Cooking fish food to control bacterial pathogens, long term specimen health effects?

[Jay Hemdal]

@Jay Hemdal thank you for the information.

Indeed, that is my concern. While this is totally a subjective observation. I have seen stn and rtn events in sps corals occur in some of my various reef tanks after offering raw frozen supermarket clams. Initially I suspected water chemistry or other issues, eventually after a few instances of stn and no issues with ICP analysis. I began to suspect a potential correlation between contaminated foods and stn/rtn. Thus, three months ago I discontinued using frozen shellfish and treated the main system with a round of antibiotics, the stn/rtn events stopped. Now three months later coral growth based on alkalinity demands are faster then ever before and no stn events have reappeared.

At this point, the only frozen foods I am offering in systems containing sps corals are sushi grade frozen fish. Its my understanding that the risk of potentially negative bacteria from these food types is much lower. The FDA if I am not mistaken basically recommends only tuna and farmed salmon to be consumed raw and those still require very careful handling techniques.

Raw shellfish not cleared for human consumption, thats the whole segment of aquarium fish food products. Frozen (mysis, clams, shrimp, brine)... I have never seen an issue feeding these preparations to marine fish, it just seems like some organisms (sps) reef aquarist keep are more sensitive to pathogenic bacteria.

Could these shellfish products be cooked then blended into a gelation vitamin diet?

Again, a totally subjective observation. Reef aquariums have many factors, no two are alike and none are likely as stable as off shore reefs. Thus my concern about the new introduction of negative pathogenic bacteria could be totally misguided. I just sure hate seeing large sps colonies melt for no known reason.

Ah, I was only talking about bacteria as it relates to fish disease, not corals.

 

[Readywriter]

What are the long term effects of feeding cooked foods to marine fish?
Bacterial pathogens are common on certain types of uncooked seafood. Those can potentially have a negative impact if given a foothold in an environment.
Its fairly easy to control introduction of parasitic pathogens with freezing to FDA standards, bacterial pathogens however are harder to eliminate. At this point, cooking is the only viable option I have read about for those types of seafood that commonly play host to bacterial pathogens.

The quickest way to have unhealthy fish is an entirely sterile environment