1st ZOOM meeting Questions about causes & prevention of aquarium fish diseases (12th January 2020)

I hope so. We hope so. Yeah. We're looking for new possibilities. But I started in a few minutes. I will start and do it in English. Okay. Have a few people already showing up. I see. I see. Mark Holsmeyer. Mark. Yes, if the audio is on. Mark, can you hear me?

Yes, I can.

Hi. Hello. Together. Hi. Yes. You will start in a few minutes. People showing up. Okay. I really have a few signed up. Behrend is there. I can see. And my brother in law was there. So some family members trying to see Gerald. Trying to see Gerald from a distance. Okay. Is the sound all right for you guys? Yes, loud and clear. All right. All right. We start in a few minutes. It's not seven o', clock. So I try to be on a exact time schedule and to see how many people joined during the meeting who were interested to join. So we saw about 150 people reacted positively. But finally to sign up at 7 o', clock, it may be different. Yes. Wait and see.

Gerrard, Will it be good if we close our cameras? Because then you have not so much files to send over the Internet. So I think it will work better or.

Yes. And I will start the meeting. Because if people have questions. What else you can write better. Maybe a question and talking. Otherwise it might interrupt the zoom data on the Internet. Thank you, Mark. I think would be smart. Yes. Okay, so microphone and video off. Yes, yes. Maybe that's the best thing. Unless you want to really say something. Put your microphone on and you can come in between. But if 50 people do it. Although I don't know how many will join today. Okay, let me try it. We will try it. Thank you, Renee. Thank you.

So I still have my microphone on.

You can see.

Can't see me, but you can hear me, right?

I can hear you.

Perfect.

So then I. I can mute you if you want. I can mute you.

No, I will do by myself. That's not a problem.

Oh, I cannot. Mark mute. I can imag. He doesn't like that, I think. Yeah, you can throw me out. Okay. So far we have five participants. I wait a few more minutes. I see Bernard is there. Marcel, Rene, Mark. So I was expecting more people to join up, but we will see how it goes.

First, Dirk and Moritz will join us.

Are they on the way? I'm home now. I just arrived home, so I don't.

Know what day, but we have talked about it and we said.

Okay, have to see that. Yeah. All right. All right. Hey, Mark, I can tell you at the end, I will close the meeting that I Will host another meeting for America, usa, Canada and South America. Because I will be in Brazil within a couple of weeks. And then I'm on the same timeline, so that would be more easier for me. Lou and Leslie asked me to do that.

Oh, great.

So we will see. Yeah.

Did Lou tell you about the new customer we have in America?

No.

It seems that we really got now the breakthrough. Let's say it's not 100% but Lou, tell me it's 100% but you know me before.

It's not written down.

It's not 100% for me.

So.

We really had a very good new contact and they told us to start with the whole. Not the whole, But I think 80% of biofish food. So we are very happy.

It's good to hear. Well, and then I'm anxious to do my Zoom meeting for the Americas.

I will give you a call maybe tomorrow then we can discuss that.

Yes, please, please. I will also need from Lou some ideas what kind of direction should go in the Zoom meeting. Because this is the first one and I start within a few minutes. I will start. I think for the guys who were on time. I prefer that the people were on time are treated well.

Yeah, sometimes a little bit complicated with these Zoom meetings. I can tell you. We have this problem with the. The schooling of my kids and they have to make Zoom meetings in the morning and. Yeah, one guy is doing teams, the other is doing zoom, the other is. Has to make big blue button and all different and at the end nothing is working.

Yeah, I know, I know. I was training the last two days how to manage this thing here. And Bernd helped me a little bit yesterday to. To make the details working well. Well, we will start, but I will make a recording of it. So many people ask me how you're going to record it so we can see it later on. Okay. Okay. Well then it's for those who are there. So there is. Okay, there is Dirk Moritz. Okay. Nice to see Germany online. Dirk Moritz. You can mute your microphone and also the camera so we have enough data going well on the Internet. Is that okay? I don't know. Okay, now hearing me. Dirk Amoritz.

Hello.

Hello. We just talked with Mark to take off the video and muting the microphone to have enough data not scrambling our conference. Is that okay? Yes, of course. Okay, we'll start. Okay, thank you all for joining the meeting. Let me get my hear itself in here. Well, this is the first Zoom meeting for me, so I will present some cases which were asked me to talk about today, on January 12, because it's the first one I might learn my lessons from this one. And your reactions will be much appreciated after this first one. First you see behind me, you see where I'm sitting. I'm sitting on a great spot. I'm sitting on the Amazon. Now you guess. I wish it was true. This was a couple of years ago, this time of the year, enjoying a beautiful trip on the Amazon. Well, this is my screen behind you. Well, talking about fish health is talking about, well, explaining you that a medicine is a science of uncertainty and an art of probability. So all what we try to do in aquarium keeping is tell you it's probability. We try. If we have an exact science on fish, well, we need to use many more tools that we do these days. But anyway, I will do my best to give you a probability of the possibilities of fish diseases. So questions have been posed to me and more questions can be put forward by the people attending this meeting. And maybe best is to send a message in the chat box. There's a chat box available, so you should be able to do that. The first thing we're going to talk about is a question that was raised. I got very often this question is, my water quality is perfect. I do all the testing I can. I have available. The PH is great, the hardness, ammonia, everything. But my fish are still getting sick. So why. So this is quite a lot of questions coming up to me like this. And, well, the thing you have to be aware about if your fish is sick, for hobbyist, you have to be a detective. A detective for your fish and your aquarium, your equipment and everything. And that means, well, did you really check the parameters you test for? Because not all the parameters can be tested. Maybe you only test five, but there are about 50 or 60 parameters you can test. There is a probability that it might be a lead poisoning or iron poisoning or too much copper or anything else in the fish tank. When I worked in Chicago in the 90s. Sorry, in the 80s, talking about years ago in the 80s, we have a lot of copper issues because the people are having in Chicago a lot of old piping system, piping system from copper, old copper piping. And that was a major problem of copper poisoning. But people were checking their ammonia and the ph. Everything was perfect. But the fish was dying of copper poisoning. So be aware that you only test limited parameters in our test kits. In the aquarium hobby, the next thing when you have a sick fish is, well, you have to watch and to see the symptoms. That means look at the science look at the behavior, what do you see? And communicate that with your aquarium shop, with your people around you and the Internet or the aquarium clubs. You're on online. Share a video and ask them, please tell me what's going on. So share videos about this. Some symptoms are typical. Another thing I can mention to you is feeding fish food can be a problem because a lot of frozen or live fish foods have high loads of microbes and parasites. Several studies have been done on that. And you have to be aware that fish food can be a risk. So that's one part of my studies. I did a lot on the fish food. And another factor when your fish can become sick is because it can be a stress factor. A stress factor? What stress? Well, can be aggressivity between the fish, can be other things like the fish is lacking hiding place or the children are tapping all day on the front of the aquarium. Stress factors, for example, in the morning it's dark in the living room, you put up bright lights and the fish are really stressed out by having a bright light. So be a detective for your fish in the aquarium and then you can maybe find out what is wrong with your fish. But it's not easy. It's a lot of probability. So that was the first question. If anybody has a. For the people attending here, we have seven participants. I see. If anybody has a question on this subject, if you want, you can put on your microphone and raise a question or all about the issue or write it in the chat, please. You can do that. Well, another question that was raised to me recently, very recently, is someone who used a good medication against gill flukes and he used a higher dosage than recommended, but the fish were still sick. Well, there is a good explanation for that, is that when you treat for certain diseases like here against flukes, and here we see the amount of dosage you apply. This is the. How can I say the time in minutes that the flukes were detached or death or dead like is detachment. And then the gray bar is that the flukes are dead. And you can see with a higher dosage, the higher you go, less flukes are going dead or less dying and less flukes are detaching. That means a higher dosage does not mean you will be more likely to kill off the parasite. And that's not only for flukes. That's luckily a lot of good medications like the ones from aquarium unsterd, they have very good indications on the leaflets how exactly to use the dosage because extra dosage in most cases do not Help. It's the same thing for white spot disease or velvet disease, or flukes. It's the same from the hole and the head disease. People are using 2 to 3 grams metronidazole, but for four days. Well, this is killing fish because this is a toxic product when you use it at this high dosage. So this to tell you, please stick to the dosage that is recommended by the producer, the manufacturer or the seller of the product of the medication. So follow the instruction on the leaflet. Higher dosage does not mean you will kill more parasites. No, not at all. This is a case which was very well studied on Gulf flukes. Higher doses did not kill just in the contrary, they survived even better. Another question that was raised. My fish are suffering from white spot disease. Ich. But it seems that the medication is not working. Well, that can happen, of course, that you use a medication and it's not working. I'm not going to discuss the kind of medications, but the first thing I want to see. Are you sure that it's a white spot? You see? Because like on this lipurinis here, you see an encapsulated worm larvae, betace. This is a lipurinus from Colombia, from Bogota and from those rivers in the Rio Negro, the Rio Amazonas. The fish in many cases have this kind of parasitic infections which you cannot kill, you cannot get rid of. There is no medication for it because it's very nice encapsulated and no medication can penetrate, induce encapsulated worms. So it's part of nature and the fish will die from it. They just stop looking nice. But you cannot treat. But many people mistreat it and see it as a white spot. Oodinium in many cases is the same thing. It's regarded some people when it's a heavy oodinium infection, they see it as a white spot appearance while it's gray and dusty. Usually a skin scraping, if you have a microscope can help you identify that. So white spots are not always ache. Then on the other hand, if you have a medication, the normal medications you have for the normal white spot here on the left, this is the normal ichthy of teres. You might be able to cure this clown lodge where you act quickly enough on time, not waiting too long. There is a new kind of white spot which is called the Neo ichthyophtherius. And the Neo ichthyophtherius is a new kind which is more resistant to the common treatments we have. You can see it sometimes very clearly on certain fish because it looks very large. Smeary looking, more yellowish than this white one here than regular white spot disease. But this is quite often mistreated. You have to try to identify this new white spot because you need to do a different treatment. Like the new treatment for this kind of is actually just salt. This is the new one here on the right. It needs extra salt that doesn't like salt. This kind of new white spot in the ethereum and in a microscope you can identify the difference. Here is the regular Ichthyophtherius multifilius. You see the typical U shaped nucleus. And here you see the Neo Ichthyotherias schlutfeldi. You see the very strange looking nucleus. They're more darker and they look a little bit different. So it's something you have to take care about. And the other thing you can do as actions when you, you're dealing with this kind of, how can I say, white spot disease. Let's see if I can get the screen here correct here so we can see it more clearly that the temperature. Raising the temperature can help you to speed up the cycle of the parasite. The parasite has a cycle for about 7 to 10 days depending on the temperature where it's living in. And the higher the temperature you raise it, the more quicker the cycle will go and the more easy you can kill off this baby here. Here's the tomite and that's the one you can kill with medications like Farnamor and protomol. You also can kill the Neo ichtenant with adding salt to it. You can use a microfiltration smaller than 300ml. You can use a UV lamp which kills the burning light, particularly for centralized systems. Important siphoning of the bottom of the aquarium that helps to get rid of the parasite. It's a physical action leaving 24 hours of light on because the parasite only reproduces at night. So he falls off the bottom and remains there until the light goes off. It goes dark. So he leaves the light on. The parasites fall off. And the light is on, you can siphon off from the bottom. So if he siphon off a couple of times a day, you can physically remove white spots. And particularly in severe infections, you can eliminate, you can eliminate it. So let's see what I can see on my screen here. Okay, I see all the people attending. Thank you for more attending here to the presentation. Okay, let's see here. So that was about the widesprodices. Same for a while. I can talk about the marine ick. This was tricky. In the marine ick. It's the same way you can handle it with different physical actions you can take on the new ICK system which we recommend to use. So many actions you can do and at the same time. Well, I didn't explain it yet, but feeding the biofish with metrine, because the metrine helps that the fish, when he eats the metrine that he expels the parasite. That means as the mucus changes and the parasite drops off and the new born baby parasite does not reinfect the fish. So that moment you have an opportunity that the fish can be defending himself against these kind of parasitic infections. So this is the combination of a treatment and the combination of the biofish fluid matrine helps you that the fish can have multiple choices of defense and you can help with your actions by the filtration, the siphoning, the light, raising the temperature, particularly raising the temperature is something really helpful in speeding up a parasitic cycle. So the quicker the cycle goes. So that's why it's so difficult to treat cold water, physical cold water when they have white spot disease, because the cycle takes about two to three weeks. So something to think about. Okay, let's see what we have here. All right, so we are here. Next question. Well, something new which I came across by talking to people working in aquaculture. It's about thermotherapy. Thermotherapy is a new way to stimulate innate immune system of all animals who live in temperature controlled conditions. Of course, our fish are cold water or pilotherm species. That means they adapt to the temperature of the environment. But that helps. We know from mankind that thermotherapy can help to cure because the heat can help to turn on your immune system. But also for the fish. We know that like Hippocrates stated 2000 years ago that those who cannot be cured by medicine can be cured by surgery. But those who cannot be cured by surgery can be cured by fire. That's hypothermia. That's an old trick of curing people, giving a temperature raise. And the hypothermia is related for humans, for protein activation, for body enzyme activation for humans and to control allergic symptoms. And when the body temperature for instance for humans increases 1 degree and they use it, for instance now in Corona times. Talk about it. Corona times. A lot of doctors use this term hypothermia to stimulate the immune system. For people who are suffering in the immune system. Because with one degree dropping of temperature of the body, the 36% immune system declines. If decreasing temperature has a bad effect on the basic Metabolism and on enzyme activities. So every raise of temperature people learned it can help you to stimulate your immune system. The disadvantage of a stimulating immune system in aquaria is when you have a higher temperature here 30 degrees Celsius, 20 or 10, you have more toxic ammonia risk, particularly in higher pH water or higher temperature has less oxygen in the water. So something to think about it can help your fish to stimulate the immune system, to stimulate the physiology. Some people like our culture use it, particularly people dealing with koi and goldfish. Fancy goldfish dorandas. If you keep them at room temperature, 80, 19, 20 degrees and the fish seems to suffer. We have seen very good cases when you just higher are speeding up the temperature or higher. Raising the temperature to 22 degrees really help the fancy goldfish to do better, to eat better and to stimulate their immune system. So this is an example which we learn about more in the near future. So are there any more questions for you people attending the meeting? I don't know if you are. Let's see if you have the chat room here somewhere. Okay, Rene, thank you for your question. What is the best doses for metronidazole? Well, I learned by people in aquaculture that the maximum dose you can use is 0.8 grams or 800 milligrams to 100 milliliters if you go higher, if you go to 1 gram of metronidazole, you can have a risk of poisoning your fish or having causing some pathological damage. It's overdosing. So you can go easily 0.6 to 0.8 grams by 100 liters for two days. So 0.6 is okay too. What do you say, Rene? 0.6 is okay too if you go, yes, 0.6. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Usually 0.6 is about the average people use, but a lot of people use many more. And then they say, well, this pyronucleus is not killed, which is the parasite you want to kill. I tell you, we had many people having really bad problems and not only the parasites were not killed, but they became also resistant. Yeah, I've done it very wrong in the past. I don't know. This is something spread on the Internet because recently somebody called me and said, no, I used 4 grams. They say, what? Yeah. And the fish are still sick. Oh, yes. Well, yeah, you Google it and you get 2 grams per per 2 grams treatment. And then. And then use charcoal filtration. Why not changing the water, which is the best treatment? Change the water, get rid of all the shit in the water and Refresh the water. Well, this is the Internet probably that's. That's one of the problems. You have to deal with that on social media. On the Internet, people share their thoughts and information to help to control fish. But it's sometimes too bad. It's a problem. Okay, thank you. Thank you. I see here a question for Eleni. I'm sorry, Eleni. It's in English tonight, but I will do it soon in Dutch for you and your friends. Well, what is a good medicine for flukes? Well, this depends if it's gill or skin flukes. It is a problem because a good medicine is depending on the history of the flukes. If a fluke has been treated very often with certain products like Levamizole, Mebendazole, Prazicanthal, there seems to become a resistance. Currently in the experience I deal with people caring for their fish. Is Prazikanthel one of the best solutions? Unfortunately it's not common available anymore by the common supplier of fish medications. And Lukely a quarterminster came out with a new one which is the. The Bactimorph, I guess. Yeah, that's the name of it, which is a different kind of. It's a kind of chemical that disinfects the fish and kills the flukes in a certain way on a gentle way. We would have preferred Prazo Catel to be staying on the market, but unfortunately that Prazikatel is taken off by Europe and is not allowed to be spread without prescription. You still can get it by prescription through the veterinarian. Yeah, yeah, it's duct tumor Forte. Yeah, I'm sorry. Sorry, Dirk. Oh, yeah, I'm see I'm getting older, getting. Getting slowly out of the industry. Eleni. Well, you use Argumor. Well, argument sometimes works because Argamyl kills the skeleton of the flu, so it might take longer to work. So some people have good luck, some people don't. So that's why we recommend for the flus use the Ductimor Forte. That is better. And I would recommend to use that instead of the argument. So that hopefully explains you the difference in the question you brought forward. Is that. Okay, Well, the difference. Yeah, well, active ingredients. Thank you, Mark. There it goes. Bactymore Forte Psytomazine, which has been used many years ago in United States. It's been well known and I've tested in the laboratory and in the beginning I thought it was not working. But in the long run have to be patient. It kills off the flukes. Oh, thank you, Nikki. Nikki, thank You, Nikki, for being there. You have a large group of attendees. Next time I should do a zoom meeting for your group of people in Dutch for you. It could be something that neither of us do well. What is a good medication common on the market for bacterial infections? I wish it was easy to explain for you, Nicky, because it depends on the bacteria. There are so many kinds of bacteria. And if for humans, if we use bacterial treatment, for use we try first send a sample to the laboratory to check what kind of bacteria do we have. What kind of antibiotic is tested in the laboratory can work. Of course, we cannot do that for fish. We have no time. We have to act rapidly. Used to be antibiotics, used to be the best. Slowly we are changing our opportunities to use a kind of disinfectant. You know, we have disinfectants on the market which cleans the fish from the bacteria. Maybe it's not so efficient, but it all depends on the moment when you start. How can I say any. When you start treating the bacteria, you do it in the beginning. You might have very good success with the products from Aquarium Muenster. I'm just thinking on the name of it now. Hey, Mark, correct me the name of your antibacterial products which we tested for Aquarium Muenster. You know, Bactopur is not always working anymore. I know Bacterpur is a very simple product. You know, it's venomor that it is. It's called Veramor because it cleans the fish from viruses and bacteria. It's a kind of a very good disinfectant. So I would recommend to try that out. But important that you treat as soon as possible against the bacteria. If you wait too long, the fish are too much damaged. And Virgo mora particularly helps in the beginning stages when the bacteria, particularly in the outside, the gills, the fins, has a very good impact. Internally, it's more difficult. You should try to work with our biofish food. You know, like the biofish root, we have the fecal, the grapefruit seed extract, moringa or the garlic. Those are a few that we recommend for helping the fish during a bacterial treatment next to a medical treatment. So I wish it was easy to answer. Bacterial effect. It's a trial and error. Like I said in the beginning, a lot of trial we do in our hobby is a probability. We try, we learn from the experience. So Eleni, I hope this answered some of your questions on the bacterial infection. On the other hand, yes, something else. Bacterial infection. Let the people check very well the water quality. Usually it happens that the water quality is not correct by the people or their food feeding the wrong food, which is maybe kept in the. In the refrigerator for five days and is contaminated with bacteria or it's spoiled. So it's good to know the reasons why the fish get bacterial infection. So, Okay, Eleni, you're using the best layer professional. Well, the professional is made for the professionals because the professional is made during my experience as an importer to treat my fish during the acclimation process and during the time during my fish house, like you have, Eleni, you have your fish in your fish house and you can use the old fish and you can use it for at least the professional care you can use permanently. You can use that permanently or at least two to three weeks at the professional treat you can use in a case when you have a chance, when you're encountering a disease, bacterial or a viral or something you don't know. So the professional treat is a general treatment. You can use it maybe every month, one week as a preventative. So try it. Let me know, Eleni, how it works for you. Okay. I hope that sounds right for you. Okay, thanks, Helene. Okay, well, I will see. There are more questions coming. We have eight participants now, but I hope I'm recording it here because people ask me. So I will continue a little bit more on my presentation. Then we'll see if more questions will come up. I hope I answered it all, otherwise not. I will see what comes up later on. Well, always tell the people, study in the books. I have several books available. Go to my YouTube channel. People want to get training. Go to my new Patreon channel. You know, there's things that can help you. Here are the links I can provide to you so you can see them on my videos, which I explain a lot on fish diseases in four languages. So German, Dutch, English and French. So not it's available. Many of our lectures are available in Brazil, but it's only available in Portuguese at the university and Natal for the training of the students. So. Well, there's a training now I offer in my Patreon. So there's also opportunities for people who want to learn more. Well, the next zoom meeting plan will be for the usa, Canada and South America time contact the US branch according I will schedule a meeting with them and they will inform their American and Canadian customers and I will inform people to Facebook. So this is the next to come, probably within a couple of weeks. Something else I can continue to talk about. We have another half an hour left. Unless my questions come up Is about the cause and prevention of fish diseases. If you want to teach to become a fish detective is learn to investigate for the causes of the problems of your fish before you start medicating. People who know me and see my presentations, they know I'm very keen on telling you look on the reasons why your fish are getting sick. Don't go looking where your puppy is lost if he didn't check properly. Well, the lady found it out too late for me. But the summary of causal prevention you know is that will talk about shortly is there's certain causes. Water quality is one of the most important to test. People who deal with fish every day or making medications, who are making fish food like Renee. They know that water quality is the first thing we have to check. Check acclimation and current time procedures. Check fish food and the immune system of the fish. Things you can work on. You can work on biosecurity and fish health. So and fish health management. These are all things in a summary which can talk all about fish disease and causes. Well, of course proper identification, that is the most important thing we have to learn. And it's the best way is to learn to use a microscope. Our goal is always to keep healthy fish. Here is pretty healthy guppies, very great guppies that came in from Sri Lanka to an importer in Europe where I work for every month. And why are those guppies healthy? Well, it starts because the breeder took proper care of it. Good breeding, good selection and good packing procedures. Good shipping, good unpacking. Well, first of all, good transport by the airlines, which is sometimes very delicate roboticos. Usually the fish are traveling for approximately 24 to 48 hours. So this can be a risk for the health of these fish. Also good acclimation procedures, good carry time using proper medications, Depending on the species, depending on the history of that guppy. And a good filtration system changing water. All those things are factors that help together for these fish to be a perfect condition. Because if you also learn to look at fish, you can see these fish behave very healthy. They're coming to look for food. They're coming up to you when you're passing by. So this is a good indicator of a healthy fish. But origin of fish diseases, which I explain a lot in my in my classes Is the combination of stress. Stress can be bad. Water quality can be stressed by physical stress. Netting, wrong netting can be stressed by too much light, for instance. And microbes which are available in the environment or in the food and the fish. So that the Origin is a mix of problems, a mix of causes. And the introduction of the patagon can be coming in already by poor acclimation procedures. When you adding water to the arcoria, newly introduced fish or mixing fish from different breeders or wild or different tanks, that could carry diseases. So introduction of pedigens can be from different sources. For the home aquarium, it's sometimes new fish that without any guaranteed procedure comes in your home tank and it can bring in a disease which the old fish in the existing aquarium has never seen before. So it can introduce a disease. So they will introduce this. And therefore you have to be careful when you start mixing fish because they can carry diseases. Feeding food that is contaminated with pathogens, particularly the people are feeding live food. No, that if they just collect food from the wild, from the rivers, that they can introduce pathogens. I know from a fish farmer who is breeding clownfish and many other marine fish. When he gets his phytoplankton in or when he gets his Artemia eggs in, he has to disinfect them because they are carriers of vibrio. And vibrio is very pathogenic or very risk for disease for marine aquaculture, particularly for people breeding clownfish and other fish in warm water aquarium. So even the Artemia eggs coming out of the cans were carrying vibrio. So he had to disinfect the Artemia eggs before he could give it to his clownfish. So this fluid can be a risk. So always by food, you know, I can add to it, make sure your food is well cooked, well heated, well disinfect, or like I say, I'm the biofisheries man, you know, give granulated food because that's cooked and prepared and cleaned off any pathogens. That's why aquaculture is feeding 99% with granulated food, because it's safe. Another risk of disease is not eliminating dead or dying fish. You should know when a fish is dying in an aquarium that before he dies that all the pathogens, particularly the parasites, escape from the dying fish and goes looking for new hosts. And that's his friends, his brothers and sisters in the aquarium, is going to be attacked by the leftover parasite from the dying fish. And a dead fish should be eliminated because even also dead fish is eating by its counterparts. And when it's eating, the fish can also eat the pathogens. The bacteria, particularly Mycobacterium is a risk of spreading like this. Another risk of introduction of pathogens, introduction of contaminated water. I have known cases by and marine fish wholesalers who were collecting the marine Water from the ocean bringing in diseases because they were not disinfecting the water properly. Now everybody knows they have to use UV or other sterilization techniques to get rid of possible microbes or parasites in the contaminated water. I've seen it at ponds who are getting the water from rivers because it's cheap. I've seen it in China where a lot of diseases came into the ponds. I've seen it in Brazil because it's cheap to get water from the rivers, but it's bringing in also parasites or the risk of parasites or bacteria. So all things to watch and to be careful. So this is all a lack of biosecurity because all this can be prevented if you follow biosecure rules. Another problem I would like to discuss is that so many people have problems with their aquaria for two main reasons. Dirty filters. Poorly maintained dirty filters which do not work properly. Don't tell me these are bacteria, because this pet shop who showed me this tank, he told me, oh, I cannot remove this dirty thing here because those are all my good bacteria. I told them there is no living bacteria. Living. Is that dirt? This is dirt. Leftovers should be eliminated because this sponge is polluted with dirt. However, there is dirt that cannot be eaten by the bacteria. There is no bacteria living. So you have to clean the sponge and get rid of the problem. The reason I was here in this pet shop, because he had dying fish. As soon as I had 50 guppies in this fish tank, he was losing 10 guppies. In the next 24 hours, he only could keep 30 or 40 guppies in the tank. 50 was too much because the filter was not working properly. It was too dirty. You have to clean the filter properly. It's washing it out regularly and best to do it with the tank. Water maintenance is very important here. Another fish tank in another pet shop. I was giving advice. This was a big tank with a very tiny, small filter. Well, it's the same thing as a big truck running with a small engine from a small sea, from a small motorcycle. How can an engine work well from a big truck with engine from a motorcycle? Well, this is an aquarium with a very tiny pump filtration. You only can keep very few fish. These people who are introducing too many fish and these kind of aquaria have problems. The fish die. The other fish will do maybe well, but they can be getting a risk of bacterial infections, for example, because the water is not properly filtered. So if you have promos, if you have a shop or you have people talking about the promos ask them about the filter. Is it cleaned properly or is it big enough? I always recommend everybody install a filter as big as you can. It's the best investment you can make. It's in a good filtration. Sometimes we have diseased fish. People tell me, show me a picture and send me this picture. Oh, my fish is dying. Well, I asked, did you check the water? Well, no, I didn't check. The fish was dying. Well, this fish was dying of ammonia poisoning. That was the reason, the cause of the bacteria outbreak of this fish. The fish start to bleed because it was just weakened and exhausted and the bacteria attacked. Why? And then the people tried to put medication in the water. When the water has a high ammonia content, what happens? Ammonia. And together with medication, it's even worse. The fish are much quicker dead. And then they blame it on the medication. No, it's the ammonia poisoning they didn't get rid of. And what happens with that, those kind of fish? Well, those kind of fish have usually secondary bacterial factors in the gill. And that's why they die, usually after stress, after poisoning. Those gills, like here on the right, it's completely damaged. You know, they have like pneumonia, have a lung infection, a gill infection, and the fish will die here it starts like this, a few parts here. And this is just on a small magnification. You can see this 50 to 100. You can see already damaged gills. And it tells you something. Damaged the gills. And it's usually most cases why our fish will die in our aquarium. And because also they're getting secondary bacterial infections after parasitic or after stress are bad water quality. So fish diseases of wild and tank raised fish. Well, you have to understand when you work with tank raised fish or wild fish that there is a difference. Do not mix them. It's the same for koi farmers, you know, don't mix koi from Israel and Japan unless you know they're being well treated or well taken care of. But don't mix fish from different origins. And here particularly, it's mixing fish from the wild and the tank raised. Because the tank raised fish usually have specific diseases. Because the breeder is breeding fish, but also breeding diseases. This is part of aquaculture. They have more resistant pathogens. Why? Because they use more of the medications. Luckily they have more financial investment. So they try to use many more, many cases than anybody else can do. And they try to use other systems. In the wild fish, there is less control, there are more different diseases and there's less resistant pathogens. But of course you have Then those kind of crazy worm infections. Like this is a nematode in this capsulated, in this ribbonose. But there's less resistance, unfortunately, there's less financial investment in the wild fish, so there's more risk of disease. But to give you an idea, never mix to fish. It's very important for many exporters or for wild fish. And that's particularly here in a fish exporting station in Kenya. When they received the fish here from the fishermen, they came here from the boat, from the, from the ocean. And here is the Canadine station. And here is the, the biologist, the fish doctor who is giving the, the fish a proper disinfection treatment with methylene blue fresh water dips and everything. She puts them in a fish tank for 24, 48 hours and she uses carotene treatment, a treatment with against parasites and bacteria. Depending on the kind of fish and her experience, what she find out. So this is the procedure properly disaffecting and conditioning marine fish. Another thing is food fight is cruelty. We love about this. Oh, we like this. Oh, this is funny. The child is playing games with the dog. No, they're fighting for the food. Well, if you see this in the aquarium, we laugh about it, we like it. You know, look at the goldfish eating the food and now the other fish trying to have a part of it, a piece of it. But look at the dominant Chiclet, the angelfish. There he goes, he goes away and takes the relic and nobody else can have it. Well, a food fight can be cruelty. That's why I'm not a pro of feeding tablets in the water. Everybody knows my idea about it when you see my videos on YouTube. Also, bad foods can be a risk of containing pathogens here like a mycobacterial infection is quite often a problem in dwarf cichlids. They get some fatty greasy growths here on the pectoral fins, they get swollen bellies, they die and they have internal massive mycobacterial infection. And usually this came in this apistograna. This came particularly from feeding mosquito larvae because most of the mosquito larvae which are not properly taken care of, contain Mycobacterium bacteria, mycobacteria, a risk of fish tuberculosis or these wild fish, Sinodopters decorus from the Congo, very easily infected with parasitic worms and starvation. This is a typical problem for wildfish worms. And this is coming from the food from the river because it's containing worms. So why should we strengthen the immune system of the fish? Some other ideas about how helping the fish, because we can have an impact of that. The fish is able to protect himself from a virus, a bacteria, fungi. An immune system is very important. We know it from humans also during the corona epidemic now, that the immune system is very important. And then when it's weakened, a minimum amount can already be lethal and have lethal consequences for fish and mankind and any living organism. So when the immune system works efficiently, you can prevent infections and prevent medications. Some other thing I want to mention about the cause of diseases is the risk of spreading. Risk of spreading diseases. Typically here, there's a fish farm in Malaysia. Look, all the fish nets all together, different fish pieces in one pump of water. Or here, selecting fish all in the same water. Well, this is typical areas where I work and consult. I say you cannot do that. And one net, one net to go around to collect the fish. While you're spreading diseases here, you're spreading diseases. You are spreading diseases. This is a very big shop I visited and there's only three nets, four nets to pick fish from all these different tanks. Well, this is a risk. When there's a white spot infection here, you bring it to this tank or to this tank. Fish nets, fish nets are the number one spread of diseases. So take care of fish nets that you disinfect or you put one net to a tank. So this is about what I want to explain you about some causes of fish diseases. In short, study the books, subscribe to my YouTube channel, get training on my Patreon and well, get some information on my books, on my videos. Let's see if you, if you have any more questions on that, I can try to help you if something comes up here. Let's see if we chat here. Let's see. Here we go into the chat room. But let's see, where is the first. I can get here somewhere. Okay, let's see. Can the filter be too big? Has that any kind of bad influence of the tank? No, a filter can never be too big, Nicky, Very good question. The only thing that can be too big is a water flow. Is the water flow. I have very beautiful videos on that if you want that for your customers. Nikki, I have very beautiful videos where fish getting sick.