I thought it was my brand new and tiny 3/4" filefish as I couldn't find him for a couple of days. Then I fed the tank worms and there he was all happy and all so I have no idea what that dried up fish was but I do occasionally find a fish in there that I haven't seen in months or years.
I know I had 2 Gecko gobies and I only catch a glimpse of a fin from those every couple of months at most. It could have been one of them. :thinking-face:
Anyway on another thread I have been in a "discussion" with someone and I have been misquoted a number of times. My method of no quarantine or medication must be very confusing because some people have it almost totally wrong.
I also have nothing against quarantine as long as it is not done for a very long time like 72 days.
But I think if you want to do that it is fine as long as when you put that fish into your tank it has a chance to eat food containing gut bacteria to give it a chance to revive it's immune system to be hopefully immune to things we normally find in a natural tank.
If we don't want to keep a natural tank and prefer instead to depend on quarantine, UV and medication, that is fine. But in such a tank we just can't add anything that has not been quarantined because those fish will not be immune to that. We also need to be careful and not feed those fish live food unless it is from fresh water where there would be no parasites.
Plenty of tanks run like that and if that is what you want, that is what you should do.
All new tanks should be run like that especially if they were set up with ASW and dry rock as those tanks are not healthy and won't be until the bacteria, viruses and funguses settle down and do what we pay them for. That may take a couple of years.
Many people, especially scientific people who like to study charts and learn about all the studies of the life cycle of parasites and such are at a loss unless they are keeping their tanks in a lab.
Frankenstein was born or made in a lab and look what happened to him with all the village people wanting to set him on fire and all that. :astonished-face: Frankenstein could never live in a normal house because he ate with his feet and probably smelled like dead people.
Labs are totally different from a common home tank. They are fed certain foods that are sterilized to kill parasites and bacteria lest that corrupt the study. The tanks are mostly bare or just have inert materials like PVC or glass which stresses the fish to no end.
Then they count the parasites to see how they multiply and see how long it takes to kill a percentage of the fish.
They will study how long a fishes immunity lasts after it was removed from parasites and put in a sterile tank. Then in a laborious process they introduce parasites to see how long the immunity lasted.
This is all good information to know especially if you are going to be a marine biologist and are writing a paper on it. For the rest of us with a normal life and tank it doesn't mean anything.
Of course it is all true and scientists can spent their entire lifespan on this instead of going out with their girlfriend to a nice seafood restaurant and maybe having the Cod with a side order of clams on the half shell.
But in a home tank we can't separate our fish from the parasites present so the parasites are happily living in there with the fish just as they do in the sea. Those hungry parasites, especially the ones with fangs will constantly try to take a bite out of a fish gill. (If you look really close and maybe squint a little, you can see those fangs. )
When those parasites take a bite out of a fish, the fishes immune system eliminates the parasite in one of a few ways but the fishes immune system is very smart and it remembers that bite.
Instantly the fish starts pumping out antibodies that will repel the next parasite bite so even if this protection only lasts 6 months (Like scientists say) it doesn't matter unless that fish is in a lab where it won't get another parasite bits so it's immunity will eventually wane. Those bites are like measles booster shots.
I didn't make this up as I am an electrician, albeit a really good one. I have posted scientific papers on that because I know people like to read things by people with more degrees than a thermometer. A fahrenheit thermometer because I think they have more degrees but I could be wrong.
