Paul B
NJRC Member
Why do fish, and us have a lifespan? Why can't we live forever like Moses who was supposed to live 900 years. (I doubt he lived a day over 600)
There is actually a reason we have a life span and none of us ever lived longer than 122 years and that was only one French woman who didn't have a reef tank.
The reason for this is something called a "telomere". What is a Telomere as most of us are not researchers, doctors or Martin Scorsese.
A telomere is a little cap like thing on each end of a chromosome, sort of like the little thing on the end of our shoelaces. (aglets) It helps protect the end of the chromosome.
A chromosome which is an "X" shaped thing (for part of it's life) which is a chain of DNA and is a part of our genes and as aquarists that’s all we need to know. They are in every one of our cells which we and our fish are made out of.
Every creature including grasshoppers, pods and aardvarks are made of cells and all of them have chromosomes in their cells.
Being we are all built out of cells, if the cells die, we die.
Our cells constantly divide and eventually die. Every time our cells divide the telomere on the ends of the chromosome get shorter until they are so short, the cell can no longer divide. When that happens, we start to age until there are no more cell divisions taking place and our cells die. We then die of old age.
In humans that happens around age 80 give or take 20 years. Of course in fish, copepods or Nancy Pelosi that time is different.
Of course fish and us die of other things like if we are in a 6 hour lecture and the instructor is droning on and on we can die of boredom or get hit by a Toyota Landcruiser occupied by Noobs on there way to a frag swap.
So if we can have a way to make those telomeres last longer we will have found the fountain of youth. Most of the early Spaniards were looking for that but they wore armor while conquering the natives in the steamy Caribbean and stunk so bad they just dropped dead from the smell and athletes foot.
The good news is we already have. In all of us there is also something called a "Telomerase" which is an enzyme that elongates or at least stops the telomere from shortening.
That good news is not so good because even though that telomerase stops the telomere from shortening, it allows the cell to keep living without dying which is called cancer. We don't want that.
OK thats how it works in a perfect world but we don't live in a perfect world because we have things like Twitter, Facebook and the heartbreak of Psoriasis.
Now whats interesting for us as aquarists is that some things can actually cause those telomeres to shorten prematurely. When that happens it shortens the lifespan of the creature.
We know that many of the fish we are trying to keep, in too many cases just don't live as long as we would like. I am not talking now of disease but something all our fish face at one time or another, some fish face it constantly
STRESS
There is a reason for this and recently, in Humans anyway there have been research done which correlates stress with "Cortisol". Cortisol is in all of us and varies throughout the day.
Any kind of stress will cause a rise in Cortisol. Even good stress like for instance if we go skydiving, even if we wanted to go or we accomplished a back flip on top of a bi-plane while eating a hamburger from Burger King.
But these things are temporary and only last a few minutes so the effect doesn't cause harm.
Cortisol temporarily increases heart rate and blood pressure to help us deal with the stressful situation like running away from a saber tooth tiger. It will also start to dissolve bones to supply more calcium which the muscles need and for nerve conduction and limit wound repair and it actually causes the muscles to turn to sugar for that quick flight response. One of the worst things it does is "suppress the immune system".
Of course this is very simplified and cortisol doesn't magically appear. It happens through the limbic system, the pituitary gland and many other things.
We all make cortisol. This is normal. But with stress, cortisol levels stay relatively high rather than cycling throughout the day and those biological changes I just spoke about like higher blood pressure, a suppressed immune system and bone loss continually occur. We can see why that will be a problem.
One more important thing excess Cortisol does, due to stress is shorten the telomeres, or the lifespan of the creature.
We unfortunately are constantly causing our fish stress. Every day in the sea fish get stressed. They are constantly trying to evade predators and fighting to get enough food. But this is normal for a fish and wouldn't affect it's cortisol levels or lifespan. Unless of course that predator eats it. That may shorten it's life.
In a tank, depending on the lay out of the tank, the fish may be exposed to continuous stress. If the tank is to small, has a predator or antagonist. Food that is unrecognizable or the most important one, a lack of a "natural" place to hide.
Fish in the sea naturally hide from predators constantly. If you dive you will see this. They can dive into a tiny space in a coral head and know immediately that they can fit in there. You very rarely see a fish dive into a hole, then back out because they can't fit. They know they can fit due to their "lateral line" which gives them a sort of ESP of hiding places.
They try to get into a hole that they can just about fit in so that shark, moray eel or Jacques Cousteau can't get into to harm them. Fish never get cut on the sharp edges of the coral and depend on the tightness of the space for safety.
Fish really hate PVC elbows in a quarantine tank because it is usually stark white, smooth and much to big. Fish are not stupid and know they are not safe in that hardware from Home Depot. They also don't want to see us even if we look like Angelina Jolie.
This is a big stressor in fish and remember that fish was just a few weeks ago in the sea minding it's own business. Someone captured it and stuck it in a vat with hundreds of other fish, with no where to hide. Then in a plastic bag for many hours or days. Then into your quarantine tank. Talk about stress.
Of course those are the lucky fish as many others suffocate on the deck of a ship, are boiled and stuffed into a little can labeled "Dolphin Safe".
This very procedure actually "causes" disease that many of us are trying to prevent.
Remember fish in the sea are exposed to every disease and they have no problems with any of them. But now we are stressing them, sometimes for 60 or 70 days before we even put them in our reef which "we" feel is something the fish will like. They don't.
Elevated cortisol which does all those unhealthful things like suppress the immune system, causes bone loss, suppresses wound healing and shortens the telomere which shortens their natural life span.
Some other things raised cortisol does (In Humans) is interfere with memory, bring viruses out of remission, cause allergies, eliminate sex drive, increase belly fat, cause auto immune disease.
It does all of these things because none of those things are important when we are running from a Tiger and all the body’s defenses are primed for one thing, getting away.
Now if the fish, or us is constantly stressed, all of those nasty things causes the fish to become sick.
This is why many times we have a fish in quarantine for something like ich and the fish then comes down with something else.
We are causing those diseases that we think quarantine is helping. It is not, "unless" that quarantine tank is set up like a normal reef that the fish was accustomed to with associated real, natural hiding places.
Medication is another big stressor. If we as Humans get a rash or ich. We can put on a topical salve like Calamine lotion. But we don’t drink the stuff like a fish has to do.
If we use copper to eliminate a parasite, that fish is also drinking that copper which is a poison when inside the fish. Copper is also a poison if we drank it but most of us do not suffer from ich.
So if stress and medications actually cause illness in fish, what can we do?
This is something most of the Old Timers in this hobby figured out a long time ago. If they didn’t, they would not be old timers because their fish would continually die and they would get out of the hobby and get job at Home Depot loading toilet bowls into Mini vans.
All fish come from the sea fully immune from all sea based diseases.
We just have to cultivate that immunity by eliminating stress as much as possible and feeding the fish something that thy were used to eating in the sea which is whole sea food with all it’s associated bacteria. But that is for another rant that I am sure after reading this, very few will read.
There is actually a reason we have a life span and none of us ever lived longer than 122 years and that was only one French woman who didn't have a reef tank.
The reason for this is something called a "telomere". What is a Telomere as most of us are not researchers, doctors or Martin Scorsese.
A telomere is a little cap like thing on each end of a chromosome, sort of like the little thing on the end of our shoelaces. (aglets) It helps protect the end of the chromosome.
A chromosome which is an "X" shaped thing (for part of it's life) which is a chain of DNA and is a part of our genes and as aquarists that’s all we need to know. They are in every one of our cells which we and our fish are made out of.
Every creature including grasshoppers, pods and aardvarks are made of cells and all of them have chromosomes in their cells.
Being we are all built out of cells, if the cells die, we die.
Our cells constantly divide and eventually die. Every time our cells divide the telomere on the ends of the chromosome get shorter until they are so short, the cell can no longer divide. When that happens, we start to age until there are no more cell divisions taking place and our cells die. We then die of old age.
In humans that happens around age 80 give or take 20 years. Of course in fish, copepods or Nancy Pelosi that time is different.
Of course fish and us die of other things like if we are in a 6 hour lecture and the instructor is droning on and on we can die of boredom or get hit by a Toyota Landcruiser occupied by Noobs on there way to a frag swap.
So if we can have a way to make those telomeres last longer we will have found the fountain of youth. Most of the early Spaniards were looking for that but they wore armor while conquering the natives in the steamy Caribbean and stunk so bad they just dropped dead from the smell and athletes foot.
The good news is we already have. In all of us there is also something called a "Telomerase" which is an enzyme that elongates or at least stops the telomere from shortening.
That good news is not so good because even though that telomerase stops the telomere from shortening, it allows the cell to keep living without dying which is called cancer. We don't want that.
OK thats how it works in a perfect world but we don't live in a perfect world because we have things like Twitter, Facebook and the heartbreak of Psoriasis.
Now whats interesting for us as aquarists is that some things can actually cause those telomeres to shorten prematurely. When that happens it shortens the lifespan of the creature.
We know that many of the fish we are trying to keep, in too many cases just don't live as long as we would like. I am not talking now of disease but something all our fish face at one time or another, some fish face it constantly
STRESS
There is a reason for this and recently, in Humans anyway there have been research done which correlates stress with "Cortisol". Cortisol is in all of us and varies throughout the day.
Any kind of stress will cause a rise in Cortisol. Even good stress like for instance if we go skydiving, even if we wanted to go or we accomplished a back flip on top of a bi-plane while eating a hamburger from Burger King.
But these things are temporary and only last a few minutes so the effect doesn't cause harm.
Cortisol temporarily increases heart rate and blood pressure to help us deal with the stressful situation like running away from a saber tooth tiger. It will also start to dissolve bones to supply more calcium which the muscles need and for nerve conduction and limit wound repair and it actually causes the muscles to turn to sugar for that quick flight response. One of the worst things it does is "suppress the immune system".
Of course this is very simplified and cortisol doesn't magically appear. It happens through the limbic system, the pituitary gland and many other things.
We all make cortisol. This is normal. But with stress, cortisol levels stay relatively high rather than cycling throughout the day and those biological changes I just spoke about like higher blood pressure, a suppressed immune system and bone loss continually occur. We can see why that will be a problem.
One more important thing excess Cortisol does, due to stress is shorten the telomeres, or the lifespan of the creature.
We unfortunately are constantly causing our fish stress. Every day in the sea fish get stressed. They are constantly trying to evade predators and fighting to get enough food. But this is normal for a fish and wouldn't affect it's cortisol levels or lifespan. Unless of course that predator eats it. That may shorten it's life.
In a tank, depending on the lay out of the tank, the fish may be exposed to continuous stress. If the tank is to small, has a predator or antagonist. Food that is unrecognizable or the most important one, a lack of a "natural" place to hide.
Fish in the sea naturally hide from predators constantly. If you dive you will see this. They can dive into a tiny space in a coral head and know immediately that they can fit in there. You very rarely see a fish dive into a hole, then back out because they can't fit. They know they can fit due to their "lateral line" which gives them a sort of ESP of hiding places.
They try to get into a hole that they can just about fit in so that shark, moray eel or Jacques Cousteau can't get into to harm them. Fish never get cut on the sharp edges of the coral and depend on the tightness of the space for safety.
Fish really hate PVC elbows in a quarantine tank because it is usually stark white, smooth and much to big. Fish are not stupid and know they are not safe in that hardware from Home Depot. They also don't want to see us even if we look like Angelina Jolie.
This is a big stressor in fish and remember that fish was just a few weeks ago in the sea minding it's own business. Someone captured it and stuck it in a vat with hundreds of other fish, with no where to hide. Then in a plastic bag for many hours or days. Then into your quarantine tank. Talk about stress.
Of course those are the lucky fish as many others suffocate on the deck of a ship, are boiled and stuffed into a little can labeled "Dolphin Safe".
This very procedure actually "causes" disease that many of us are trying to prevent.
Remember fish in the sea are exposed to every disease and they have no problems with any of them. But now we are stressing them, sometimes for 60 or 70 days before we even put them in our reef which "we" feel is something the fish will like. They don't.
Elevated cortisol which does all those unhealthful things like suppress the immune system, causes bone loss, suppresses wound healing and shortens the telomere which shortens their natural life span.
Some other things raised cortisol does (In Humans) is interfere with memory, bring viruses out of remission, cause allergies, eliminate sex drive, increase belly fat, cause auto immune disease.
It does all of these things because none of those things are important when we are running from a Tiger and all the body’s defenses are primed for one thing, getting away.
Now if the fish, or us is constantly stressed, all of those nasty things causes the fish to become sick.
This is why many times we have a fish in quarantine for something like ich and the fish then comes down with something else.
We are causing those diseases that we think quarantine is helping. It is not, "unless" that quarantine tank is set up like a normal reef that the fish was accustomed to with associated real, natural hiding places.
Medication is another big stressor. If we as Humans get a rash or ich. We can put on a topical salve like Calamine lotion. But we don’t drink the stuff like a fish has to do.
If we use copper to eliminate a parasite, that fish is also drinking that copper which is a poison when inside the fish. Copper is also a poison if we drank it but most of us do not suffer from ich.
So if stress and medications actually cause illness in fish, what can we do?
This is something most of the Old Timers in this hobby figured out a long time ago. If they didn’t, they would not be old timers because their fish would continually die and they would get out of the hobby and get job at Home Depot loading toilet bowls into Mini vans.
All fish come from the sea fully immune from all sea based diseases.
We just have to cultivate that immunity by eliminating stress as much as possible and feeding the fish something that thy were used to eating in the sea which is whole sea food with all it’s associated bacteria. But that is for another rant that I am sure after reading this, very few will read.
