Speaker 1: This pet Life Radio. Let's talk pats.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Aquarium Radia. I'm your host, doctor Royano, speaking
to you from the University of Florida. I have this
tropical aquaculture laboratory. Thanks for joining us. Reef aquaria from
nanotanks to large, complex high tech systems have exploded in
popularity with increased knowledge and more advanced lighting infiltration. My
guest today, doctor Alex Hall, a recent betiical graduate with
interest and growing expertise in reef diseases, has made a
name for himself on social media as the reef bet
Join us as we discuss Alex's journey from child hobbyists
to aquatic veterinarian and scientists. We'll be right back after
these messages.
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Speaker 4: Let's talk pets on petlifradio dot com.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to aquarium Radia on pet Life Radio guests
is doctor Alex Palm, the third in aquatic veterinarian and
researcher with a strong interest in disease and health management
of corals, fish, and other reef organisms. Thanks for joining us,
Alex Alight. So a lot of my interviews always start
with a little bit of a kind of personal questioning.
So I want to talk to you a little bit
about some of your early years. You told me your
father had set up a reef tank before you were
even born. Can you tell us a little bit about
your father's tank and interest in the hobby and how
that influenced you.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So, my dad set up a reef tank about
thirty two years ago. It's actually still up and running.
He fell in love with it, you know, all those
years ago, and then finally when I was about five
or six, I started to get more interested into it.
And then when I was about ten years old, we
had a tank crash, lost practically everything. That's when he
decided that he was pretty much done with the hobby
and didn't want to really partake in it anymore after that.
So then I started to take over growing more soft
corals like the mush and some of the leathers and
some of the easier corals to grow. And then over
time I just got more and more interested into it,
got more involved with the corals, and now seven tanks
are running on that system.
Speaker 2: That's great. So you basically just kind of cleaned up
the system after it crashed and kind of restarted again
when your dad gave up.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it was pretty much almost a complete reboot. So
it was nice to finally, you know, redoce some of
the equipment from you know, the older generation that wasn't
as efficient as some of the newer equipment. So I
was able to do some upgrades and made my life
a little bit easier.
Speaker 2: Actually, yeah, I'm curious, So what kind of a filtration
did you have back then?
Speaker 5: So it was some filter floss and a homemade skimmer
made out of was it twelve inch PVC pipe and
a bunch of airstones that was all handmade.
Speaker 2: In the wall Wow, that's pretty good. What about lighting?
Speaker 5: Back then he was running metal halides, but unfortunately the
bulbs that we used to use are no longer manufactured,
so then we switched over to LEDs and T fives.
Speaker 2: Okay, cool. So you mentioned you have a lot of
a bunch of tanks. Now I guess you said off
that system. What kind of things are you raising right now?
In those systems? I know you're interested in kind of
culturing different things as well as just you know, raising
them for display.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 5: So in the biggest tank, I have one hundred and
eighty gallon that's like a mixed reef set up mostly.
Speaker 6: Acroporaut with some soft corals.
Speaker 5: Then I have a fifty five gallon bubble tip an
enemy only tank, as well as a third gallon bubble
tip and only tank.
Speaker 6: I've got one.
Speaker 5: Little hospital system attached to that, well not really a hospital,
but more of a quarantine, and then two tanks growing
out various species of sps, so small pop stony corals,
LPs large pop stony corals, as well as some softies.
Speaker 2: It's great, all right, Well, I'm gonna switch over a
little bit and let's talk a little bit about your
kind of education, little background, When and how did you
decide to become a vet terinarian and even more specifically
one that works at aquatics.
Speaker 5: I was five years old when I decided I wanted
to be a vet. It's the only job that I
ever knew that I wanted to do. It wasn't until
more in more recent years that I got into the
aquatic medicine. Originally I was I'd say, you know, first
second year of veterinary knowledge in these areas, I became
more interested in that pursuit of knowledge.
Speaker 2: Well that's great. So I guess when you were five
you were thinking kind of just dog and cat pretty much.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Did you have other pets at home then, or
was this just something? Yeah?
Speaker 6: So I've always had a lot of pets at home.
Speaker 5: My father used to breed snakes and lizards in my basement,
so I always was around the reptiles, always had a
lot of big dogs.
Speaker 2: I was trying to figure out when to ask you.
But somewhere in there, you also have to talk about judo,
since it seems you were quite a judo expert as well.
But maybe start kind of with the education first.
Speaker 5: So I went to Starbuck University, for undergrad majored in
biochemistry and minored in organic chemistry. At that point, I
applied to the Veterinary College in London, so I ended
up going over there, And this ended up going there
was I've got my German citizenship, so I wanted to
have my license to be able to practice in the
US and in Europe if I decided one day that
I wanted to go to Europe, so that school allowed
me to have my licensure for both continents.
Speaker 2: Okay, if that makes sense. Yeah, I was curious because
obviously that's kind of quite a distance. So I have
to ask. I know you may not be able to
answer this really wealth not having been here for school,
but do you know of any major differences between how
veterninary schools educate in London versus here in the US.
Speaker 5: The major difference is that I've seen, especially talking to
my friends who've gone to school in the US, is
that in the US, I like your a lot, mom,
there's a lot more guidance and being baby sat in
terms of your classes and constantly having exams and constantly
being you know, people check up on your work, whereas
in the UK we only had one exam a year.
It was completely cumuative and it could have been anything
from that year or previous. So it was always constantly
you had to always you weren't able to brain dump.
You weren't able to just you know, shove the information
in your head for the exam, take the exam and
forget about it. You had to remember it throughout the
entire year.
Speaker 2: Were they kind of similar or how did you.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, they are very similar.
Speaker 5: There's just you know, some differences in like the parasitology
versus the UK versus the US. Like in the UK
there is virtually no heartworm, whereas in the US that's
more of a more prevalent thing. So it was just knowing,
you know, plant toxicology versus the US versus the UK,
infectious disease versus the US and the UK.
Speaker 6: Other than that, it's fairly similar.
Speaker 2: Okay. And what about your classmates relative to kind of
your interest in aquatics and how did you kind of
do aquatics in London? Were there a lot of opportunities
or how did that work?
Speaker 5: No, so there wasn't a lot of opportunities. I mostly
self taught, reading as many of the textbooks and the
literature that's out there.
Speaker 6: Fortunately I've been.
Speaker 5: Entered by doctor Julius Tepper back from the States because
fortunately he lives like thirty minutes for me, well my
home base in New York. So he's been a great
mentor and guidance through like the wabmaster at a qv program.
But other than in school wise, there was no fish
really at all. Even the exotics team there doesn't really
talk about fish or doesn't see fish. So in school
wise and people, you know, learning about my interest in
fish either people are really ecstatic about it and very interested, like, oh,
how you know, how is that progressing? Whereas other people
sometimes they don't really understand, like oh, you see goldfish
and you know, sometimes it's a little more in depth then,
you know, just like the normal problems.
Speaker 2: Right, were you able to do externships I guess in
kind of aquatics and did you want to talk about
any of that?
Speaker 5: Yeah, So fortunately I got to do some internships at
the Long Island Aquarium, got to work with them and
some of their pathology team, and then fortunately with COVID
or unfortunately with COVID, I was home for about a
year and a half. So during that time I was
able to work with doctor tepper and get some more
hands on experience.
Speaker 2: Well that's great now, I noticed too when you kind
of gave me some of your materials that you have done.
Are really interested in research.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 5: So in my undergrad one of my senior research project
was chemoselective modification of adenoviruses. So at that time I
was really involved in chemistry and really loved the organics.
And that project was essentially it was theorized that adenoviruses
would accumulate in thyroid cancer tissue. So my lab was
trying to the lab I was working with was trying
to prove that. So my job was to synthesize molecule
that would connect the virus to a radioactive marker molecule
so that once those two were connected and that virus
was introduced to the body, we'd be able to see
where in the body that virus was accumulating via PET scan.
The second project was just a protein synthesis helping another lab.
They were trying to help quantify bacterial proteins in the
periplasmic space, so I was just helping synthesize proteins for
them to do that.
Speaker 2: Okay, And then in vet school.
Speaker 6: So at school, I was working with French bulldogs.
Speaker 2: And now you're you're pursuing a master's. So you've got
your VET degree and you decide you want to kind
of go on a little further. Can you explain, I
guess what you want to do with your masters and
what you're working on as well.
Speaker 5: So my master's is infectious disease, and for me with
the fish, ninety percent of the problems that I see
are infectious disease related. So I really wanted to have
a better understanding of different infectious processes. Not necessarily that
those are the exact processes that I'm dealing with, but
that's a really nice way of, you know, being able
to relate to other problems and you know, figuring out
how you know a certain disease process works in another animal.
It may not be the same in fish, but you
could have similar ideologies. So that's why I started to
pursue that masters and I would love to eventually go
on for my pH d.
Speaker 2: Right, all right, so I'm gonna switch gears a little bit,
and now we're going to talk about the aquatics and
disease and you being an official veterinarian, so you are
both a veterinarian now and a grad student. So how
are you juggling those two things? And are you kind
of working with private clients as well?
Speaker 6: What do you mean by private clients like, yeah.
Speaker 2: Fish clients, yeah, or both either either.
Speaker 5: Right now, I work full time as a small animal
vet end part time, and I'm hoping to be more
full time with the fish currently. The hospital that I'm
working at currently is supporting these fish streams and hopefully
within the next coming months having a fish only facility.
And in terms of juggling everything, it's a seven day
a week process right now. And I squeeze, you know,
studying in you know, after work or in the middle
of the night, and I see my fish clients. I
do a lot via like telehealth, and occasionally I'll go
out to those clients for you know, diagnostic purposes, but
a lot fortunately has been via you know, email text. Fortunately,
I'll have client, you know, they'll have like a microscope,
I'll have them scale, scrape, I'll show them how to
do all that procedure and they'll have them just send
me the images to review.
Speaker 2: Okay, that's great. Are you working in Long Island then yes, okay, cool.
You can say what's the name of your clinic.
Speaker 6: Massive PEAKUA pet VET Massive people.
Speaker 2: Okay, sounds good. So if anyone has any fish issues,
they can kind of find you there. Yeah.
Speaker 6: Absolutely.
Speaker 5: And then so then the offshoot is Aquatic Veterinary Medicine
and Diagnostic Services.
Speaker 2: Okay, sounds good. Now you co authored a chapter on
coral and aquatic inver diseases, which is, you know, obviously
really cool at this stage for you, can you can
you tell us how you got involved with that.
Speaker 5: So I have a passion for imaging or microscopee, and
I really like to image parasites because I've always gotten
frustrated looking at texts and seeing like literature and seeing
like black and white, grainy images and not being able
to really look and I identify what I'm looking at.
So over time, over the years, as I found parasites
and different organisms, I've tried to take really nice, high
resolution images. I showed those images to doctor Tapper, and
he thought it would be interesting for me to use
those images for this textbook. So then I started writing
about these diseases and how I've encountered them in potential treatments,
and then wrap that up all together for this textbook chapter.
Speaker 2: Well, that's great, so I am going to you know what,
let's take a short break and we'll continue our discussion
with aquatic veterinarian and researcher doctor Alec Paul the Reft
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Speaker 2: Let's talk, let's done, Petal Headline.
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Speaker 2: We're back and continuing our conversation with my guest doctor
Alex paul read that. So you talked a little bit
about kind of your background and in terms of working
now as a veterinarian. You also mentioned to me that
you are consulting for the Long Island Aquarium. Can you
explain a little bit about your history with the facility
and how you ended up working there with them.
Speaker 5: I've been interning there on and office since I was
in my early teens. I've always been really involved and
interested in the reef tank there, and the curator, uh,
mister Joe Aulo has always been a real big mentor
of mine in terms of reefing and problems that I've
had in the past. So we've always bounced ideas back
and forth with each other. So once I graduated and
once I've became more involved in the medicine aspect, they
were looking for someone who's involved in the reef knowledge
to be able to do some medicine related things, because
treating reef tanks can be really quite difficult. You know,
when we use different antimicrobial drugs or different drugs in general,
it may be toxic to not only the organisms you're
trying to kill, and that that's The big problem is
when we treat you know, dogs and cats, the medications
that we give aren't necessarily toxic to the organism, the
host organism with the dog, and is toxic to the
you know, the microbes, whereas there's a lot of microbes
in a reef bank that you necessarily don't want to kill.
So it's becoming very selective and figuring out what exactly
can be done when, when, at what concentrations.
Speaker 2: Yeah, excellent, excellent points. Now I think, yeah, I know,
we corresponded a while ago before, and then then I've
noticed that you were really active on social media, which
is which is great. I think there's a lot to
be said for kind of educating the public and you know,
hobbyists enthusiasts on you know, the fact that there are
actually veterinarians and people seeing you know, aquatics. You got
a lot of really decent following on Instagram for example.
So what made you decide to kind of go all
out on social media and to engage the public and
why do you think there's so much interest?
Speaker 6: So it all started.
Speaker 5: I always used to send the pictures I would take
to you know, fellow reef hobbyists, fellow aquatic hobbyists, and
they always I always got really good feedback and they
always told me, oh, you should share these pictures, you know,
other people would be interested. I put it off for
a long time and just kept collecting pictures and kept
them you know between my friends and you know, other hobbyists.
And then eventually I was convinced to set up the account,
and then it started to grow a lot faster than
I ever expected. So then I just kept continually you know,
posting you know, the interestings that interesting, you know, items
that I've found over time. And as you know, the
more I've posted, the more I've realized that people are
really interested in these topics.
Speaker 6: So I've just continued to do so.
Speaker 5: I think that a lot of people have a lot
of you know, fish are common in these in people's households,
and I think a lot of people have a lot
of problems, and the internet not necessarily has great resources,
and it's a lot of in fish medicine, the amount
of anecdotal reports are massive, and a lot of people
have a lot of strong feelings. So I like to
create like an unbiased, you know, scientific platform rather than
you know, my feelings and thoughts.
Speaker 6: But more through my scientific lens.
Speaker 2: That sounds good. You don't want to set up like
battle lines or anything. I'm just kidding. So speaking of then,
what kind of feedback and what kind of questions do
you get? You know, are there any specific questions that
are pretty common that you are seeing routinely that you
might be of interest.
Speaker 5: Most commonly, I asked, you know, parasite identification, or you know,
my coral or my fish looks funny, what's wrong with it?
Is a very common one. Or you know this coral
is slowly decaying over time? What could those possibilities be?
Is also very very common, And then how do they?
And then the next step is how do we treat
and get rid of those problems, which is a lot
more gets a lot more complex because a lot of
these infectious diseases and corals, there hasn't been any you know,
real scientific literature that's described treatment in these species. It's
mostly you know, anecdotal reports that aren't really replicatable. So
my goal is to go back through these anecdotal reports
and hopefully find and scrutinize them, and hopefully find treatments
and actively prove that certain drugs work versus certain drugs
don't work.
Speaker 2: Now, are you getting any kind of weird feedback at all,
or you getting any any strange kind of comments that
might be a interesting.
Speaker 5: You know, some people don't, you know. The most common
weird question is like, oh, like you, why are you
treating a fish? Why are you driving to this person's
house to treat a beta? Is a very common question.
But you know, the human animal bond is a really
interesting thing. And you know, if someone bonds to a
fish the same way somebody else bonds to a dog,
you know, it's not just because it's a cheaper animal
or just because it's you know, not as what other
people find is loving doesn't mean that those animals don't
deserve the same treatment or respect that you know, dogs
and cats do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, it's definitely true. I actually received a call
years ago from a woman who had been working with
her vet on her vet I spent a couple hundred bucks,
called me because she didn't think her vet was doing
the right thing. And I actually talked to the vet
and I told her, yeah, he's doing everything right, so
it's fine. But yeah, you're right, that definitely strong bonds.
So I guess let's start with fish and talk. Do
you have any kind of recent or favorite cases that
you might want to share with its.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so, my I'm really again interested in this disease,
and I've been, you know, become increasingly more interested in scutiosio.
Scutiociliotosis or uranema is the most common. So normally I've
seen mortality rates of nineteen eight ninety nine percent within
three days with you know species being infected with uranema.
I actually had a maroon clownfish who was infected. Normally
your ainema was seen and like superficially, but ironically she
was in my one of my quarantine tanks and I
was just practicing taking fecal samples.
Speaker 6: So I took her, took.
Speaker 5: A sample of her FECs put it under the microscope,
and then found that she had a pretty prevalent internal
urinema infection that did spread. Finally, after hunting on the superficially,
I was able to find it on her outside as well,
and normally, you know, mortality would be really high, but
I put her on intramuscular antiprotozols and instead of passing
away in three days, she did live six weeks. Unfortunately,
she passed. I had to another event that I had
to go to, and I left her with somebody else
who with very explicit instructions on how to care for her. Unfortunately,
they didn't care for her the way that I told
them to, and she did pass. But I thought it
was a really nice proof of concept that we went
from you know, three day guaranteed mortality just six weeks
and she was, you know, every day continually getting better.
So hopefully the next case that I have of it
was immediately she ulso rated. So that's like one of
the more common symptoms of your anema is a nice
red banding across the skin and an ulceration and the
you know, it was a day or two after her
last injection when she was supposed to get it, but
the person who was caring for he didn't give it
and she immediately almost alterrated.
Speaker 2: Stuff. Okay, yeah, sorry to hear about that. So let's
talk a little bit about corals now in general. How
many coral problems do you think are really more or
have a large route and husbandry, and what would be
some common clinical science for these and and also kind
of what type of approach do you have for these?
I know we talked a little bit about the sort
of infectious nature and obviously corals. There's so much going
on that you know, I'm guessing is probably environmental. But
what are your kind of thoughts on all that.
Speaker 5: You know, I I would have said ninety percent plus
of corals that die would have died from country reasons,
but now I would say it's I would say it's
considerably less. I feel that the husband try is relatively
you know, for experienced people, is relatively good, and that
I think infectious disease plays a larger role than I
ever did think before a lot of people when they have,
you know, a quarrel that is slowly wasting away. So
like commonly, if your water parameters aren't good, right, corals
die relatively quickly, you know, days to weeks. When you
have corals that are slowly wasting away over time. And
if it's very specific, if there's certain corals that are
wasting away and other ones aren't, you go, Okay, the
water parameter and the lights and everything are most likely
all right, So then why are these specific colonies dying?
And as I you know, look at those colonies and
scrutinize them, you know, going through each individual poll up,
I'm finding more and more different types of infectio disease,
like flatworms and different mites that we haven't necessarily seen before.
And a lot of people get, you know, really offended
if you suggest that their tank may have acropora eating flatworms,
because those are you know, considered, you know, a big
no no in the hobby, and it's people getting salted
by that. So people don't necessarily like to look for
these things. And when they do look, they'll look standing
in front of their tank. You know, a colony will
be eight inches away from their face. You know, the
tank's really dark, you know, or it's you know, with
a lot of blue lights. You really can't see the
coral besides, like that really bright colors, so you can't
really see the tissue underneath. And they go, oh, there's
no parasites here, and you're like, you know, you have
to take that colony out of the water, and I
use a triocular scope and you know, scan every inch
of that colony. I've had been that clients that had
euphilia or or a type of LPs, and they were
slowly wasting away, and they were wasting away in a
very particular pattern that I've noticed and you have. It's
almost like a wave like where it'll start on one
side of the colony and slowly progress through the colony.
You know, the classic you know, white band disease. It's
not white band disease, but it progresses in the same way.
And if it was any external factors or you know,
lighting chemistry, you would have, you know, the colony would
be dying from all sides equally instead of you know,
having these progressional fronts. So this one particular colony, I
was convinced that there was you know, some sort of ecdoparasitism.
Couldn't find it originally, but about two hours after sampling it,
I started to find more and more of these flatworms.
And then as we look through the other colonies started
to find more of them. And I think a lot
of people neglect looking for these flatworms, you know, so
the colony, the colony will slowly die, and then once
the colony dies, they'll pull it out of the tank,
but by then there are no more flatworms. So then
they just attribute the death to like a bacterial infectionately
attribute the death to like husbandry related things, even though
the initial cause of death were these types of flatworms.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, and I know
some of these can be really pretty small. So segueing
into the next question, so what would be the most
common parasitic diseases that you're seeing in corals in general?
Speaker 5: So different types of flatworms is probably the most prevalent.
And for every species of coral that exists, there's some
sort of species specific flatworm that I've seen. And unfortunately,
some of them can only be you know, one to
two millimeters in size, so without you know, proper magnification,
you wouldn't necessarily see them. A lot of them can
be transparent translucent, so they're just showing up the same
color as the coral's tissue. So seeing these organisms is
really difficult. And something that I've been doing that I've
found identify these is I'll take a sample of the coral,
put it under a triocular scope. I use my phone
camera and hook that up to the scope, and then
I time laps so I can see small movements over
you know, a large so you know, I'll let it
run for an hour and then I'll be able to
see organism moving. Because if you just look at it
and look by your naked eye, you necessarily wouldn't see
these organisms even moving because they move so slowly. But
by time lapsing, I'm able to see, you know, the
organisms traveling around the coral. So that makes it a
lot easier to identify.
Speaker 2: Cool. Yeah, very very cool. Yeah, I don't think a
lot of people probably have thought of that. Now. You
mentioned general challenges with coral medicine, and yeah, definitely quite
a few. So where do you think kind of clinical
research needs to go and what do you you mentioned
a little bit about that, what would you be interested
in trying to do on that front?
Speaker 5: I think it needs to go more into like a
practicality realm rather than theoretical And I think a lot
of core research that has been done has all been oceanlated,
and the diseases in the ocean are very different than
diseases in home tank aquaria. In the ocean, you have
basically it's an unlimited supply of water. Everything is scaled massively,
so you don't get these really high concentrations of parasites
the same way that we do in a tank. You know,
you have a forty gallon tank. The speed at which
these diseases perpetuate in these enclosed systems is far greater
than when it is in the ocean. So I think,
in like actual tank treatments are a different avenue than
looking at these diseases in the ocean. You know, Acropora
eating flatworms in the ocean aren't necessarily as big of
a deal as they are within a you know, a
home tank full of only acropora. The speed at which
these parasites can replicate is a lot higher. So I
think that treatment needs to be designed for at home
rather than just looking at the these diseases and parasites
in the wild.
Speaker 2: So, with regard to these flatworms, what's kind of your
standard recommendation for quarantine and management or treatment if they're there?
Speaker 5: So, I guess the bane of all reefers exists. To
the report eating flatworms, I've seen four different subtypes. Personally,
I'm sure there's a lot out there. It's unfortunately there's
no advisable in tank treatment at this time, and that's
something that I've personally started to look into and experimenting
with at home. But these organisms is you know, you
buy a frag or you buy a small piece from
you know, a retailer, wholesale or friend wherever that may be,
and it's really important to you know, look under a
magnifying glass and really examine that coral for any possibility
of eggs or any of the larger and with flatworms, again,
some of them can be only a few millimeters in size.
So once you know, set up a small quarantine system
away from your tank, ideally off the water supply, know how,
that has its own system, But a lot of people
can't do that, so, you know, inline quarantine systems may
be more of a possibility for some people. Granted that's
not a full quarantine, but it at least allows you
to examine that coral daily, maybe even you know, twice daily.
I really like to look at night because that's when
a lot of these parasites come out once when the light,
when the lights go dim, you know, they'll start to
crawl around the coral, so you can really examine it.
I really don't think that, you know, you should buy
a coral and then immediately place it into your tank,
because that's how disasters happen a lot of times. With
these flatworms, you can use like a toothbrush or something
to manually remove the eggs. There are some over the
counter dips that they don't necessarily eradicate the worms, but
they will irritate them. And if you you know, the
coral a bath and shake it around in these dips,
it'll knock some of them off, or it'll least allow
you to identify that they're there. And I think knowing
that they're there is half the problem, because a lot
of times, you know, if you have corals or colonies dying,
if you know what the problem, you're not running down
another avenue experimenting thinking that it's a chemical problem, and
then you start experimenting with the chemistry and then you
could end up, you know, killing more coral and more
of an issue. So I think really properly examining new
coral is the most important thing.
Speaker 2: Okay, sounds good. So where do you see yourself in
the next five and ten years?
Speaker 6: That's a good question.
Speaker 5: In the next five I'd really love to have the
you know, my aquatics hospital up and running with surgery
and like in house you know, bacterial culture diagnostics. Ten years,
I feel like that's really far out to know exactly
what that would be doing. I'm definitely going to be
within this hobby or within this field of medicine. I
don't know exactly where that'll take me, you know, Will
I be more interested in the coral disease? Will I
be more interested in the fish disease. Originally I was
more interested in coral disease, but then as I've gotten
more involved in the medicine, now I do more of
the fish disease as well. So I think it's going
to be a balance between the two.
Speaker 2: Or quarrel reforganism. Health is a career.
Speaker 5: I mean, I'm a really big fan of the veterinary
school route. Some other people who go like the marine
bio route, and they don't necessarily you know, they understand antibiotics,
but they don't necessarily understand.
Speaker 6: When and why and how we use them.
Speaker 5: So I think having a medical knowledge really good at
dealing with these problems. I don't think that the medical
knowledge allows you to identify what the problems are. I
think that comes from experience over time. So I think
it's the experience over time that allows you to identify
the problem, But it's the medical knowledge that allows you
to come up with solutions and able to you know,
accurately attack these problems and hopefully find a cure.
Speaker 2: And before we close up and I ask you the
final final question, you have to give us a couple
a minute or two on judo. So tell me about
your kind of experience with judo. I see you were
like nationally internationally ranked and all that, so yeah, tell
me a little bit about your judo experiences.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so that was I started when I was six
or seven. Originally I had an Olympic dream. My dream
was actually to compete in twenty twenty four. But unfortunately,
when I was nineteen, I had a pretty substantial injury
that was career ending. So then at that time, so
I broke my back, had compressions fractures up through my
thoracic spine, and that's when I really shifted from sports
to more of an academic mindset. So I was before then,
I put all my time and effort into training, and
that was you know, a seven day a week thing.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 5: Once that injury happened, I you know, found something else
to fill that time. So I really went from you know,
really sports heavy to really academic heavy. And you know,
I started you know, training for veterinary medicine and training
you know, my my brain rather than my body.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's always a challenge. But things happened for a reason, right, So.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, happier with where I'm at now versus then.
Speaker 6: So all things worked out.
Speaker 2: But could you still hurt somebody though if you really
wanted to, you would want to I know, of course
I appreciate that. And yeah, definitely definitely enjoyed speaking with you, Alex.
Hopefully you'll come down visit at some point if you ever,
absolutely you know, come down, and yeah, I'd love to
talk with you a little more, show you around. So
unfortunately we are out of time. I want to again
thank our guests, doctor Alex Hall, and our producer Mark
Winner for making the show possible and Alex, So the
last question is do you have any just final words
of wisdom in general for our listeners, any topic.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so, with coral or even fish, always really really
examine what you're looking at when you're buying. And even
if the fish you're buying looks clean, you know, if
you're in a store, look around the other tanks that
are nearby. Look into other tanks that are you know,
pumped into the same system. Do they have diseases in
those tanks? Because if they're in those tanks, it's probably,
you know, highly possible that the fish that you're buying
is exposed. So don't only look at the fish or
coral that you're buying. Try to take a look at everything.
Speaker 2: That's great advice well. Please be sure to check out
Alex's social media links, which will be found on his
Crimini episode page. If you have any questions, comments, or
ideas for a show, email me at doctor Roy at
petlife radio dot com dot d R R O y
at petlife radio dot com. Until next time, please visit
your local France stores, keep your tanks clean and your
coral reach systems healthy.
Speaker 4: Let's Talk Pets every week on demand only on petlife
radio dot com