Fish suddenly dying for no reason? This may be the cause.

[7Enigma]

Well last night as I was washing my sand for my new 20gallon tank I had a bit of a realization. I've spent WAY to much time reading this forum the last 2 weeks and occasionally come across the, "My fish suddenly died, all the measurable perameters were fine, I didn't change anything at all!". Obviously, when you have a large die off, its not just dumb luck, there is most definately a cause.

So last night I'm washing this sand by hand, and remember a lot of people get great joy out of hand feeding their fish, and it dawned on me. ANTIBIOTICS!

The big fad nowadays and a wonderful marketing scheme is to sell antibacterial everything. It's in hand cremes, its in soaps, its in dish detergents, etc. I could go off on a tangent about how I disaggree with the use of antibacterial products from a number of points of view (non antibacterial soaps and cleaners do the job just fine, less contamination of waste water producing antibacterial resistant strains, killing off of beneficial bacteria in your environment). Reread that last one, your environment as in YOUR HANDS!

Your hands absorb a bit of everything they touch, be it dyes, lotion, fish water (love that smell after working on a dirty tank?). It takes very little of these to wreck havoc on bacteria. This is why I don't recommend it for washing hands and such, your killing off EVERYTHING, not just bad things. So you go and do dishes, or go to the bathroom and wash your hands with this antibacterial soap. Some of these antibiotics make their way into or dry on the surface of your skin. Or even worse those dry sanitizers (ex Purell) that people love to use (though the bacteria is still on your skin, just dead. The antibiotics will just dry on your hands at HIGH concentrations since you didn't wash anything off.

It's feeding time. You decide to hand feed little bubba and next day they are keeling over, or your nitrogen parameters are out of whack. Think about how little chlorine needs to be in your tap water (ppm) to kill a lot of bacteria. Now imagine how much antibiotics could be on your hand during feeding, leeching into the water supply.

I can tell you, I will be making sure to NEVER use antibiotic hand products from now on for this reason. HTH

justin

 

[mortiss]

Most antbacterial handwashes and soaps are just alcohol, there's no actual antibiotic in them. But you're right, soap and other residue on your hands will make its way into the tank.

 

[7Enigma]

mortiss, I would have to disagree. While those Purell type sanitizers may indeed be mostly alcohol (and now that you mention it you can definitely smell the alcohol) most soaps are not. I just walked into our bathroom where my wife has antibacterial soap, and sure enough its the culprit I see most often, Tryclosan at 0.3%. Check any soaps you have in your house and see what the active ingredient is. I'll bet it contains tryclosan, and some contain multiple ones (at my lab at work we have an industrial hand sanitizer that has 3 at relatively high concentration, I only use it in extreme cases of oooppsss!)

As an aside, in college I had a microbiology class where we had a very intersting project. We had to take a random water sample from an area around our house and streak out and isolate a single microorganism. I chose an old, what appeared to be a small shelter below ground (maybe a hunters hideout?) that was full of rain water. I ended up isolating a single strain of bacteria and after identification our prof wanted to show us what the rampant use of antibacterials had done to the environment. We used antibiotic discs on petri dishes (about 15 different antibiotics). Areas where the bacteria stopped growing were considered resistant, areas that were wiped out where considered non-resistant, and areas that grew right through the disk were considered tolerant.

I was shocked to find that my random sample was resistant to 6 of the 15, and another 2 didn't even stop the growth. That was enough evidence to show me how dangerous overuse of antibiotics can be. Imagine if this was a strain of bacteria that could be very harmful (popular example of anthrax), say your doctor is perceptive enough to find the proper cause and start you on a large dose of antibiotics. What happens when the bacteria laughs at your treatment and keeps on multiplying? Could be too late to start another antibiotic....

justin

 

[mortiss]

Guess I'm behind the times again, you're right - they are putting Tryclosan in everything now - even tissue! Good call.

 

[7Enigma]

Mortiss, yeah I forgot about that one in my original post. Those new tissues! Not a lot of people wash their hands after blowing their noses (I've always got a runny nose at work since I work at 4C and my body keeps my nose from freezing by running...go figure). Those tissues normally have a lotion in them that will help to absorb into the skin (marketing buzz: moisturize your hands while you blow!), but this could be serious since you now have the antibiotic in your skin.

I also remember reading a great article last year (I think?) about a husband who's wife suffered from a serious degree of skin disease (think it was psoriosis or something). Her husband bought a gigantic barrel of hand creme, some antibiotics, and an emulsifier (detergent). He spent many years doing simple science trying to find the right combination of the 3 ingredients to get something that would cure his wife's ailment.

He eventually discovered the proper formula and it cleared up his wife's condition better than any treatment she had been given. Last I heard doctor's and other health care workers that are constantly washing were using the stuff due to its superior killing ability and protecting the hands from cuts and dryness. I think some company was going to start manufacturing the stuff. I'll have to look around for the article on the net, since its one of those warm fuzzy stories...

 

[mortiss]

There's more antibiotics in the water table than in a pharmacy nowadays! My LFS guy said that people were starting to ask him to stock medicated food so that they can use them as a preventative - what nonsense. I would be interested in that article too.

 

[7Enigma]

Oh and I just did a little math on my hand soap. At 0.3% starting concentration, that's the equivalent of 3,000ppm (if yo say at 3% that would be 3 parts in 100, so 0.3% would be 3 parts in 1000, or 3,000ppm).

So you now throw this into your tank, lets use 20gallons as that's my tank. And.....I'm stuck, can't figure out where to go from here. But I'll say this, most antibiotics are effective at PPB (that's billion), so I'm sure there would be adequate killing power in the tank if you had this on your skin.

 

[7Enigma]

Thank god for google, took me 10seconds to find that article:

And surprise, active ingredient.....Tryclosan

Here's an excerpt that should make aquarium people take notice, "The lotion killed bacteria within seconds of being applied, and lasted for at least three hours after application. "The results are exciting in as much as we have found that the base to this treatment - silicon - retains the anti-microbial activity even if volunteers wash their hands with soap and water several times during a three -hour period," says Professor Elliott."

http://www.rense.com/general54/manasi.htm

 

[Holokai]

Oi... Man, now you're just scaring me.8O So have any suggestions? Washing your hands apparently doesn't help....

 

[7Enigma]

Holokai,

Yes, don't use antibacterial anything in your house (or use sparingly). Normal detergent soap (be it bar or liquid) work extremely well at removing bacteria from your hands (and surfaces). Not only that, but the fauna (microorganisms normally found on your skin and underneath your skin) present will compete with foreign bacteria when it gets on your hands. It's like putting new fish into an uncycled tank, they will have a tough time surviving. If you put new bacteria on skin that has been cleaned with antibiotics, there is no competition and the new bacteria will thrive. If you already have a good lawn of bacteria on your skin, the foreign bacteria will have to compete for resources and may not take hold.

A 1-10% bleach solution for all critical parts of your house (kitchen, bathroom, etc.) will kill everything that an antibacterial soap would, so its not like you are losing killing power. Unfortunately the public loves that word antibacterial, and companies would be idiotic to not include it in their product! "So for the same price I can get one with antibiotics included! I can't lose!" (in best homer simpson voice..)

I have a theory that a lot of the rampant "allergies" we see young kids get today may very well be caused by them not being naturally acclimated to the environment. While I feel hand washing and general hygeine is extremely important to society (and its well under satisfactory if i go by the amount of people i see not washing their hands when using the bathroom ), there's a line that is being crossed now that we may well wish wasn't.

 

[TankGirl]

7Enigma - this is a pet peeve of mine, and I agree completely with you. Normal, healthy families should let their kids play in the dirt, and should not need antibacterial products all over the place. You need exposure to these minor nasties in order to build your own immune system.

Anyway, that is a topic for the Lounge, so feel free to start up a post there - it is very interesting and relevant these days.

Returning to the fishy discussion, I think you may be right that we take special care to wash our hands before we put them in our tank, not realizing that we are transferring soap ingredients into the tank. There are lots of threads about mysterious fish deaths, as you say, and we ought to examine our habits carefully to determine the cause.

 

[Lonewolfblue]

Yes, antibacterial soaps can do some harm, but I use it all the time. Before I work on my tank, I only rinse my hands off with as hot of water as I can stand, then work on the tank. Then after working on the tank, I'll wash my hands with antibacterial soap. Just the skinny on how I do it.

 

[7Enigma]

Lonewolfblue,

I think I'll wash my hands with antibacterial soap AFTER working on the tank, and with no plans on going back in their for at least a day. Also, a lot of people have much bigger tanks than I do, so I assume their entire arm will be in there at some point to get near the bottom. If you have fancy lotions or other beauty products on (nail polish?), they may leech into the water, but I doubt they would be as harmful as the antibiotics.

 

[Lonewolfblue]

I personally never use lotions anyways. A quick hot rinse at first and I'm just fine. Then washup afterwards.

 

[QTOFFER]

Good thread!

I'll add another hazard. I have a humidifier running 24/7 for my sinuses, and I use a bacteriostatic/fungicidal solution to prevent stuff from growing on the filter. This stuff is soapy and certainly deadly to the aquarium. I'm very careful to feed my fish BEFORE I refill the humidifier.

I wash my hands with warm water only before messing around in my tanks. Afterwards, I wash with warm soapy water.

It's hard to find liquid hand soaps, kitchen sponges, and paper towels that DON'T have some antimicrobial something in them! The marketing people are convinced that consumers won't buy their products unless they are antimicrobial. The funny thing is that most of these products really aren't that good at killing the nasty, pathogenic germs anyway.

 

[jgc8fan]

IMO I don't think it's necessarily due to the antibacterial ingredients, but there is an angle in this that I've been mulling over for some time. Right now I have 2 tanks... A 20g and a 40g. The 20g gets hardly any real maintenance performed on it aside from filter changes and topping off the water weekly due to evaporation. Those fish have been alive over 8 years and going fine. My 40 I just set up last year so have been giving it more attention, and lost some new arrivals within the first 6 months the tank was set up.

I've noticed this trend with other people I've "talked tank" with as well. The conclusion I've come to isn't really related to the antibacterial issue (the mysterious death issue was around long before everything became A-B), but more likely a result of our old friends toxic detergents which are in all soaps, laundry detergents, lotions, dish soap, etc... This stuff has long been known to be toxic to aquariums in even small amounts due to the closed nature of an aquarium system. The main point is that these products include "binders" or sticky agents that cause them to stick to dirt, bacteria, etc that can then be rinsed away. It also causes the detergents to stick to your hands, and then your hands go into your aquarium... Easy to figure out that small amounts of toxins are building up in our tanks.

So all in all what I've noticed (even long before the A-B trend occured) has been that people who keep their hands out of their tanks usually have longer living fish. The answer??? I don't think we need to rush out and change our soaps (the A-B ingeredients are more of a sales pitch anyway as the A-B agents ussually are ineffective), but someone needs to create or find a santizer that one can use before dipping hands into an aquarium. Not sure about alcohol based sanitizers as if the alcohol isn't allowed to evaporate it would be toxic to the aquarium itself, and I'm meeting a lot of people lately who are allergic to alcohol anyway so it would be useless to them. Maybe vinegar??? If you don't mind smelling like a salad the rest of the day.

Right now rinsing with hot water is the best solution, but even that won't get rid of all the detergents we come in contact with. The better solution is to keep your mitts out of the tank unless it's neccessary.

 

[Codefox]

While they may build up over time wouldn't they break down as well. I agree that I've always been far more concerned about the detergents getting in the tank and only wash with water when I'm working with my tank.

I think a better solution here would be to have a pair of latex gloves or something that were used only for tank maintance. That would answer all of these problems.

 

[jgc8fan]

While they may build up over time wouldn't they break down as well. I agree that I've always been far more concerned about the detergents getting in the tank and only wash with water when I'm working with my tank.

I think a better solution here would be to have a pair of latex gloves or something that were used only for tank maintance. That would answer all of these problems.

I'm sure they break down, and get removed by filtration as well, but newbies always seem to have their hands in the tank... It's usually the newer people that seem to be having the most problems. (athough it happens to experienced folk when setting up new tanks too)

I was thinking the same thing about the gloves... You could "net dip" them before using. I actually know people with reef tanks that do this using the gloves that come up past the elbows with elastic tops to keep water from getting in. Don't remember what those gloves are called, but vets use them for things I won't discuss here.

While I don't completely disagree about the antibacterial topic I just think it's a small part of the toxic detergent issue that has been around forever. I've got books with chapters about mysterious fish death from the 70s long before any of this A-B in everything started. And I've personally seen it going on with newbies since I started as a newbie myself in 1988.

 

[Codefox]

I'm sure they break down, and get removed by filtration as well, but newbies always seem to have their hands in the tank... It's usually the newer people that seem to be having the most problems. (athough it happens to experienced folk when setting up new tanks too)

It's really unavoidable sometimes. I think there's a lot more than just detergents that are causing problems. Oils from the skin are likely not that great either

All in all...I think it's best to either stay out or go in with, er, protection.

Seriously though, gloves are a gret idea...I'll have to get some for when I start putting my live plants in this week. I wouldn't have even thought about it if not for this topic.

 

[7Enigma]

Codefox,

Glad I could help a little. I've learned a ton from this site. I'm a bit of a germ-o-phobe, and it doesn't help that I'm in research (read: sterile). 1/2 my day I'm in latex gloves, and brought a box home for working on the tank. I would recommend if you do go the glove route, to wash the gloves off prior to using them (some are powdered, some are powder-free, but there still might be something that could leech off) in tank water of course (and only the outside of the glove , try putting on a wet latex glove...not a fun experience). Originally this was to prevent me from catching something, but its a two way street, and its probably more beneficial to the tank than it is to me.