Cause of HLLE discovered
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Topic: Cause of HLLE discovered
Posted By: bbauman
Subject: Cause of HLLE discovered
Date Posted: May 09 2012 at 12:31pm
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http://saltaquarium.about.com/od/hlleorlledisease/a/Cause-Of-Hlle-Head-And-Lateral-Line-Erosion-In-Saltwater-Aquarium-Fish.htm" rel="nofollow - http://saltaquarium.about.com/od/hlleorlledisease/a/Cause-Of-Hlle-Head-And-Lateral-Line-Erosion-In-Saltwater-Aquarium-Fish.htm ------------- 28g Cube http://www.utahreefs.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=23030" rel="nofollow - Beginners Guide to Saltwater Aquariums Brandon in West Jordan |
Replies:
Posted By: Jeremyw
Date Posted: May 09 2012 at 1:01pm
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WOW! Thanks for sharing this brandon! ------------- Next meeting: |
Posted By: McClure
Date Posted: May 09 2012 at 9:23pm
| Wow is right! |
Posted By: Cody
Date Posted: May 09 2012 at 11:23pm
| Good read. Makes you think about what AC you put in your system. |
Posted By: Davidwillis
Date Posted: May 10 2012 at 7:58am
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I wish they would have done more tests to see if it is just the crappy dusty carbon, or if filtering the dust out would help. Or if it is something carbon removes that causes it. It is an interesting article, but really does not provide enough information to help. Carbon has been suspected for years, but we still don't know what about it causes HLLE (is it the dust, or something it removes), or if it is the only reason for it (which I still think there are other things that cause it as well). |
Posted By: Boxfish
Date Posted: May 10 2012 at 8:36am
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If you click on the link for the full article it does give a little more info. It was the cheap dusty carbon. Extruded pellet carbon was better and in the other article it does suggest rinsing the carbon thoroughly before using and using a good skimmer. I do wish they would do a study like you suggested with different types of AC. So has anyone experienced this with their fish? I had a purple tang that got it one time and to be honest with you I do recall using carbon and it wasnt the good stuff and I believe I used it for about a month and thats its for a 15 year period. Ive never really used carbon. And had the tang about 7 years after that it cleared up very little. It wasnt a bad case just some pitting. |
Posted By: ReefdUp
Date Posted: May 10 2012 at 9:15am
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I'm with David. Carbon has been suspected for years, but people have used the cheapo carbon with no ill results...and others have had fish with hlle and didn't run any carbon. In fact, the purple tang I rescued healed up great from a terrible case of hlle WHILE I ran the cheapo activated carbon. I'd like to see this test repeated by a third party. My gut says there's more to this story than just carbon This is just a correlation at this point in my opinion, not a causation....and the hobby has already correlated carbon with hlle. ------------- www.reefdup.com Diving since 2009, reefkeeping since 2007, & fishkeeping since 1987 200g, 75g, & 15g Systems PADI Advanced Open Water |
Posted By: Mark Peterson
Date Posted: May 10 2012 at 10:57am
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+2
------------- Reefkeeping Tips, & quick, easy setup tricks: www.utahreefs.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=9244 Pay it forward - become a paid WMAS member 
|
Posted By: bfessler
Date Posted: May 10 2012 at 11:51am
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I read the whole article and this wasn't just a single tank tested on a few fish. They did try to eliminate all other sources of the problem by running 2 tanks from each sample group. They tested both Lignite, (Dusty) carbon, Pelletized Carbon and No Carbon. Sure there are tons of different carbon but this relates well to cheep and premium IMO. They also fed premium and basic foods to 1 of each tank in the 3 groups. They controlled the lighting, water parameters and several other suspected variables that were suspected of causing HLLE. The fact that all fish in the Lignite Group contracted severe HLLE is a pretty good indicator that the dust or fines of carbon are what caused the disease. Additionally the fish in the low dust Pelletized group also developed signs of HLLE though not nearly as severe as the dusty group. No signs at all of HLLE in the control group with no carbon. Sure more testing needs to be done but the study does point out pretty conclusively that Carbon dust does cause HLLE. The article also notes that not everyone who runs carbon has problems and that the incidence of problems is greatly reduced by running a skimmer. The full article sites instances where public aquariums that had run dusty carbon and then stopped still had problems because the fines couldn't be completely eradicated by simply stopping to run dusty carbon. There were many fines still in the system. It also pointed out that when tanks affected were throughly cleaned of all fines that the tanks ceased to have problems with HLLE. The article also recommends not running water through carbon at high pressure so as to prevent erosion creating fines. Over all I thought it was a well executed study and well written impartial article. You can take or leave the results but it's like Cigarettes, no one wanted to believe they would cause cancer. Put a filter on it an the smoke will be safe, not everyone who smokes gets cancer, a friend of mine got cancer and didn't smoke, and so on. We now know that Carbon Fines do cause HLLE. You can ignore it or take precautions to prevent it, especially if you have Tangs or other fish pron to the disease. There are other products that work as well as carbon like Purigen. They are more expensive but have the added bonus of being renewable. By soaking the exhausted pellets in a 50/50 solution of bleach and water then throually rinsing them they can be used over and over which reduces the cost and may over time make them less expensive in the long run. I don't think we need to jump to conclusions and stop using activated carbon completely but it's good to know the relationship of carbon fines and HLLE. ------------- Burt An equal opportunity reefer, I support all hobbyists and organizations involved in Marine Aquarium Keeping. [email protected] |
Posted By: Boxfish
Date Posted: May 10 2012 at 12:55pm
| So what is the safest way to use carbon on your system. Also I was working with a guy building these filter systems for something completely different using zeolite. Can we use that? From what I understand its better than carbon in the application we were looking at. But dont know about aquarium use, so forgive me for throwing that out there since I dont know much about it. |
Posted By: Davidwillis
Date Posted: May 10 2012 at 1:55pm
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don't get me wrong. I think it is good information, but I think it needs to be taken a lot further to make it actually useful for us. We already know carbon/carbon dust was a possible cause. Although this proves it a little more. I wish they would have taken some carbon, put it in a reaction chamber, and run the output through a micron filter. Run several tanks each with say 200 micron, 100 micron, 50 micron 10 micron. It would be interesting to see if that would solve or reduces the occurrence of HLLE. Also I read the article a few months ago, so I may not remember it correctly, but didn't they say they looked at the fish with a microscope and could not find any carbon dust? So it may not be the dust directly, it may be the type of carbon, etc. |
Posted By: bfessler
Date Posted: May 10 2012 at 2:13pm
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It would appear from the results of this study and the little bit of other research I've done on the subject that anything you can do to reduce the amount of carbon dust or fines that enter the water column the better. Running the output from your canister filter or reactor through the skimmer should help remove these fine particles. The problem is that many aquarists run the water through the carbon as the last stage of filtration to make it last longer and not become clogged with particles coming from the display. Also to use a premium carbon that has little or no dust to begin with. These carbons are more expensive but since it appears that the less fines you start out with the better it is for the fish in the system. A carbon like BRS ROX 0.8 or SeaChem Matrix Carbon have very little dust and generally better capacity and would be good choices. I've also started looking into Synthetic Resins Like SeaChem's Purigen which, while more expensive, is also renewable and can be used over and over makeing it more cost effective long term. Here is a good article by SeaChem that talks about the various types of chemical filtration including Zeolite, Carbon Synthetic Absorbents and more. http://www.seachem.com/Library/SeaGrams/Chemical_Filtration.pdf" rel="nofollow - Seachem Chemical Filtration Article Bottom line is best practices would dictate that we do as much as we can to remove carbon fines from the water column. ------------- Burt An equal opportunity reefer, I support all hobbyists and organizations involved in Marine Aquarium Keeping. [email protected] |
Posted By: bfessler
Date Posted: May 10 2012 at 2:44pm
I found portion of the article that talks about not finding any carbon dust in the lesions. The quote gives a few reasons why this might be. "In addition, the hard pelleted carbon used in this study did not cause severe HLLE, while the soft, dusty carbon did. However, no carbon fines were seen in the histological examinations of the lesions of the study fish. This means that the dust causing the effect is either fleeting, the fines were too small for the histologist to see, or that there is some other factor associated with carbon use that causes HLLE in susceptible fishes." I do agree that more study is required to find out if the use of AC can be safe, but the intent of this study wasn't to determine if there is a safe way to use AC, it was to determine if AC can cause HLLE. IMO they documented a definate link between the two. Now we have the option to do as we see fit with the infromation. ------------- Burt An equal opportunity reefer, I support all hobbyists and organizations involved in Marine Aquarium Keeping. [email protected] |
Davidwillis wrote: