Collecting Stress > Ion Loss > White Fuzzy Death

I have on multiple occasion killed several dozen elassoma by overwater change. There is a reason why I prefer my elassoma captive bred: all the wild caught ones are ridiculously susceptible to the white fuzzy death. I do not know if it is columnaris or flexibacter or something else, I just know that after high percentage water changes, they became symptomatic, they died. This happened on more than one occasion in more than one tank. Large water changes stress fish.

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You are right Erica, large water changes stress fish. I will tell you though, that most native fish are not exactly like elassoma. Most native fish are pretty darn hard to kill. I have mostly dealt with "fuzzy death" from taking fish from nice cool water and warming them up too quickly, and or not having some salt in the water. Point is, most native fish deal with great changes very frequently, and most don't need to be coddled.

My heterandria formosa showed symptoms of it, too, after I added a sick elassoma evergladei to their tank (mistakenly thinking it was an elassoma-only disease). (It's not).

The hardest time I have had with it was when taking redside dace from a spring fed stream during warmer months. Ugly. They were great for a day or so, then BAM! their tails were rotting off. Same stream during winter, and salt and slower warm up, no problems. In general though, as someone who used to sell wild caught fish quite a bit, very little problems. Telling you they are tough. The two species that you are mentioning are probably not the best examples of "hardy" natives. I have had H. formosa overwinter in my garage which was often near freezing with no problems. They were in a 300+ gallon system though. Never had to do water changes, as there was 150 gallons of "refugium" packed with hornwort and other plants. The formosa resided in the refugium, their offspring got sucked through the system, and fed the darters and shiners.

I have had repeated challenges as with your red side dace when acquiring coppernose bluegill from the Suwannee River drainage. Necrosis set in very quickly and consistently when fish transferred from source to hauling tanks. I tried using only water from source, manipulating salinity, using antibiotics that are not legal for food-fish as well as water from other localities. Somehow problem was intrinsic to those fish. Offspring of such were also touchy.

I have had repeated challenges as with your red side dace when acquiring coppernose bluegill from the Suwannee River drainage. Necrosis set in very quickly and consistently when fish transferred from source to hauling tanks. I tried using only water from source, manipulating salinity, using antibiotics that are not legal for food-fish as well as water from other localities. Somehow problem was intrinsic to those fish. Offspring of such were also touchy.

Interesting. Redside dace from other localities have been much easier. I assumed it was the spring water. Almost always a constant, then a small change caused big trouble.

coppernose bluegill from the Suwannee River drainage.

The Suwannee is not the average river. These may be fish who have never seen bacteria

"dissolved organic carbon (DOC) to its waters. At its headwaters in the Okefenokee Swamp, the Suwannee River is a blackwater river, with DOC concentrations ranging from 25-75 mg/L and pH values of less than pH 4.0."
http://www.humicsubs...rg/sources.html

Health issues pop up within hours during transport even when exact same water capture source is used to fill a sterilized hauler.

Capture source water with salt added i presume? The adrenaline rush during and after capture is what causes the rapid loss of body salts in soft low-conductivity water. Fin necrosis and infection sets in quickly where the tissue is damaged from ion loss. The "stress" of adapting to added salt is trivial compared to the stress of cellular ion depletion if you don't add salt.

Presumably there's low levels of bacteria already present on the fish or in the water (or in your collecting & hauling gear). The infection has to come from somewhere.

Health issues pop up within hours during transport even when exact same water capture source is used to fill a sterilized hauler.

Our standard protocol is to raise salinity to 2 PPT using NaCl. Did not help. Sea salt might have been better or a higher salinity.

Do you add salt to the cooler or live well (or whatever container you're using) BEFORE you start adding fish? I think that much of the ion-loss damage probably occurs within the first few minutes (due to adrenaline spike), even if you dont see symptoms until hours later. 2 ppt ought to be plenty, and maybe some other ions besides just NaCl might help. Check with the Bait Saver & Finer Shiner people and see if they can tell you anything (beyond "buy my product"). Or maybe the FL Trop Fish Farmers Assoc has some research articles.

BTW -- I'm gonna try to move the latter half of this thread to a NEW topic if I can, in the Collecting & Sampling section.

Our standard protocol is to raise salinity to 2 PPT using NaCl. Did not help. Sea salt might have been better or a higher salinity.

Salt is added to well with water at the very least several minutes before fish is added. What we do is pull up to collection site, load hauler with water from source using either bucket brigade or pump powered by auxiliary power, then add salt stir to get it into solution. Then we start collecting fish. Normally we do two compartments at a time so stocking density can be kept very low, especially once this problem was noted.

If future efforts made, the marine salt will be used.

First of all, I have no experience with the species mentioned so far. Only thing to compare is silversides which everybody knows are fragile and I wouldn't presume to expect to get any home alive in a bucket.

All fishermen know not to bother trying to keep golden shiners alive in a bucket during summer, but they're indestructible in a bucket the other 3 seasons.

In both cases salt will not change anything except add another stress variable [for freshwater fish].

SO my question is, why would you add salt for fish that come from systems where there is no natural salt? Yes, I'm aware of conventional wisdom as perpetuated on the web ad nausium, but besides blindly repeating conventional wisdom, to me it's counter intuitive.

I confess I'm bias as staunch anti-add anything. Part of that comes from retail pet trade background where a bag of salt was sold with every set up regardless of who/what/where and more bags of salt followed by bottles of snake oil were pushed with every sign of cloudy H2O or a white fleck on a customer's fish. And then a new fish after the first one is killed by treatment stress.

I think I went astray re: original topic: ie too big H2O changes.

Same same what I said before. Large water changes can often be a significant stressor. Some of those generic undiagnosed "fuzzy deaths" appear with stress, whether it's temp, H2O quality, lack of cover, pesty tankmates or fragile mental disposition. I've seen fish fail to thrive 'cause their tank was in too busy of an area in the home. Rather than dump in salt or snake oil, I moved the tank and no more fuzz.
I'm just sayin...

Only thing to compare is silversides which everybody knows are fragile and I wouldn't presume to expect to get any home alive in a bucket.

After listening to Gerald, we got 8, then another trip, 8 Brook Silversides home in a bucket in August. Salt in the bucket before catching fish.

After listening to Gerald, we got 8, then another trip, 8 Brook Silversides home in a bucket in August. Salt in the bucket before catching fish.

Hmm, hokay. I can't get atlantic silversides home, but since they're already in full marine habitat, never occurred to me to add salt.

Maybe 'cause brook silversides are evolved from marine species? Maybe 'cause they are found in mineral rich hard water [if they are]? I don't know.

There may be something to the science behind adding salt but I'm convinced it's way way over used and over pushed in pet stores and internet forums. I stand behind my general premis of salt being a potential stressor, especially for fish who evolved in systems where salt or dissolved minerals in general are in low concentration.

I should also take this chance to point out I'm none too bright, trained, educated or qualified to contradict guys like Gerald or any of the many people way smarter than me. I just like to point out my own [possibly invalid] observations.

MIKEZ I think you are fishing for inflated egos to get them riled up.

All water in nature has some natural salt, even the softest blackwater streams. The salt-uptake cells in the gills are extremely efficient in soft-water adapted fish, so they can absorb what they need when there's hardly any ions in the water. And their kidneys are really good at excreting water without losing much salt. But the adrenaline rush when fish are frightened messes up this balance. The increased blood flow to the gills (to get more oxygen FAST) causes salt ions to leak out, especially if ion content in the water is very low. In low-conductivity water it may take too long to replenish the lost ions, during which time bacteria can attack the skin tissue damaged by ion loss. Flexibacter (aka Columnaris) is especially good at this. Adding salt in the collecting container reduces the rate of ion loss during the fright reaction, and provides a ready source of ions for uptake when the fright reaction subsides. For a wild fish being chased by a predator, its all over in a few seconds - either he escapes or he's caught. For a netted or hooked fish placed in a bucket or live well, the fright reaction lasts much longer, so there's greater potential for tissue damage from the ion loss. Does that make sense now?

It's interesting that one of the most susceptible fish to post-collection skin infections (in soft water without added salt) in my area is good ole Gambusia -- the ultimate "tolerant" fish in terms of poor water quality, low oxygen, pollutants, etc. Physiologically it's a hard-water fish, like other livebearers. When not stressed it can uptake the ions it needs in very soft and acidic water, but apparently it loses ions quickly when stressed by netting and transport.

SO my question is, why would you add salt for fish that come from systems where there is no natural salt?

I agree totally what your statement below -- salt is way over-used in the hobby. It's fine for long-term use with coastal species and many hard-water fish (recognizing of course that fish need Ca and Mg too, not just NaCl), and it's great for short-term use in transport and disease treatment, but using more than 1/2 teasp per gallon for long-term maintenance of soft-water fish is probably not beneficial.

There may be something to the science behind adding salt but I'm convinced it's way way over used and over pushed in pet stores and internet forums. I stand behind my general premise of salt being a potential stressor, especially for fish who evolved in systems where salt or dissolved minerals in general are in low concentration.

I've never been a fan of salt for anything other than treating acute outbreaks of parasites or creating a brackish environment, and never thought to use it while collecting. But after hearing Gerald give a presentation on natives and collecting at my aquarium club, BCAS (Bucks County Aquarium Society, Churchville PA, holding our big annual auction 5/10, pm me if interested, shameless plug!) I started using it. I have no figures from previous collecting to compare it to, although I rarely had issues anyway. But since I started using salt, the only instance of fish death that I can attribute to collection stress was 3 small Yellow Perch last summer. I forgot to salt the water until the fish had been in it around an hour, and all 3 broke down and were dead inside of 2 days. Anecdotal I know. Fwiw I use API aquarium salt which is actually not plain sodium chloride as is commonly thought, but is actually evaporated seawater. Full disclosure I was given approximately my own weight in the stuff a while back. It's made at a facility in Bonaire that also produces pricey "culinary" sea salt. The only difference in process is a final wetting/evaporation to reduce the chunky crystals to those nice little flakes. I put the stuff in a grinder for cooking. This is the only warning you're likely to get if you eat my cooking, other than the one about what exactly it is that I'm cooking, so be forewarned!