A discussion on Immunity

[Mark_C]

Paul,

Timing is everything. A new study released earlier this week showing that gut bacteria ties in with immunodeficiencies. The primary gist of the paper is that analysis of gut bacteria, or lack of, can accurately predict if a child will develop asthma. The speculated treatment? Identify the missing gut bacteria and replace them.

As mentioned earlier, the concept has been around for a bit (old article)...
http://www.nature.com/nri/journal/v9/n5/full/nri2515.html

But this study, in a sense, verifies the earlier theories (including yours) to an extent.

Heres a link to a general article in Science...
http://news.sciencemag.org/biology/2015/09/gut-bacteria-could-predict-asthma-kids

and another general article in medscape...
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/851938

The actual paper was just published and reguires a membership to get. If you're interested in it I can contact a colleague to get a copy this week.

 

[Paul B]

Thank you Mark. These are the types of articles I researched for this thread. I am still amazed that so many people don't put any faith in fish immunity and instead rely on quarantine and trying to cure fish after they are sick. I severely curtail my thoughts on this because of all the arguments and narrow thinking. (I can't mention it on RC or they delete the thread) I would imagine it is from all the horror stories we read over the last 4 decades. How many times do we read, "I didn't quarantine and lost all my fish"?. That is a silly statement and means nothing without a little research as to why those fish got sick in the first place. Many people refuse to keep their fish in the proper condition to ward off diseases. My fish are happy that they are "lucky" and are never sick and never will be. DeadHorse

 

[Mark_C]

I can't mention it on RC or they delete the thread.

Made me snicker. I've got an anthias that's being a pain with eating. Been in the tank for over a year. Didn't post on RC as I knew the inevitable 'It wasn't quarrantined long enough, should still be in there' or 'Quarantine immediately and souse with antibiotics and chemicals' would come up within the first few replies.

 

[Paul B]

On the first page on RC right now is a guy who lost a yellow tang and firefish in 2 days while in quarantine. They are asking things like "what the parameters of the QT are" andif it was cycled, like that has anything to do with why those fish diedin2 days.
It boggles my mind. You take healthy, eating fish from a store and put them in a tiny, bare tank and wonder why they die. I hate it when my mind is boggled. Another reason I wrote a book.

 

[Brando457]

What live or frozen foods are recommended? I've been feeding rod's fish only food, mysis, and brine shrimp in addition to some NLS pellets. I'd like to give my fish as many variety as possible.

 

[Paul B]

Brando I wrote this article about feeding fish. (I hope I am allowed to link it here, if not, shoot me)
http://www.saltwatersmarts.com/want-healthy-spawning-fish-feed-them-properly-5010/

 

[JRWOHLER]

I understand this guy is looking for test subjects.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...-injecting-3-5-MILLION-year-old-bacteria.html

 

[Paul B]

Well if it is written in the The Siberian Times it must be true

 

[JRWOHLER]

http://nypost.com/2015/09/30/so-far...-injected-himself-with-eternal-life-bacteria/
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...-injecting-3-5-MILLION-year-old-bacteria.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/hea...cting-himself-with-eternal-life-bacteria.html

I admit it is strange and different but intesting.

 

[Paul B]

First off, Thank you Mark.C for that liquid phytoplankton you sent me. I have been using it and although my corals normally look good, now some of them are smiling from ear, I mean, tentacle to tentacle. I will continue to use it.
Getting back to immunity, I am not sure if I mentioned this (more than 8 times) but when I was 20 I was stationed in Viet Nam. Not in Saigon or some other relatively clean place, but the jungle. Just like Tarzan movies but without Jane although I am not sure if any of the numerous of monkeys were named Jane. If you don't know anything about a jungle I will tell you. In the rainy season, when it is not raining, it is raining harder. In the (very short) dry season, everything is covered in red dust. Especially when a helicopter lands near you which happens maybe 5 times an hour and you are covered in sweat because it rarely gets below 95 degrees (not that I had a thermometer or anything else) and you spend your "free" time filling sand bags, (and swatting bugs or shooting snakes,) you look just like Sasquatch because red dust is caked all over you. So you go and take a " shower." Oh, but wait, you have no water, or shower, or anything that resembles a shower (unless it is the rainy season and you are up to your waist in it, and leaches) so you wait to take a shower. You wait for the day you leave the country which happens after a year. We didn't have a few things you normally have in civilization. Things like a roof, walls, floors, tent, electricity, plumbing, water (unless it is raining) bed, real food (we ate C-Rations) or underwear. That is correct, they didn't give us underwear, they didn't give us that because when it remains wet for a year, it rots. Why am I saying all this? No, I don't want you to join the Army, but it would be a noble thing to do and I am sure the conditions are now better. I am telling you this to show that the human immune system is a fantastic innovation, especially when it is allowed to do it's job. People now walk around with that silly bottle of hand sanitizer, and do you know who are the people who are always sick? Correct, the people with the hand sanitizer. Our bodies were built to handle dirt, bacteria and viruses. Go to any Natural History Museum and look at Primitive Man. See if you notice any of them holding hand sanitizer. In most museums, you won't see that. Cave men were well equipped to handle germs and the occasional Woolly Mammoth tusk stuck in their arm pit. I spent an entire year in that jungle and never got sick. I slept in the mud every night (when you had time to sleep) I never washed my hands, as the little "clean" water you had was for drinking. That "clean" water came from a river. When we ate, which was any time we were hungry and we had C-rations, helicopters would land, covering our food with dirt. It didn't matter and made the C-Rations taste a little better. If we were going to stay at that LZ (clearing in the jungle) for more than a few days the helicopters sometimes sprayed the surrounding vegetation (and us) with bug killer (probably DDT) and Agent Orange. When we found ourselves in water, which happened quite often we burned leeches off ourselves with cigarettes that came free in our C-Rations (which by the way were put in the can before I was born)
While in Viet Nam, I never got sick, nothing. Not a cold, Fly, headache, rash, food poisoning, ich, nothing. Why was that? It was because my immune system was up to the task. Before going to a place like that they gave us shots for plague, parrot fever, jungle fever and a number of things I can't spell. That is because we Americans have never been exposed to those things and our immune system was not prepared. The local people there had no shots and they looked mighty healthy to me. For the rest of the illnesses like colds, flu, sore throat etc, I never got that because before going to Nam, my basic training was conducted in mud which built up my bodies defenses.
We in this hobby need to change our thinking about keeping fish healthy. Sterility, long quarantining, antibiotics and siphoning the sand bed is not the answer. Strengthening the fishes immune system "is" the answer and the only answer if you want to keep your fish alive and healthy in a natural way where they are immune from everything except a broken heater or a Supermodel with a bottle of copper and no test kit.
This is a "friend" I met there. He ate rats which were like ants here. They were all over everything. When we were, shall we say, "in the bathroom". (Which had no bath and wasn't a room) we would take M-16 rounds, remove the projectile and fill it with soap to shoot them while they tried to climb up on our feet. This way, we didn't blow off our feet.

 

[Paul B]

A little more on immunity if anyone is interested. This stuff fascinates me almost as much as Supermodels.

A fishes epidermis consists of, besides other things, various types of unicellular glands some of which are goblet or mucous (slime) glands. These glands secrete slime. (other parts of fish also produce slime) Slime is a major part of the fishes immune system.



Besides secreting slime, the epidermis produces keratocytes. These motile keratocytes can cover the surface of a wound in hours after it's formation adding bacterial resistance to the wound and helping new cells to grow. This is the reason fish appendages, such as fins can re- grow.



Skin mucus evolved to trap and immobilize most bacteria and pathogens including parasites. This mucus is constantly shed, eliminating most pathogens and is immediately replaced.



The thickness of the slime is regulated in part by the stressers put on the animal such as temperature or stress. Copper, that we often use to treat fish would also cause the fish to produce more mucus there by helping the fish to eliminate the pest as well as to help kill it.



Interestingly a different type of mucus is produced for several days after a fish is stressed composed of a gel like material. It is unknown weather this gel has the same antibacterial and anti parasitic properties of the normal slime. This last statement has not been qualified on "all" types of fish as it has not been tested but it is interesting to me because I believe quarantining fish in a small tank would elicit this response making the fish more susceptical to infection. This is only a thought on my part and not something I discovered through research.



There are many more ways a fish has immunity to pathogens but they all have one thing in common. They require energy in the form of food. I know I have said it numerous times, but almost none of our fish are fed enough or correctly which is the reason for so many disease threads. With all the help fish get from their vast, complicated immune system, they should never get sick. If they do, it is our fault, not the store, not the wholesaler and not the fish.



We supply the living conditions, the stress and the food and most of us are not very good at it. Fish in our care should live out their normal lives, disease free and they should also be producing eggs, and if they are in the proper tank, spawning.



If our fish are not spawning, their immune system is not functioning and they are susceptible to all sorts of infections.



Feeding fish correctly is easy as I have mentioned many times. We have an obligation to keep these creatures in the state of health that they were living in, in the sea.



Just my opinion of course.



Reference:



ISRN ImmunologyVolume 2012 (2012), Article ID 853470, 29 pageshttp://dx.doi.org/10.5402/2012/853470







Review Article



An Overview of the Immunological Defenses in Fish Skin







María Ángeles Esteban

 

[Mark_C]

No worries on the plankton. I've got it bottled and labelled and am selling it through a couple of shops, plus I'm planning to get up off my arse within the next 2 weeks and begin selling on ebay/craigslist. I'm a horrible businessman so as I know you I'll send you some on the cheap, drop me a PM if interested.

Also, per immunity. I've now taken the approach of feeding my main guys a chopped up home made mixture that has been soaked in garlic oil alternating with live blackworms. I'm also feeding the corals/pods on Coral Frenzy mixed with the phyto. Everything in the tank is doing great and seems to be healthy as horsefish. Of my initial 6 fish, only the initial 2 were QT, the other 4 were added after a 2 hour acclimation. All are still living and doing incredibly well with the exception of an anthias which is not doing well as it is dead. It took in a large chunk of food and couldn't dislodge it. Kept trying to eat but couldnt get anything in and faded away over a week. REGARDLESS! With the tank transfer last week there seemed to be no serious concerns on stress levels. All the fish were exploring and swimming about literally within minutes of the transfer.

Here is where Reef Central folks would chase me into a tower on a hill and set light to it. Bad enough I added a few non-QT fish initially, but I've added a juvenile picasso clown, a watchman goby, and a new anthias last week sans QT, just a 2 hour acclimate. The fish all looked healthy in their respective shops, all were eating well, none showed visible signs of ich or rot. I tried to make the transition for them as stressless as possible. Within a day or two they're out and about, eating, and seem to be doing generally well.

I fully believe that a well kept tank with happy, well fed fish (on a garlic and omega oil supplemented diet) is safe for adding fish sans QT. Securing a fish in a small stressful environment (which requires 'hiding places' to keep the fish calm) and stripping away its immune system via antibiotics and medications, then adding it to a new environment filled with other fish... that seems not healthy.
Wellness in health care has a lot to do with the state in which you keep yourself.
Someone who eats well, sleeps well, is generally content, has some interactions, and gets a little exercise has a top notch immune system helping prevent illness.
Someone who is stressed, anxious, in a non-interactive environment, has restrictive movement, and is heavily medicated... they will get sick, they will be prone to sickness.
Risk or not, I'm going to continue going the way I'm going and bring minimally stressed fish into a very healthy system.

Thanks for the links, will do some reading later tonight.

 

[Paul B]

Sounds good. Remember the bacteria in their food. To keep them immune their immune system needs bacteria all the time so their immune system keeps functioning. Good luck.
As for RC. Someone there mentioned my book. It was immediately deleted.
Paul

 

[horseplay]

I bought a small tang last week and put him in a 20L with some rocks. I was gonna give it some Prazi treatment to deworm it. I heard deworming needed for wild fish because new fish are laden with all kind of bad stuff, fluke etc ... But it was quite stressed so I said what the hell and put him the DT the next day. It was happy ever since. Grazing all day and start eating frozen blackworms. I have a feeling that fish do need presence of other fish otherwise it would be stressed because of loneliness! I am pretty new but for the 15 or so fish going thru my system I only seen ich once from a new fish and it disappeared in a few days by itself and I never QT for more than a few days.

 

[Paul B]

I have never de wormed anything and so far have not had any problems with worms.

 

[horseplay]

I put the scopas in a week ago. Yesterday it was covered in Ich, in the DT. There are at least 20 spots floating on top of the slime. It happened really fast. One day there is nothing the next whole body is covered. Today the spots are mostly gone. None of the other fish is affected so far. So we'll see how this goes. Maybe the ich is in the next phase of the cycle. All the fish are eating well except the Regal, which never eats well but seems to be doing fine.

 

[Paul B]

There was a Doctor on TV this week who must have read this thread (yeah right) because he was talking about eating dirt to enhance your immunity and why so many people get sick now. Of course I related this to fish.

I read everything this man wrote then googled "Eat Dirt" and found a wealth of information on why eating dirt is good for you. No, don't go out and eat dirt, read the article first. But what he says and what I read on a few more places on the subject.

Also this from the American Medical Association a couple of months ago:



“Countless studies have found children who spend recess time in a green environment, rather than on cement or blacktop, perform better on tests in the classroom, have reduced symptoms of ADHD and stress, and lower risk of obesity,” she says. “They’re also more likely to have perfect vision than those who spend most of their time indoors.”

- See more at: http://www.lifescript.com/health/centers/allergies/articles/dirt_can_give_kids_a_cleaner_bill_of_health.aspx#sthash.WOkFbtIv.dpuf





There are data that say our immune system and bodies in general, function best when exposed to not only microbes, or organisms, but also to diversity too. That has to come not only from a diverse diet, but also the environment. Quite simply, our kids need to go out and play in the dirt.





For example, regular use of bleach is associated with more – not fewer – infections in kids, according to a 2015 study published in Occupational & Environmental Medicine. “Children aren’t as healthy as they once were or as they could be,” she says. “I’ve observed more incidences of chronic illness and health issues like allergies, diabetes and neuropsychiatric issues.” - See more at: http://www.lifescript.com/health/centers/allergies/articles/dirt_can_give_kids_a_cleaner_bill_of_health.aspx#sthash.WOkFbtIv.dpuf "





The Data goes on and on. I feel and have always felt that we keep our tanks much to clean and our fish food much to sterile. New research suggests this and you can find it all over the place.

I believe it because I am an outdoor kind of a guy and always have been. I never believed you have to wash your hands every time you eat unless you just got off the New York City Subway system because that is not dirt. That is bubonic plague, typhoid, diphtheria and any number of social diseases, but if you were just working in the garden or you just helped a Supermodel jump start her car, those germs won't hurt you. (unless the Supermodel just got off the subway and that is not likely to happen because Supermodels would never ride in a subway)

As I have said numerous times feeding live worms and other foods that have not been sterilized is the reason my fish are immune from (so far) everything. It is the "dirt" and associated bacteria and parasites that are the secret.

I feel we should keep our fish away from foods that claim that they are free from parasites and harmful organisms.

 

[Paul B]

This morning my wife and I were discussing how we lived when we were much younger and how the world has changed. My Dad and her Dad had retail stores. My dad had a fish market and just like her dad and everyone with a food market there was piles of saw dust on the floor. The cutting boards were wood, the knife handles were wood and the fish, and meat came in wooden crates as plastic was not available then. I am talking about the fifties.
I used to play in the back yard of our fish market and shoot flies with a rubber band. We also had live carp and eels in old bath tubs.
At the end of the week my Dad would sweep the floor and throw out all the old, fish scale infested sawdust and put down clean sawdust. Every night he would clean, using soap and bleach the knives and cutting boards.

Today, you are not allowed to use saw dust, wooden handled knives or cutting boards probably because of lawyers. I am sure someone, some where got sick and saw dust was blamed just like coffee can't be hot any more.
But it was the saw dust, cutting boards and wooden knife handles as well as numerous other things that enhanced our immune systems.
I was always an out doors kid and cut myself many times. I would rinse it off in a puddle or pond and go about my business never thinking about it.
I had an uncle that worked at the docks in NYC, one of the roughest places on Earth at that time. He got stabbed in the belly twice when 3 guys tried to mug him. (the muggers didn't fare very well) My Uncle wrapped the wounds in the same rag he cleaned eels with and lived to be about 90 never seeing a doctor or dentist in his life.
When my Mom would get a cold as a kid, her Mother would make her sleep in the horse stables thinking the smell of horse poop would cure her. (my Mom was born in lower Manhattan in 1910) My Mother lived to be 99 years old, she died of old age and was never sick and never even took an aspirin. How many people today could say that?

The point of this is that today how many kids do you know with allergies? How many kids are allergic to peanuts? How many kids are home from school with colds?
How many people in their 60s or 70s can you name with allergies?
Probably very few. As a kid no one in my school had any allergies and we all ate peanuts. I always got an attendance award because I was never out sick. I think in the 40 years I worked as a construction worker in Manhattan I was out maybe 3 or 4 times from being sick and never for having a cold, allergy or anything else except maybe a broken bone or disk problem.
That is IMO because I was brought up in a natural environment surrounded by bacteria and never having access to that silly sterilizing hand spray that people today feel they have to take baths in.
I still almost never get a cold, flu or any silly infection.
The little kids in My Grand Daughter's school almost all have some sort of allergy. My Grand Daughter is allergic to everything and half the kids in her school are allergic to something. Peanuts are outlawed in many restaurants and schools.
Kids today, (Like fish) get all sorts of things and in some homes it is an adventure waking up to see if the kids have some sort of infection.

I feel this is a big problem in our fish tanks and the biggest cause of all the posts on disease threads.
This is also why I go to a muddy bay and collect mud to throw in my tank. If I didn't live by the sea, I would throw regular dirt in there as I did when I started my tank.
I also feel we have to start thinking of bacteria as a good thing instead of a bad thing.
Just my thoughts of course and not meant to be taken as fact. Just an observation that is obvious to anyone who is a lot older than most fish people.

 

[JRWOHLER]

My son asked about "bacteria" in yogurt, yes it is good for you just eat it. We have our own garden, radishes come out get rinsed and stuck on the table little dirt ... just eat it. I grew up in the country I would chew on grass pulled from along the road, or those little seeds that pop. I have missed about 5 days of work in 30 years. I am with you some bacteria helps your body, sterile environments leave our bodies with no bacteria immunity. Oh and yes the 5 second rule is in effect in our house.

 

[njtiger24 aquariums]

Well I have to agree with @Paul B but note that I do have allergies. In fact when I was born my allergies where so bad that the ER doctor told my mom if she wanted me to live past the age of 3 we had to move to AZ. Now my dad just left my mom right after I was born so my mom was very upset and was talking to our family doctor. She knew no one in AZ, had no job in AZ, etc.. Our family doctor told my mom "Well he will just be allergic to stuff in AZ as well". My mom never did move and I am 33 years old now (30 years that I 'shouldn't have'). I now have two kids and I will admit I get sick with what ever they bring home from school. I used to never get sick. When I first got married I think I went 5 to 6 years without being sick. Now my oldest gets sick all the time but my youngest never gets sick (she has a stomachs like her dad). I allow my kids to play in the dirty, out in the rain, etc.... I see many parents who don't allow their kids to get any dirt on them and then wonder why their kids are always sick. I'm another one who don't QT his fish. The main reason I don't is because I don't have the space. In my years (which isn't many) I only had 1 fish get ich on me. I think this was due to more my fault than anything (I put a copperban in a 36g tank). I also never 'stir' my sand-bed. I may vacuum some of the top off but for the most part I leave the sand alone.