Ich aftermath... what to do now?

[asylumdown]

Originally Posted by fishytime

so you dont think that chasing a fish around a glass box with a net for a few minutes or for one minute several times in a couple weeks is stressfull to the fish?....I think you are vastly underestimating it, or perhaps are in denial about what we put our fish through....many game fish are hooked and released in less than a minute and still die from LA build up....how is that any different?....just cause there is no hook involved?

I never said it wasn't stressful. I'm sure it's very stressful. I'd find a giant net descending from the sky and taking control of my physical position in the universe pretty stressful indeed. Though if I had any real moral concerns about the moment to moment acute level of stress a fish was under, I probably wouldn't have a tank. However, I'm not convinced that fish have much by ways of a deep, subjective emotional experience so other than the moment in which they are trying to not get eaten (caught) I don't think they think about it much. However, fatal lactic acid build up is a specific issue, and it's not one I've ever heard of being a problem in the context of aquarium quarantine procedures. Fatal lactic acid build up can only happen if the fish is exerting a huge amount of effort - enough to build up lactic acid to fatal levels. Pulling a fish from the water by a hook leads the fish to exert far more effort trying to get away, it's pulling against the force of the line as hard as it possibly can, same thing with keeping a fish in a drag net with thousands of others for hours. A fish that's been netted in a closed box might struggle in the net a bit, but it will be nothing compared to a fish fighting trying to get off a hook, and they are never in the net for more than a few seconds.

I've got 20 fish in my tank at the moment, and every single one of them went through a tank transfer protocol. I can also say that every single one of them went back to behaving completely normally within 20 minutes (about an hour for the anthias) of the transfer, including eating. Stressed, scared fish generally don't eat. They were caught using a tupperware with holes drilled in the bottom and other than trying to get away (which involved swimming no faster than they often do in the tank), there was very little struggling, a few thrashes as the water drained out of the tupperware. Yes it's stressful, but it's temporary and over vey quickly compared to what they went through to get to you. I've never heard of anyone losing a fish to the tank transfer protocol that wasn't from mismanaged water quality (a track record that copper should look upon with envy and self loathing). In fact, I would consider something like the tank transfer method to be the least stressful of all the ich treatment protocols because you're engaging the fish in a survival strategy they've spent hundreds of millions of years developing - they are literally built for the 'fight or flight' response and have a myriad of physiological pathways to activate and cope with it. They are not built to cope with hyposaline conditions, or to deal with toxic levels of physiological poisons, they just aren't necessarily immediately killed by them.

The goal with fish (and in humans, coincidentally) should be to avoid long term, chronic and systemic stress, as that's what will affect their overall health and lifespann. Poor water quality is a long term chronic stress. Keeping them at the wrong temperature, or under the wrong lighting, or with the wrong tank mates, or in too small of a box is a long term chronic stress. Keeping them in an environment that encourages higher ectoparasite loads than they would ever be exposed to in the wild is also a chronic stress. Exposing them to acute bursts of very short term temporary stress in order to avoid exposing them to chronic conditions that could possibly or kill them is the lesser of two evils IMO. It's like saying we shouldn't vaccinate our kids against the measles because they're afraid of needles.