White spot and velvet control by natural means

There is no actual science behind this way, but some of the known science relating to protists behaviour is amongst this, it’s more so just actually results visually as to the actions upon fish and their health!

A very mature bio system will carry out a little of this with its protist communities, but to pass the tanks waters through a well designed clean wet section with near no oxidation achieved yet, for me works close enough to 100 percent affective with parasite control.

I have typed this else where in Auz and some of the more interesting hobbyists prevents even thinking it is possible, that being the use of other protists with the eradication of the protists white spot and velvet.

Twice over the last 25 years with in the aandtsociety there has been a close look at firstly an under gravel bio filters granules for a marine aquarium and later on a look at live rock with the use of laboratory gear.

I have read totally conflicting opinions on what I do and many have quite strongly shot down my theory, so it is not regarded as possible, yet it works beautifully, for me!

Both times our club looked at this, I wasn’t there for these experiments as they looked closely at the oxidisers of the nitrite cycle on and near the surface of calcium media.

I know the people that looked at firstly a matured marine systems gravel from an under gravel bio filter in the eighties and the live rock a few years back and I believe their findings.

They found the oxidising bacteria forms, but no where near enough to even slightly oxidise the tanks nitrite cycle to control the over all process.

They did find very large communities of life forms above bacteria; later on I was told these were made up of predominately protazoan-protazoa.

These days they are called protists or of the protista, which includes the ichthyophthirius multifilis which we call ich or white spot and amyloodinium ocellatum, which we call oodinium or velvet, both a pain in the body for our fish.

Any scientific terms for me to use back then was not going to happen, I found the ones who knew and used the words and terms were of no use and I would not develop the use of those terms that I found pretentious from people that were of no help to me!

So that’s why I don’t come across that well with wording as such, with the wording, I am years behind!!

The reasons I believe these people found exactly what they said, are because I have after not long into the hobby, always started marine systems in certain ways after a little while of experimentation that showed, unbeknown to me until in the future, the ways I always use, proved they were right, well to me any way.

Even when building complete and matured tank and system combos for two shops I had dealings with, this was so hobbyists could just buy it totally ready to go, this was back a while.

I would use the ways that most likely many others use and not the old original bacteria in a bottle or live rock to start a system that was available after some years back.

I have used the live rock and my home made venturi skimmer, after wood stone skimmers of course in the eighties for a while, I found this way far to weak for abundant fish in one closed system creating a large load on the bio medias capacity.

Plus once the skimmer supported system is reliant on a skimmer, it can’t be let fail or left off.

The way I would start a system was to boil and use bleach on everything; no life of any kind was to be a part of my cycling, just fresh seawater was the basis of the bio start.

Treated dead tissue of all types were added and contained in stocking bags to stimulate many variations of ammonia that a marine system needs to get a good diverse cycle/mature.
What was in the water, being bacteria and I assume protists at the start, these mutated to account for all of the cycling/maturing processes.

Once this was in full swing the unstable initial bacteria part of cycling was complete and maturity was on its way.

At this stage is where I believe protists are multiplying and grazing out the bacteria, as do the bacteriophages as well.

All are applying their very important affects upon the tanks stability.

The phages can’t harm any micro life encapsulated in a shell, so they more so account for additional assistance by adding some organic matter feeding the protist community with organic matter and producing enormous amounts of inorganic phosphorus we test as phosphates.

Now the bio systems maturity is complete, the forms of protists that carry bacteria as a symbiotic life style and some forms that can oxidise the nitrite cycle with out the symbiotic bacteria are now running the majority of the nitrite cycle from nitrite to nitrate.

I believe these are the only oxidising life forms that can retain a stable community in a salt-oxygen rich environment!

The word protist is of a high priority now, you see fish from a constantly monitored copper sulphate environment were added to this system in many ways at different times to see what mutates from something else to live in this, there should no be any traces of white spot or oodinium due to the copper sulphate making it initially a protist free environment!

The parasites appeared, even when salt water was not from the ocean, I used RO water filters and homemade saltwater after blasting the tank with copper sulphate and an acid I use to keep it in solution, then lowering the levels down with the sterile home made saltwater and making sure I sterilised my skin to not carry water or micro life on me from another tank, they still came back, how is this possible??

I assume some protist are capable of remaining dormant for a long time and or this is a natural progression of mutating life from the basics to higher forms when nothing is there to stop them from advancing with in a closed systems evolutionary capacity.

I feel protists prevent them selves from advancing any further by natural culling with in their own communities.
I didn’t know any names or any scientific terms back then or any actual science to back this up, just what I could see and I put a meanings to what was happening, on my basic level of understanding.
So from these times I came to the conclusion what ever was in the water, were self controlling communities?

The ways in which I used these protists to cull the protists white spot and velvet was to make and establish similar to what we always called a wet section in the eighties.

I found what works best is calcium particles between 3 to 8 mill in diameter and matured it as the main oxidation area as the water first leave the aquarium after excellent pre filtering.

The types I make are vertical, like a reactor and as the tanks planktonic white spot and velvet pass to this area where the communities of protists living there feeding on bacteria and oxidising the nitrite cycle devour these weaker forms of protists and do not allow any to get past from what I have seen as results on the fishes bodies.

I have induced stress and added infected fish and parasites are gone in a short time and do not return no matter what I do to try and get them to reactivate.
Plus these parasites exist,dormant for a very long time at best in non active substrates waiting for stress signals to atack the fish,i dont use actual substrates!

Salinity is normal, all levels are normal, and so these are not contributing to the process.

For this and on going bio filtering stability, I had to find ways to make sure there can not be any potentially clogging matter coming going from my tank that would render this action weak or useless so the close gaps between particles needed to be protected for fully functional bio areas.

Also any porus areas for anaerobic functions needed to be free of blocking potential to its porus nature, which is anything like a deep sand bed, shell grit bed (substrate) or porus coral.

To get that part right, it took me nearly twenty-two years to get far better then filter socks or any other way of pre filtering out nearly everything!

This enabled an external bio filter with a sand bed or any porus type of area or material used in any way, to remain free of potential blockages that ruin the nitrate reduction these areas are mainly for.

With pre filtering better then filter socks, this way of on going parasite reduction was possible in such a simple way and always remains fully functional.

The level of protists that carry out nitrite to nitrate, I assumed were quite a strong and carnivorous to their own kind once bacteria was not available to graze on, the protist community to do all this I assume, is very diverse.

This is only from my results,there is no science behind this and I would not expect any one to copy my findings or even believe it, it’s just the way I do parasite control and maybe another option with in the hobby to control parasites!