Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

This may be right out there as far as fish health is concerned but has anyone ever tried using a colloidal silver solution as a hospital bath.

It's only anecdotal but I have a couple of sterling silver coins in my drink bottle and I rarely get sick even when my wife gets sick I get nothing, nada, zip.

Silver has a long history of antibacterial, anti viral and anti fungal medicinal use.

I know this sort of thing is usually lobbed in with seances and witch doctoring but modern medicine is using silver impregnated bandages for severe burn cases because of its recognized anti bacterial properties.

Also due to the nature of mountain streams and river ways many fish species developed in environments that were essentially weakly colloidal solutions of metallic and monotomic-metalic elements.

Moreover, If you think about it this is not too distant in actuality from the concept of the salt bath. Indeed, it is only the familiarity of salt baths and their effectiveness in treating fish disease that removes the salt bath from being associated with quackery.

There are an inordinate number of examples of animals seeking out element rich resources and utilising them for what may well be allopathic applications.

My mother used to feed me masses of the vitamin c tablets, telling me that's why I never got sick (I'm very sure I got sick though). Although reading up, taking the tablets reduced the amount of natural vitamin C your body will take up, because of the high levels you're getting through the tablets. I figure some people just have better immune systems than others. I'm not sure how much your silver coin is doing, but it's probably not doing any harm.

It was found that silver door knobs are actually fantastic at staying bacterially clean, far better than any other type, and my washing machine has a antibacterial button, but I think it's a gimmick to be honest (in my washing machine at least).

I'm also not sure what silver would do to the internals/gills/etc of the fish.

Salt sounds far cheaper though.

Try it out on some sick fish and see what happens?

According to that wonderful and reliable source of information called GoogleTM Silver may have to be in the form of nano-particles to have any effect!

I'd rather stick with salt (and give KMnO₄ a go as well)

Of course Gabe, they're your fish, and I'm sure you're doing all you can for them.

I was, merely, throwing it out there for everyone's consideration although it was bad timing on my part when you have fish suffering.

Silver is well recognized for Its abilities in these regards, being used to keep milk and water fresh by putting a coin in the bottom of the container.

I only meant to offer help.

Hi Terry.

Metals such as copper have been used in fresh water aquarium for pest control for a long time so the idea of Silver may work.

Part of the issue is that I also have edible fish in my system (SP & trout) so i am not to keen to experiment with metals,

Silver has a long history of medical use and use in foods.

Like most things too much of a good thing can lead to:

http://www.rightdiagnosis.com/s/silver_poisoning/intro.htm

are you talking about colloidal minerals or silver?
We have a bottle of the minerals and they have heaps of different things in them.

Hi Jay,

I was suggesting the possibility of colloidal silver being able to be used for fish disease and in this instance a colloidal silver bath for its anti-bacterial, anti-fungal and anti-viral properties. The rest was just blather about the natural environment of stream fish.

As is often the case with us Back-Yarders definitive identification of fish maladies is outside of our resources and so treatment is usually, at best, a guess. We reach for the salt and add more oxygen but if that fails we watch our fish die and are unable to stop it coz we're out of bullets, so to speak. Thankfully this is often sufficient.

but:

If i was a commercial APer growing strawberries and had a severe outbreak of ich or another presently untreatable fish disease I'm in big trouble because salt and strawberries don't like each other.

Unless there is another broad spectrum remedy available or I can find a targeted curative for this affliction compatible with the fruit I could be looking at a total loss of a valuable crop of fish or plants or both. (Worst case...Yup....it's all hypothetical)

For me, I'm gonna leave a couple of silver coins in my AP and try a colloidal silver douche.

Who knows it could be a revolution in the treatment of fish disease that transforms the world of aquaculture and I'll get a Noble Prize and you were here to see it. I'm not holding my breath on the prize but just imagining all the living grateful fish would be nice.

I think you'd want to design your system to cut out tanks for treatment so you could salt the fish without harming the strawberries. I don't know if UV light would be a viable treatment to prevent the parasite from coming back after re-attaching the tank but that's where I'd start looking for a solution. The other thought is how big is the free swimming parasite and can it be removed as a solid on a rotating drum filter .

I've read a bit of research on using media filters to remove parasites from the water column.

scotty435,

If I was to build a commercial AP system, which I have considered many times since discovering AP, it would be designed around simplicity. So... no swirl filters or rotating drums or separate bio-filters other than the very large growbeds. The minimum ratio of the growbeds would be three liters of wet scoria to one of fish tank.

The entire system would be located in twin skin green houses and the AP systems would be modular The system I dream each greenhouse is 100 meters long by eight meters wide and contain 14 by four thousand liter discreet tank and growbeds systems each with twelve thousand liters of wet scoria. Each greenhouse would contain fifty thousand liters of tank and one hundred and sixty eight thousand liters of growbeds.

I envision these greenhouses spreading across a property as time, finances, profitability and labor allow. Plants choices would be considered exclusively on profitability and possibly limited to as few as four different plant species and two species of fish.

The philosophy behind the design would rely totally on the simplest features in AP design and exploiting what that brings to the growing of plants and fish.

Finally, if the concept was unable to sell produce and fish into mass markets at a profit then I would consider it a failure as a commercial system.

The problem with colloidal silver in a running system is it's antibacterial properties. We need bacteria. In a hospital tank, I say go for it. In an AP system, it would be a no go.

Thanx Ron, an excellent addition to the conversation.

I'm not gonna get my Noble prize now... am I?

Bugger!