, is that urinema's incredibly prevalent. So again, it's avoiding it before it gets in the tank. 'Cause once it's in the tank, it may not be clinical for years. You have, everything is going great, you have a power outage for a day and a half, and now everybody's stressed, and all of a sudden your urinema blew out of population, and you haven't even added a tank in six months, added a fish in six months. So again, it's all about minimizing that stress. - Well, I love green chromus, and I think I've added my last green chromus for a long time, man, you scared me straight. They're Alex, what are the signs of urinema again? So urinema has three actually different presentations. One, there's external urinema, which is what we classically see. So that's that red banding, that's the ulceration of the skin, that's sometimes they'll get like a gray color, and sometimes we'll get like plaque, so it'll be a perculum, or like a plaque-like consistency over the fish, increased mucus around the fish. That'd be like that really classic external. By the time you see the ulceration, it's essentially critical care and very intensive. So when we'll get into that, then we have internal urinema. So that's something that I've started to see more of, and I feel like it's not something that's really talked about in the hobby, but I was actually doing fecal samples in quarantine. So I take, unfortunately, I sit there, watch the fish have a bowel movement, immediately take that sample, put it under microscopy, and I was finding urinema within these fecal samples. And then I know I started to notice that once these fish that had this internal urinema, they'd actually get a bruising or ulceration from the inside out, rather than you'd think that the ulceration comes from the outside from external urinema. So when we have this internal urinema, again, much more intensive processes, topical medication isn't gonna help you. It's only a very, very intensive wound care, essentially sealing that ulcer, 'cause again, once the fish shows that ulceration, whether it's coming from the inside or the outside, that's what's gonna kill it first. The urinema isn't. What happens is we have a fish that's essentially hypotonic to the environment. So the environment in the saltwater is saltier than the fish itself. So it starts to pull fluid out through that wound. And when we start pulling fluid out through that wound, we start, we end up with renal failure and cardiac failure. So they actually die from dehydration faster than they die from the wound itself. So the moment we see a wound, that needs to be immediately sealed. So what I like to use, and again, it changes based on the instance, but actually, like mucanewa honey is actually a really nice sealant, 'cause one, it's antibacterial in itself, and two, it stays on the fish, 'cause again, topical meds on fish are a little bit difficult. But if you put a little bit of honey over that wound, one, it seals it to its antibacterial, and three, now, once we start getting meds into the fish, we can start treating the actual protozonal infection, and hopefully gives it time to recreate that barrier. - And that would be, again, the same thing for internal urine. - I was gonna ask, would UV at least help decrease the likelihood that the urinema would become active? Does that help at all if you're having running UV 24/7? - Yeah, so there's no studies that really put quantification on this, but in the way that I think about it is, let's say we have a 300-gallon tank, the amount of, let's say we're turning over, let's say, 100% volume constantly. You've got urinema in the sandbed, in the rocks, on the fish. You're only gonna get the free swimming urinema. So it's nice in theory. I think it might make people feel better, but again, I don't know if there's any definitive data that says this will lower the chances of urinema. Again, if you have a massive outbreak, potentially, yeah. But again, if it's to keep it, once it's like a subclinical level, I don't think that it's really gonna change things too much. - Is there any, I mean, I've asked a number of guests on the show about the use of UV on a reef tank, using a UV sterilizer 24/7. And I do know that the microbiome changes when you're running UV. I can't recall which, whatever the, not the disease, the microbiome or whatever like that. There's a, it has an impact on the microbiome. What's in your view, is that gonna be detrimental to the health of a reef tank? And when I use UV in my reef tanks, I know a lot of other folks use UV on their reef tanks. Their reef tanks look great. But then the other side of the coin, people are like, well, you know, it does impact the microbiome. So potentially it could impact the health of the reef tank. - Yeah, no, again, I think the, this goes back to, you know, there's, I think there's 12 different ways to do a reef tank. I think they can all be successful. I've seen, again, phenomenal tanks. I don't personally have a UV on my SPS reef. But again, that doesn't mean that I've not seen other ones that have tremendous success. Like, you know, again, I think that the corals are somewhat resilient in the microbiological populations that they can tolerate. Again, my tank, the best, the best it ever looked had a massive population of mycobacteria, which is generally known for causing disease. Again, that doesn't mean that it is causing disease. I don't think there's enough data for me to go, okay, UV good or UV bad. I think it's very situational. But again, if your corals are accustomed to living in a microbiological environment that's affected by the UV and they're growing well, I wouldn't change anything. If your corals are the exact opposite, I wouldn't change anything either. Again, I think it's consistency with coral, especially with the SPS. I think changing too many factors too fast is the quickest way that they die. I think a lot of times coral dies, not because of disease that is internal or external. I think it's environmental disease or us as reefers, you know, we always want to, you know, make things grow faster, make things have better colors and we always want to tinker. That's everyone in the reef hobby wants to occur. Yeah, exactly. And I think that tinkering, unless it's very controlled and very slow, I think that tinkering in itself causes more disease. So back on the UV, there's no correct answer. Again, I've seen both beautiful and again, both biological data. Again, maybe in the future, if we have like a side-by-side comparison where we go every, you know, every variable is the same. And again, this is incredibly hard to do with reefs, but all the variables are the same except one tank has a UV, one doesn't, and then start collecting data from there. I don't think that we'll have a definitive answer of, you know, should it be on all the time? Should it be on 12 hours? Should it be on once a week? Again, I don't think there's a definitive timeline yet. - You know, one thing I do like about using UV is the prevention of a certain strain of a dinos, right? The pre-floating dinos, I can't recall the species name. - You're welcome. - Go ahead. - Asu Paris, yep. - So I think that's a really cool benefit of the UV. That's always a good kind of way to prevent that from happening. What about, I see Sturgis Reef is asking about ozone. I would love to see an experiment if ozone has an effect on fish disease, does, would ozone make a difference in your mind? - I think on a, on a chemical level, yes. Again, I don't know, I can't say it'll help 50%. I can't say it'll help 100%. But what I've seen ozone, you know, I haven't experimented with directly, but I've experimented a lot with hydrogen peroxide, which are both essentially free radicals that damage micro cellular organisms. So I've seen really good results with hydrogen peroxide. I do dose hydrogen peroxide daily in my tanks. Again, I don't generally talk about the quantity of which I dose, just because I don't want, essentially people to misconstrue that information and then maybe be responsible for them. - It can't be risky to overdose hydrogen peroxide. - Exactly, yep. - But again, I think that that free radical antimicrobial property associated with ozone can be beneficial in preventing certain types of protozole and bacterial infection. - I've never run ozone. I guess it scares me a little bit, but, you know, I guess if you do it right, it can certainly improve the clarity of the water. And I guess there's some benefits. - I've seen massive differences, not with my own tank, but with other tanks I've seen, where I've seen the ozone off and I've seen the ozone on. Again, I've always wanted to do ozone. Again, it's just the, also the safety at home. Again, you know, having it in your home, you know, if it's leaking, if it's leaching, it just adds another level of complexity to a reason. - Scares, scares me. - Yeah, yeah, exactly. - Hey, Joe Muska, what's happening there, Joe? Great chill with a lot of info, thanks, Joe. Joe's gonna be coming on in a few weeks, looking forward to that. J. Ellis, I'm gonna mispronounce this. Are you looking at the chat? - I have a guess. - Yeah. - So that's-- - Go ahead, you read it. - That's another species of scotiociliacite. It's associated with the urinema family. It's hard to say how common these types of species are, 'cause again, once we start getting down, you know, with the microscopy, diagnosing scotiociliacites, once you know what you're looking at, you know, okay, that's urinema, or urinema-like organism. And that's what I tend to say is urinema-like organism. I typically, again, you'd have to do something called new age PCR testing. And again, that's incredibly expensive, 'cause then they start working out the DNA and they go, okay, this DNA is associated with X, and that's looking for a particular organism. Like the aqua-biomics is essentially comparing PCR to, you know, an already known database, whereas this would be looking at a new organism and trying to figure out its DNA from essentially, you know, the building blocks in the beginning. So again, it's not, I can't say how common that species of urinema-like organism or scotiociliacite, but I can say that urinema-like organisms or scotiociliacites in general are very common. - So we, you mentioned, I asked you a question about dinos, or we talked about dinos, and I see a couple of people in the chat are asking questions about dinos. "AcroKiller, what's your experience with dino treatment?" And he's also, or she is asking about, what about the non-free-flowing dinos? So yeah, I mean, Alex, if you don't have the free-floating variety of dinos, is what's the best course of action, would you say, for trying to get rid of those more stubborn variety of those dinos? - So again, this is right, lean back on microscopy. I look on the microscope, what species am I looking at? That really depends on how I treat or move further. In certain species, it's just weight amount. Some species, it's, you know, block the light out. Other species, again, there's some theoreticals of dosing silicates that have the diatoms out, compete them. So again, it's knowing what you're treating. And again, a lot of times with all these, you know, microbiological diseases without microscopy, can you know what you're doing? You know, again, it's just now, it's like, okay, we know they're dinos, but again, what species? How do they react? What do they react to? Sometimes, again, certain species will react well to dosing hydrogen peroxide. Other species, I haven't seen the same type of response. And again, in certain species, we just weight them out and go, okay, I'm just not adding any coral. I'm not gonna add anything that's gonna eat those dinos. 'Cause again, they can be toxic. So again, I'm not gonna add up a cleanup crew. I know some people go, oh, it looks like algae, throwing a cleanup crew, and then they wake up tomorrow morning and there's 100 dead snails and they'll be an ammonia spike. So again, I just, sometimes again, I let it sit really depends on the species that we're dealing with. - Does it make sense to do a three, four, five day blackout? I mean, obviously there's gonna be a risk to corals if you have corals in the tank. But is that just a band-aid? - I've seen it work well. I've seen it work firsthand. But again, it's knowing the species. So if we go, okay, it's osteoparas, let me go, okay, we'll weight it out, see what it does. We know it's toxic. We're gonna extra carbon just to make sure if there's any dino toxins that are being leached out. But again, it's not a cure-all, but it's not a bad idea. Especially if you're really paying attention to your corals. Again, if your acros were super healthy beforehand and you block 'em out for a couple days a day or two, three days, four days, you're not gonna have a problem. If you already have bleaching acros and they're already not healthy, you're gonna push them over the edge and probably cause their demise. So it's really taking the whole system together and going, okay, I know my acros are healthy, my water chemistry is spot on for whatever reason, we're having a bloom, then you know what? Blackout's not unreasonable. And then I go, okay, the online said three to five days. I'm on day two, things aren't looking great. Put the lights back on. Don't, just because there's a written treatment, doesn't mean that we're gonna definitively follow it. If you're watching your corals die from what you're doing, it's not helping, so it's abandoned it before it's too late. - Yeah, there's a lot of things you kind of read that I think it's anecdotal and perhaps there's not a lot of science behind it. I mean, another thing that I always read about Dinos that people give advice on is to try to increase the biodiversity in the tank, add a lot of pods, dose of phytoplankton. In your experience, are those good things to do? - I think adding pods, no. Dosing phytoplankton, potentially. If it's like a diet's diatomaceous type of algae, then sometimes those can out-compete the dinoflagellates. But again, I wouldn't add anything that's gonna potentially eat the dinoflagellates. They themselves are quite toxic, so anything that eats them is just gonna die. So again, it's something that out-compete them. So let's say something that's growing or they're using nutrients, et cetera. Again, there's some literature that suggests dosing silicates. So then now the diatom, the diatom start growing more and then they start to out-compete. Again, not a bad idea, but again, it really comes down to also the question of why, what's happening and it's causing these dinoflagellates to happen. Again, is there a lighting issue? Is there, again, sometimes I see where we have like a tank in a living room where there's a lot of like natural light or like, you know, for a couple hours of the day, the sun is beaming on the tank. Sometimes we create an environment that's causing these dinoflagellates to start to bloom out of control. - What about, what about, you know, you mentioned sandbed before and some people use haptanks with bare bottom. Some people have sandbeds. Is the likelihood of fish disease going to be higher if you got a sandbed because there's potentially more surface area for, you know, these pathogens to take hold onto? - For sure. So if you have like, you're an ima, that's like perforating in the sandbed, you have essentially, you know, a breeding ground for bacteria. You have a breeding ground for, you know, those types of processes. There's a lot of other faults that come with a sandbed. Again, especially like sulfur dioxide pop growth or accumulation within the sandbed. That being said, I have a sandbed in my tank just because I like the aesthetic of it. I don't, again, this is just a personal preference. I don't like the aesthetic of a bare bottom tank, but in terms of bare bottom tanks, it's a lot easier. One, you can scrape the bottoms really easy. Two, you know, again, you're not having that same type of, you know, sand accumulation and chemical accumulation. If you do have a sandbed, it becomes, again, if you let it sit, you know, again, we have certain sandbeds that'll sit for 10 years. That essentially, if that gets stirred up, we'll kill the entire tank. So it's really maintaining, if you're gonna do the sandbed, and again, I agree with the aesthetics of a sandbed, it's really maintaining that sandbed and making sure that there isn't this accumulation of dead food, necrotic material, things that are, again, other sulfur compounds. So again, I think, you know, a healthy sandbed, I think it's healthy for a reef. I think a sandbed that's sitting there for a really long period of time isn't healthy or becomes unhealthy if stirred up. So again, when I'm more religious with my sandbed cleaning, you know, clean it, you know, vacuum out the whole sandbed once a week. But again, I wouldn't, if I haven't touched it in, you know, let's say a couple months, I wouldn't just do all the sandbed in one sitting. I'd do like an eighth of it, and then I'd weigh it a day, make sure the carbon's good, do a water change, et cetera. And I don't wanna stir too much up and then just do little, little, little parts. Again, even if it's, you know, a couple square centimeter, a couple inch centimeter, you know, area, clean that part, and then don't touch the rest of the sandbed. If you stir up the whole sandbed at once, you're gonna end up killing everything. - So you're an advocate, basically, of slighting the sandbed every so often to help keep that from building up. - What about going the route of not doing this siphoning, but having a cleanup crew kind of doing that work for you? Is that an alternative, or is that in your view, not as valuable to siphoning? - I think it helps, and it helps, 'cause again, we've got, you know, sand sets, you know, snails, everyone stirring the sandbed, but that does not replace vacuuming out. Again, it helps, I think it's a huge part of it, but again, there's nothing that will replace actually vacuuming out that sandbed. There's nothing else that's gonna take out these really noxious compounds other than actually removing them from the tank. - Shifting gears a little bit here. You mentioned antibiotics that you always hesitant to to use antibiotics to treat, you know, certain fish diseases and what have you. What about to treat algae, cyanobacteria, that sort of thing? You know, you've got chemi-clean to treat cyanol, you've got fluconazole, which is, I guess, an antifungal medication to treat bryopsis. What are your thoughts on using chemicals in a mixed reef system for that purpose? - Yeah, so there's always, immediately right off the bat, there's always a risk. And again, as long as that's a risk that you're willing to take, then again, each case is individual. Again, I'm not an advocate of just dumping antibiotics. Anti-fungals or anti, you know, alga-sides, et cetera, different story, but antibiotics, like chemi-clean, that's erythromycin. I see it work, but I don't, I think that there's other better alternatives than just dumping an antibiotic into a reef. When you dump an antibiotic into a reef, especially like azithromycin, that is not a very selective antibiotic. And you're gonna end up, you know, wiping out a lot of other good beneficial bacteria. Again, that doesn't mean, yeah, we see it work, we see it removes that cyanol. But again, there's an environmental reason of why that cyanol is occurring. So I think addressing that environmental reason, whether that be your nutrient levels, whether that be the lights, whether that be the sand beds not being stirred, whether that, you know, again, there's a bunch of different factors that get associated with cyanol. Again, I think chemi-clean is a quick fix to it. But again, I think one, it'll probably come back. And two, we're now exposing bacteria to this, you know, antibiotic. And again, it just creates an environment for resistance. So again, that's where, you know, my veterinary hat comes on. And I say, we don't treat with antibiotics unless we have either A, at a bare minimum, microbiological, you know, images of a bacteria that I can go, this is gram negative. We know what type of bacteria in some cases. And then what is it generally susceptible to? And then the gold standard is sensitivity. In terms of the alga sides, when they work, they do what they need to do. We're not gonna get the same sort of resistance that we see with the antibiotics. But then at the same time is why do we have... Why do we have bryopsis in the beginning? You know, again, was it just a dirty rock? Or again, are there nutrient levels that are creating an environment for this, perhaps, is to grow? 'Cause again, you can always, again, manual removal is a wonderful thing. A lot of people, for whatever reason, don't like to do that. Again, I wouldn't wanna sit there for a couple hours picking bryopsis out of my tank. But again, manual removal is the safest option. But, you know, alga sides, again, there's always a possibility of side effects. There's always a possibility of overdose. But again, it's not the same type of risk as using antibiotics. I always feel like there's, you know, kind of a collateral damage. Well, you know, you put in, like, fluconazole. I just recently put in some fluconazole. And yeah, it knocked out the bryopsis, but then I had some diatoms that popped up, a little cyanol popped up. So it's kind of like that, you know, you're solving one problem, but you're creating other problems, it seems like. - Yeah, exactly, exactly. And again, it's just not worth the risk to hurting the coral, hurting the fish, et cetera. So again, it's, you know, risk reward. And a lot of times I think using these, like, broad spectrum meds, there's a lot higher risk than the reward. - What are your thoughts in terms of, we're getting into the antibiotic discussion here in terms of corals, oxalenic acid, you know, that's a antibiotic, the protocol that was just published in Coral magazine for dipping and for in-tank treatment. I've used it a few years ago and, you know, it certainly helped my situation 'cause I had a lot of, you know, STN going on, some RTN with corals and it was happening more frequently. And then I treated this particular display tank with oxalenic acid and those episodes stopped, you know, and they haven't returned since. And it was kind of, you know, for me, it was a last ditch thing. I'd done an aqua biomics and I'd gotten back a report. There was, you know, certainly some coral pathogens in the tank, but what are your thoughts? You know, I get a lot of people reaching out to me, it's like, oh, what's your, you know, protocol for ROA and, you know, blah, blah, blah. And I always try to tell people that's the last resort. That's something that you should really not try to do. You don't want to, like, make a habit of putting antibiotics into your tank, create that resistance down the road. It's an easy thing to do, but it's something that I think there's other overriding issues perhaps that is causing that stuff to happen. But I'm just curious in terms of your thoughts and oxalenic acid specifically. - So oxalenic acid is a fluoroquinolone antibiotic. It's extremely broad spectrum. And so it's going to hit everything. Oxalo-derivative that's really commonly used of oxalenic acid is enrofloxacin, also known as betrel. Again, I think it has a wonderful time in a place, but dumping it directly into the reef unless I had cultural data, culture data. So some of the, again, for another discussion, what poll reef is something that we've been taking STN samples, RTN samples, and getting this culture data. And again, I think there's better medications that are more selective for the antibody or for the microbes that we're trying to treat. I think oxalenic acid is essentially like a slightly less than a shotgun treatment, but it is a shotgun treatment in itself. And I think there's much more specific antibiotics we could be using that would then target the pathogens in question, not just everything. Again, and again, if we're having, you know, again, in your issue, you know, again, we're having RTN or having STN. And again, you want to do something. Again, that one off, yeah, again, we got the result. It's a good result. But again, now if everyone starts doing that type of procedure, that's when we develop resistance. Again, everyone, there was a while, again, we're siprofloxis and was the new drug and everyone was going to sipro this and sipro that. And then over time, again, it worked for a little bit. And then now we just see resistance sipro strains. Again, a lot of the culture data that we send out that comes back as sipro resistant, is that just because it's just, you know, those microbes are naturally resistant to sipro or has, you know, us as a hobby started to really culture bacteria that is resistant to siprofloxacin. So again, I don't want to see the same thing happen to be true. I don't want to see the same thing happen oxalenic acid. So that as a Hail Mary, it's hard because again, in an individual case, you can go, it may help, but as a broad spectrum, you know, if every reefer in America starts doing that exact protocol, there's going to be a point where it's not going to work and we're going to start seeing more detrimental things. The other thing that I do become fearful about is that the, you know, it's called zoonosis or when a disease comes from animals and it goes into people. And sometimes we do see bacterial infections from coral or fish that do get into people. And if we start using, you know, and refloxacin or oxalenic acid, which are essentially big heavy hitters, now we've resistance to that. And now you have a bacterial infection that you created in your home, that's now in your finger, that's when things start to get really dramatic. So again, that's why I'm really big on this culture and sensitivity. 'Cause again, that, then I go, I know that this medication is going to kill this bacteria. Not, oh, I hope it just kills the bad ones. I hope it gets, you know, things normalize out. Again, in an instance, you look at it and you go, that's great. But as an overall whole, we go, okay, if we do the same protocol a thousand times, are we going to get the same result? Or at the same time in your case, did the oxalenic acid help? Or if you just poured, you know, magic water in there, would we have gotten the same result? And there's no way for us to know unless we had double blind clinical studies. But again, doing that and reef keeping is incredibly hard. You know, would that disease have, you know, was that the disease process? And it followed its normal course or did that antibiotic do something? So that's when we start going, okay, we take a sample, we see that it has X bacteria, we see the sensitivity, we start treating it. We either see it starts to get better, it starts to get worse. Again, even if it got better, that doesn't mean that the antibiotic made the coral better. It means that the coral, either A, photographed itself, or B, that the antibiotic helped. Once we have that, then we go, okay, we start seeing patterns. And then once we start seeing patterns, we go, okay, can we start to predict what type of bacteria? Can we start to predict what type of antibiotic? So again, I don't immediately jump into just dumping in OA and saying, okay, we'll see what helps for the best. - What are some best practices or what are some things that reef keepers can do if they start seeing RTN, STN? What are some of the things they can do to help treat those corals without antibiotics? - So again, my theory on RTN and STN is that it's not necessarily one disease process that's happening. It's not like, oh, they have X bacteria, and this is what's causing it. I think that RTN, STN are a way that necrosis or death is happening. So it's a clinical symptom rather than a direct sign of a disease. So I think that again, same thing with like brown jelly. I think that that's just the type of coagulotative necrosis that is happening due to a process that we don't know. But that doesn't mean that that one process is the only way that that happens. So again, you can always try broad spectrum, essentially antimicrobials like iodine. Again, unless if you had no microbiological data, iodine is always a relatively safe bath type to use. And again, it is very broad spectrum and we don't get the same type of resistance to antibiotics. So again, iodine is a good one because you can get beta dying at CVS. So it's something that you can always have in your house. You don't have the risks to yourself. You really don't have the risks to the coral. So that one I do like for areas, if I have no antibiotics, no microbiological data. I have no idea what's happening and I just wanna stop the necrosis process. I think iodine is the way to go. Does it make sense to dip all incoming corals in some sort of antibiotic dip or iodine? - So antibiotic dip, no. 'Cause I don't, again, I don't wanna just start exposing bacteria to the dip and that being said, certain antibiotics are something called concentration dependent and certain antibiotics are something called time dependent. So in a concentration dependent antibiotic, the concentration of the drug needs to be at a certain threshold for it to kill the bacteria. Certain antibiotics, it doesn't matter what the concentration is, it just needs to be the time. So again, it really depends on what you're using. If you're using a bacteriostatic time dependent antibiotic, you dipping it, did nothing other than just sensitize the bacteria. It's not gonna kill it, it's not gonna treat it, it's not gonna do anything. So it really depends on the antibiotic that you're using. So again, antibiotics, time dependent, concentration dependent, but they're also either bacterial cycle, which means they kill the microbes, they kill the microbes, they kill the bacteria, or they're bacteriostatic. And all that means is it just stops replication and stopping replication then allows the body to kill the bacteria. So again, if you're just using a bacteriostatic antibiotic, that's a time dependent concentration or time dependent mechanism of action, dipping it has done absolutely nothing other than show the antibiotic to the bacteria and then they already start to build resistance to it. - This is scary stuff, man. (laughing) Every time I get into these kind of conversations, it's like, man, it's just like, there's just so many things that could happen. I mean, I didn't realize that you can get pathogens coming in on snail shells. That it's a good thing to get quarantine cleanup crew because that's a way that things can get into a tank. And I'd imagine that things can get into the tank so it's via a water transfer from-- - Yeah, there is the best way to not have reef diseases quarantine. You could treat until you're blue in the face. If you had beautiful quarantine from the beginning, your problems are gonna be so much easier. Again, especially now, we have, especially in a reef system, this is where things try to get really complicated, is that there's so many different organisms of so many different kingdoms and species, et cetera, is that when we use a drug, a drug is targeting a specific pathway in X organism. That doesn't mean that it doesn't target pathways in other organisms. So like, let's say we had red bugs in the tank, and again, the common treatment is the mobile mice and oxamine. But-- - Interceptor. - That pathway is also the same neuro pathway in crabs. So now we're killing all the crabs and snails trying to treat for the red bugs. So it's, once they're in the system, again, there's always gonna be bystander effects, and that's why we're really trying to treat at a very specific level, at a very, we know, okay, at this pathway, this drug will only treat, you know, let's say red bugs, or let's say, you know, tagasties of any species, rather than, okay, it's gonna hit everything that's an arthropod. - Yeah, I mean, and, you know, now, you know, people, I think, again, anecdotally, are saying there's different types of bugs out there that come into the reef tank. So as a red bug, you've got white bugs, you've got black bugs. Who knows what kind of colors are out there, and they're all different, you know, resistance, it seems like. So you've got to hit the, I guess, the black bugs, harder than you hit the red bugs. You know, I mean, I do have a microscope, it's like a $200 microscope, and that's certainly helpful, and I always, you know, suggest people out there spend a couple of hundred bucks on a decent microscope, 'cause you can see the, you can actually see the bugs with the naked eye, but the microscope, I think you could at least identify the color on 'em and stuff like that. But yeah, you know, so again, it's kind of like, you've got different things going on with different, you know, varieties of pests in the tank. So it's, you know, I've had a, I set up a coral quarantine tank. When I bring in new corals, it's like a 20 gallon fish tank, and in my quarantine system, I've got a heater, I've got a light because there's corals in there, you know, you wanna make sure that they're gonna be in there at least for 30 days. So I always add a light, and what else? I got a recirculating pump in there, and then I hit the tank. I dip acrofrags like once a week in KCL, potassium chloride, and then I'll also, twice over the 30 day period, use the interceptor for the bugs. But I mean, you know, it's something, right? I mean, it's something to help to try to prevent those kind of pests from coming in. You know, the bugs, I think, are easy to solve in terms of doing an in-tank interceptor treatment. Like you said, though, you gotta have some collateral damage with, you know, shrimp and, you know, your cleanup crew is gonna be susceptible and all that stuff. Certain parts of that cleanup crew. But then acro-weating flourms. That's not a fun one to have. - No, absolutely not. So in terms of in-tank treatment, there is no great options right now. Again, that's something that we're working at Polterief to work on something of that nature. Again, with the acro-flats, all the information that I can give right now is check coral before it goes in the tank. I promise you, if you don't put an acro-weating flatworm in your tank, you will never have acro-weating flourms. That being said, I see people, they'll buy a big colony and they're really excited to get it in their tank. And the thing is, you can't check all those branches. Again, when I do my coral examination, I check every single branch under first my naked eye with a headlamp, followed by microscope, followed by, it's called the triocular scope. And essentially, that's a scope that lets me look at the surface of the coral. And I will look through every branch, every polyp, every part of that coral until, and then put it back in quarantine, let it sit, and then I'll check it again. Let it sit in quarantine for a week or two. Then check it again. That's how I guarantee you, you will not have flourms. You don't put them in the tank. Again, even people, I'll see, you know, people get into coral, they'll give it a quick 30 second look, swish it around in some dip and say that there's no eggs on there. Again, if you have a colony, if you have a frag, you should spend five minutes staring at that frag, look at every bit of tissue. Again, some of those eggs are completely micro, really small. You miss two of those eggs, and now you won't know that you have a problem until six months, a year from now, two years from now. So again, it's really being very vigilant. There's nothing that'll ever replace vigilance and watching your coral. Again, if you see something again, is there a color off? Is there a spot? And again, that's why I like to try ocular scopes. 'Cause then I image the, you know, image the parasites, and I get to see again, is there movement? Is there a type of coral tissue moving in a way that I expected not to be moving? Again, a reef tank, or successful reefers, or someone who looks at their coral, and they could tell on a day to day, is that coral looking good? Does it look bad? Is it having a feeding response? And they go, oh, you know, every three days, I know that this coral does X. Those are the ones who really, you know, sit there and stare and watch their tank, and they know exactly what their corals are doing. And again, the moment they feel something's wrong, you pull it out and you go, oh, there's flatworms. Oh, there's, you know, red bugs. Oh, there's other types of coral disease that are happening here. So again, it's all about the vigilance. Again, hopefully through polo, we can come up with a treatment for these types of diseases in tank. But again, until that time, it's keeping vigilance, again, pulling them out. Again, you can always, you know, pull them out, remove all the adults, remove all the eggs, leave it in quarantine, check in a couple of days, pull them out. Again, the life cycle of the acropower, eating flour, or one of the species, 'cause again, I think there's multiple species, and there's definitely been multiple species that we've seen in the hobby, but that haven't been described. Average is about 21 days from the time that they lay eggs to the next replication cycle. At 78 degrees Fahrenheit. So again, if there's slight variations in that, again, checking, you know, once a week is what I like to say, and then just make sure that there's no eggs, nothing like that. 'Cause again, some of these flatworms can be, you know, an inch long, others can be a couple millimeters. So I tend to post a lot of these different types of flatworms on my Instagram page. - If you have, you got flatworms on some prags, and let's say there's some eggs that you don't see, but you're doing weekly dips, and you're doing weekly dips for, let's say, two months. Will that break the life cycle? Even if you have eggs that you didn't remove? - I say on a pharmacological level, maybe on a, in an anecdotal level, I say yes and no. 'Cause again, we're not, you know, are we, you know, is it the actual drug that's killing them, or is it you're just swishing them off and they fall off? There's too many variables and too much user error that, you know, can be associated with these types of dips. And again, there's, you know, is there anti-helmetic compounds that can be used to kill these worms? Yes, it's just, are these anti-helmetic compounds, do they have any risks to the coral? And that has yet to be determined and at a full, you know, clinical length, you know, duration style of testing. So sometimes I say people can remove them, but again, is that if you just dip them in saltwater and you shook them really hard and you knock the adults off and you keep doing that before they reach, so there's a certain time, you know, the egg hatches, the adult has to reach sexual maturity and lay more eggs. So if you knock that, you know, that flatworm off before it's an adult and before it reaches sexual maturity, you can essentially eradicate them just by knocking them off. It's just, so is the dip the part that's killing them, probably not? Is it just, you know, the viscosity and the shaking in the water, maybe? But that's the, you know, the only way to really break that cycle. - Yeah, I mean, I've used potassium chloride, like I mentioned, and, you know, it causes them to implode, right? Because it's basically sucking out all the water inside the flatworm, that's my understanding in terms of what's going on with potassium chloride. So I've seen them like disintegrate. - In certain instances in the analysis, this is just overriding certain neurologic functions. But again, it does seem to work anecdotally and that's the problem with reef keeping is that there's no, again, we don't have enough people, there's not enough funding and there's not enough, you know, time and energy into like a double blind study. You know, you have someone who goes, oh, I dumped in X medication and the flatworms work. There's no way to prove, there's no way to disprove it. And a lot of people, I think every reefer is looking for that, like, magic medication that they pour in their reef and the reef looks amazing and they have no parasites whatsoever. But again, I think it's a lot more in detail of, you know, how are these medications working, you know? You're saying, oh, this medication works by X, but then how's the pharmacological data showing X? And how is that working mechanistically? Like does it even make sense at a physical and chemical level that the drug you're saying you're putting in treats X? So like there's like a lot of people or a lot of, you know, notion about like chloroquine phosphate. Like, oh, chloroquine phosphate works for certain diseases. Like the main mechanism of chloroquine phosphate is to prevent essentially like a breakdown of heme or a breakdown of blood. And that breakdown product is no longer toxic. So before we break it down, it's toxic. So what the chloroquine phosphate does is essentially blocks that pathway, blocks the breakdown, which creates a toxic buildup in the organism. So then when you tell me that that medication is doing X or it's killing X parasite, but that parasite's not ingesting blood, the mechanism of action at the beginning is faulty. That doesn't mean that it didn't kill it, but again, by the means that you're telling me that medication is working, doesn't make sense on a pharmacological level. - So back to the, I guess the topic or question I had about doing weekly dips, let's assume that whatever you're using, whether it's KCL or some other, you know, dip to eradicate the that flatworms, let's say that it's 100% success. Let's say it kills every flatworm that you put into that dip, you know, whatever the degree that you're using in terms of the potency of those dips. Let's just say it's 100% legal to any living flatworm on the coral. But like I said, you still perhaps have some eggs. If you do weekly dips for, and this is kind of a good dovetail with the reef keepers question in terms of their life cycle, if you do weekly dips for a certain period of time, let's say it's, you know, two months, three months or something like that, will that in theory break that life cycle if you're killing every- - Okay. 'Cause that's one question the reef keepers ask, can you ask in terms of what that life cycle is? And if you were to remove all acros and encrusting, you know, in the tank on the rocks, I guess, how long would you need to leave that tank without acros? So if you were advising somebody that wanted to try to do this, pull out all the acros, get all the encrustation off the rocks, acro-free tank, how long should somebody keep that tank acro-free? - So the short answer or shorter end of the spectrum would be 45 days. I always like to be really paranoid in my medicine and if I'm going, okay, if they're out for 45 days, why not be safer and do 60? Just because I know at 21 days, that's at least three cycles. So I know that we're past that point of where there could be more. Again, let's say, you know, you had one that was 21 days, but you just had a baby that reached sexual maturity. So now you got to wait another. So 45 days at short, but at least, you know, I say 60 because I like to be, again, if I'm already doing it for 45 days, I might as well go for the 60. - Right, better safe than sorry. - Yeah, again, and then there's nothing more frustrating than 45 days, you put the acros back in and now we've got flatworms again. - Right. What about the eggs? I've been told that eggs can lay dormant for years and that potentially you can have some acro-weighting flatworms hatch out of those eggs after being dormant after years. Is that something that you've seen some science behind? Is that plausible? - So I haven't seen anything that suggests that. I haven't read anything that suggests that. That being said, there's very little data regarding that. Again, they're an insisted state. So there is some plausibility that that could be true. The nice thing about the eggs themselves is that they're much easier to see than the actual adult flatworm. Again, flatworms, they could be incredibly small. The nice thing about the eggs is that they're always, always, always going to be on dead tissue and/or around the base. If you've got a nice healthy branch, I've never, and I've never seen a report, I've never seen eggs on healthy tissue. So if I go, okay, if I've got a big acro colony, it doesn't mean that there's not a thousand adults in the top, but if I look at the bottom, I look at the areas that are bare and I see no eggs, then I go, okay, there's most likely no eggs here. They don't, again, as far as I'm aware and as far as I see, they do not lay eggs on healthy tissue. Again, if somebody has pictures and data saying that they do, I'd love to see it, 'cause then it would change the way that I talk about flatworms. But as of now, from my experiences and from other people's experiences in the hobby, it's always on dead tissue. That doesn't mean that you've got a big colony and one branch is dead and then you look in the center and then on that dead branch, you have those eggs, but again, it's always gonna be on dead tissue. So again, that's where you start to really, again, you comb through that entire colony, but again, around those edges of the bottom, around any dead tissue, around any part, that's like on the rock connected to the tissue, that's where you're gonna find them. That's where you should spend extra care looking for those eggs. - Does, what was I gonna ask you in terms of the acroRNA flowers? - So in terms of the ways to prevent the spread of them, I mean, there's been a few different in-tank treatments out there. I'm gonna mention one Kasey flatworm stop. There's a lot of people that really feel like they've used that product and it solved their issues. Wormwood is like a homemade type of remedy that you see people talking about. What, you know, and in terms of all this anecdotal stuff that you see, some people have success and others don't, is it could that be due to the different varieties of flatworm or these current in-tank treatments that are being sold right now, it's just not bulletproof? Or are they just reducing populations and it seems like the problem has gone away? - I think a combination of everything you said - It's my answer to my own question there, huh? - The problem is again, there's so many, again, I think there's so many different types. I think they all have different susceptibilities. I think they all have again, slightly different life cycles. Again, the life cycle we were talking about before was purely, and again, I don't remember the Latin, emusculio, et cetera. That was for that one species. That doesn't mean that the purple variety, that doesn't mean that the larger variety or the smaller variety act in the same manner. So again, there may be some differences in A, the medication, B, the size of the tank, or what the dosage, again, a lot of people really like to overdose these medications. But the problem is that a lot of these in tank treatments are under, essentially like their proprietary ingredients. So they don't tell you what's in the bed. And that's where I have my problem. And again, I get that it's a business and that they don't want people to copy of that. It makes perfect sense. But then when you're telling me, like you're not telling me what the medication is. And if that medication even theoretically works, again, if I say, oh, we're putting iodine in the tank or we're going to treat flatworms, it's not going to do anything. So again, if that bottle is just full of iodine, it's not going to do anything and it's not going to hurt anything. So again, unless I know what compound is in those medications, can I say if they'll even work at a theoretical level? - Right, and you mentioned iodine and a lot of these products have a lot of iodine in them. And if you go very heavy on those kind of dosing regiments, then that's potentially a whole nother host of issues because then you're going to have extremely high iodine, which is not good. - Yes. - Well, I will be watching very closely with the Polar Reef videos to see what goes on with that research because if you can crack that nut in terms of an in-tank treatment for aggregating flatworms, that would be frickin' huge. - Yeah, it's something that we're working very actively on. - That would be incredible because I don't really think there's been a lot of research done on that topic. So that would be groundbreaking. All right, let's switch gears. And folks, I see there's a few questions in the chat. If you want to drop some more questions in the chat for Alex, please go for it. Anthony has a question about clams. What Dr. Hall's opinion on sudden clam death deaths in a quarantine protocol for incoming clams because cause of death of clams at Polar Reef question work. So, Alex, clams, what can you tell us about clams? - So I can't comment directly on the ones at Polar Reef. That being said, it really comes down to the size of the clam, right? So if we have, you know, a one inch maxima, I think a lot of their death is attributed to either A, poor water quality. Again, a lot of reef reef keepers who are keeping acros, we already know that's not the problem. The next one comes from actually feeding mechanisms. And I think a lot of these clams, especially the smaller, the smaller the clam, the more it needs to eat. Clams that are under, you know, two inches, essentially they eat and they also have their mantle, essentially that pretty tissue that we look at that's photosynthetic. When we have a clam that is under two inches, that mantle, the surface area of that mantle, isn't enough or can't generate enough energy for the volume of that clam. So clams under two inches, or even, you know, slightly bigger, the volume of tissue is too much for that mantle to sustain. So that means that they need to eat an incredible amount. So again, when we have tiny clams, they should be eating, you know, 10 times a day, 15 times a day. And again, that becomes really, really intensive. 'Cause again, you know, they're essentially when we're culturing them or growing them in green tinted water, they're always, they're always essentially eating. So then now it goes to your home, you have this tiny little baby clam, you know, you find a little place for it and you feed it, even if you're crazy and you're feeding it four times a day, a lot of the times that's not enough actual sustenance for the clam to survive. Once they start growing, you know, they're three inches, four inches, that mantle and that surface area of that mantle then creates enough energy through photosynthesis for the clam to survive. So I think a lot of deaths associated with little clams are associated due to lack of feeding. - Interesting, you know, it's just, and I've talked a lot about this, you know, years and years ago when I used to keep clams, it seemed like clams were very hardy. It was kind of rare to see them die, but the last 10 years or so, 15 years or so, it seems like to be a very big challenge. Is that due to the size of the clams that are in the marketplace today for sale that they're smaller than they used to be? - That's what I suspect. Again, well, 'cause again, 10, 15 years ago, we didn't really have captive breeding. Again, those were already adult clams. They came in, they were three, four, five, six inches. At that point, now you put it in an acro-quality water. It's got really nice high quality light. Again, now they live, but now these babies, they need to be eating so frequently that without that constant feeding, I think that a lot of the times that's why they're passing. Again, that doesn't mean that there's not, you know, viral infections and bacterial infections, but the more that I've delved into them, I'm not seeing evidence of bacterial infection. And again, viral infection is a whole different, you know, ball game of testing and, you know, et cetera. Whereas I see the clams that are eating, you know, essentially, you know, 20 times a day, et cetera. But I'm not saying now, just dump food in your tank 20 times a day. That's why it becomes hard. You know, you get target feeding, these guys becomes a real challenge. And again, and no one has time to do that. So again, I tend to like my clams a little bit on the larger side before, you know, again, I know that a clam that this big is gonna be a real challenge. And again, if you're up for the challenge of feeding that, and keeping it alive, again, it's very difficult. So does it make sense to quarantine clams, especially small ones? Yes, I say quarantine everything. 'Cause again, you don't know where that came from. Is there, you know, an ix, you know, cyst on it? And now you're bringing ik into your tank. But again, if you have the ability to quarantine it and feed it appropriately with really good, high quality water, then I say quarantine them. Again, if you don't have those capabilities and it's a captive bread clam, the likelihood of them having disease that's affecting your fish is extremely low, but it doesn't mean that it's impossible. And again, if that clam doesn't eat for, you know, let's say it's a baby and it's metabolizing that food pretty much as soon as it's going in, you know, it'll starve in only a matter of days. Yeah, you know, it's interesting. I love clams. I love, you know, the keep and all that stuff. I've just been a little gun shy. Yeah, no, it's definitely, especially, you know, them being so small, I think is the problem. But again, that doesn't mean that there's not a viral, you know, disease that's passing around to all of our tanks that we just don't know exists yet. So we, I mentioned potassium chloride a couple of times. E-I-Y Kumar, what's Alex's opinion on potassium-based dips? Do you, do you favor them or do you favor other types of dips? Depends what I'm treating for it. For the acroflats, it's generally towards more anti-helmetic medication. That's not like a broad spectrum irritant, but rather it's directly targeting, you know, nervous system components, directly targeting, digestive system components, directly targeting, you know, the essentially the epithelium or lack there of epithelium of the flatworm that's going to, you know, change the osmo regulation processes. So in terms of my dips, I tend to be very specific and I go, okay, I'm treating this parasite. I know that this X chemical does Y mechanism of action and this is what I'm going for based on a theoretical and chemical level. If I don't have those, again, they work, they're irritating. I think a lot of times these dips, you know, you end up knowing that the parasite's there, not necessarily that you're treating it, but knowing that it's there is 75% of the battle. Again, knowing that, okay, I know this frag has acropore eating flatworms, is the first part of not having acro eating flatworms in your main display. - Yeah, yeah. Once they get in, tough to get rid of. - Incredibly. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, so, you know what, one last question for you and then we'll wrap it, DNA testing. You know, there's a DNA test that acro biomics does to help people identify certain parasites in our reef tanks. Is this something that, you know, makes sense for us reef keepers to do on a, you know, semi-regular basis. You know, I always, you know, people always talk about ICP testing that even when your tank is doing well, that it makes sense to do ICP testing because you have a benchmark or a baseline in terms of, you know, how the tank is functioning with certain, you know, traces in the, certain levels of traces in the tank. What about DNA testing or even like just the typical microbiome testing? Is that something, even though it is a longer turnaround time that, you know, you mentioned that there is issues with those guys in the turnaround time and I know they're trying to work on that to make it quicker turnaround time. But does it make sense for folks, you know, the average real reef keeper to do microbiome testing, DNA testing, just to, you know, see they have a certain baseline of pathogens or certain bacteria strains in there, does, or is that, you know, potentially going to be raising red flags and causing people to do things they shouldn't be doing? - I think it definitely gives, you know, people a place to start looking. You know, again, we go, okay, we have this disease. Now we're, again, I think it's always hard to look for things that you don't know exist and I think it's always hard to look for things that you don't know are there. So if they go, oh, we're seeing this. Now take a special close look at where would I find X parasite? You know, now I know it's here on a DNA level. You know, now if I see something weird, can I attribute it to that or is it something else? I think it's a really nice benchmark for people to, you know, start to describe what's happening. I don't think it's an end all be all, but I think it's definitely a good data and a half again, especially if you go, you know, it's been a couple of years and everything looks good and then all the things things change and we send out and we see something change in that, again, I think that's good data to have. It's not right now. It's not the best in terms of like clinical situation wise. So like, I have a fish I need to treat right this second. But again, if we go, oh, okay, we started seeing some waxing and waiting over the past month, then we wait for that data. It comes in and it shows us that, you know, a certain process is happening or certain disease process is happening. Then we go, okay, let's hone in on that. You know, where can I, you know, how can I find that? Can I confirm that it's being a problem? Or again, is it just an incidental finding? So again, I wouldn't get crazy and immediately start medicating my tank. I go, okay, you know, it says that I have, you know, let's say, you know, your name on the tank. You know, if I start doing scale scrapes and I see that it's not present, okay, I know it's in the tank, but I know it's not causing clinical disease at this time. Then if I start seeing, oh, that fish looks a little discolored. I know that's a sign of your anema. I know it's in the tank. Now we can either A, scrape it fast. You know, you're gonna pick up on that, scrape it. Oh, we see that this fish does have your anema. That test told us it's in the tank. We know we, you know, we didn't wait a couple days to see if it was just sandy. We didn't wait to see if it was just stressed out. You know, we were more active because we knew that that parasite was already present. So again, the faster that we treat these diseases, especially in fish and coral, faster the disease process is identified. The faster the disease process is treated, the success rate is exponential. Again, if I have a fish with your anema and again, I wait two days, dead. If I start treating immediately and I start getting really aggressive with anti-protersal medication, I start getting intraceulomic antibiotics, intraceulomic, anti-protezols, then the risk of the reward is much higher and the likelihood of death is much less. 'Cause again, the moment like with the your anema, we have an opening or an ulceration within the fish. Now we have a bacterial infection on top of that. If you have an ulceration, I can guarantee you this bacterial. So now we're not only treating your anema type infection, but we're now treating a bacterial infection. So the quicker that we diagnose the your anema and we prevent that ulceration from happening and we prevent secondary bacterial infection, the likelihood of success is much higher. So by having this acobiomics data and by having going, oh, I know that this is present. I think it can be a little bit faster to pick up on something that's a little abnormal and then you can confirm that abnormality and then tie it back to that acobiomics data and then go, okay, I know it's here. I can see this fish is in distress. I see the clinical signs associated with what I'm seeing on the acobiomics data and that makes me act faster in treatment. - All right, one last question. I'm gonna sneak in here from Miguel M. And maybe I won't get into the specifics of the question here, but it's basically a fish reproduction question. He's got some bang eye cardinals that used to reproduce and now they're not. But I think in general, is that potentially something that could be caused by some sort of disease or bacterial infection, the spawning behavior or is that not your bailiwick there? - If it is, again, at a base level, reproduction only happens when things are incredibly healthy. There's no reason that something would waste the energy to reproduce if it wasn't doing well in itself. That being said, if they've spawned, that means they're in well health, B, is there something that changed in the environment that's not inconducible to them spawning? Did the lights change? Did the light cycle change? Again, very little was known about like hormone cycles in terms of what causes a fish to cycle, what causes replication, et cetera. Did you change the lights? Did you change the photo period? Again, you may have had a photo period that was conducive in causing them to have spawning behavior. Again, something could have changed. Again, even temperature of the water could have changed. So again, something in the environment most likely changed that then causes them no longer to be spawning. Or is there something that's causing disease? And any of that disease can come from any facet. But if they look healthy, if they're eating normally, if they're swimming normally, if they look normal, and again, if you can't do a full physical exam, then you go, okay, it's most likely something that changed in the environment and not something that's causing disease to the fish. Interesting. Alex, man, I wanna thank you so much for taking the time tonight to be with us. Any final thoughts before we wrap? No, I'm very excited to be here. I'd love to discuss in the future. Again, this is something that I'm incredibly passionate about. I mean, I'd love to bring more to the hobby and really set a course for describing some of these diseases and coming up with more definitive treatment plans and really using veterinary modalities and giving us proper medication and treatment for our pets at home. Very cool. So you could find Dr. Alex J. Hall on Instagram at the REEFVET TikTok at the REEFVET, Facebook at the REEFVET. And there's also a Facebook group, REEF Tank Parasites and Disease. So you could get in touch or interact with him there. So anyway, listen, Alex, thank you again for doing this. So I'll show, I also wanna thank my sponsors one more Time Polo Reef. Make sure to check out Polo Reef's new YouTube video that drops us Friday, their team, which is everyone a happy and safe Labor Day. Keep an eye out for some upcoming YouTube videos, including a crazy Japanese koi show, fish vet discoveries and much, much more. Make sure to subscribe to the YouTube channel at Polo Reef for video drop notifications. Champion Lighting and Supply, besides being in place for hobbyists to purchase saltwater aquarium supplies online. Champion Lighting is also a wholesale distributor for many popular brands. If you own an aquarium store or an aquarium service company, contact Champion Lighting through their website at championlighting.com to set up a wholesale account. And finally, Fauna Marine. I do use the Fauna Marine Reef ICP Total Test Kit, which gives a quick, accurate and easy overview of over 90 water values in reef aquariums from macro elements and trace elements and pollutants. You get a complete overview with corresponding dosage and action recommendations. You could pick up these Fauna Marine ICP test kits at reefbom.com as well as other Fauna Marine products. Big thank you to Paul, who is also the president. He's the moderator of this live stream, but he's the president of the Boston Reefers Society. Please join and support your local reefing clubs. They are so, so important to this hobby. Also, I want to let you know that all episodes of Rapid Reef Bum are available as podcasts on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher and Amazon. My next Rapid with Reef Bum live stream will be next week, Tuesday, September 3rd, back to the usual 7 p.m. Star Time. My guests will be Jeff Turner from Reef Aquaria Design. You can check out the full upcoming schedule of guests on reefbom.com under the YouTube section. Until then, be safe and be well.