Ornamental Fish Health Program (OFHP)

What is the Ornamental Fish Health Program?

The Ornamental Fish Health Program provides outreach, education, and service to the ornamental fish industry .

We primarily work with importers, wholesalers, retailers and hobbyists to improve fish health management within these aspects of the industry.
The OFHP is heavily involved with the training of veterinary students and veterinary practitioners at Oregon State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine as well as training the next generation of aquatic husbandry professionals through a strong partnership with the Aquarium Science Program at Oregon Coast Community College.
The OFHP partnership with the Associated Koi Clubs of America, as well as with the local pond professional industry, has facilitated the development of numerous training programs for hobbyists and pond fish retailers.
We are currently pursuing research nationally and internationally with the marine ornamental industry to address some of the health issues associated with the collection and transport of these species.

Goals, Sub-goals, and Organizing Principles

To improve the husbandry and health care of ornamental fish and invertebrates in the aquarium and pond environment.
To improve the quality of ornamental fish health management within the global ornamental fish industry through collaboration with industry organizations, government entities, and other universities.
To improve the quality of veterinary care available to the aquatic pet industry and aquatic pet owners through training and consultation with practicing veterinarians and veterinary students.
To promote responsible ornamental fish and invertebrate acquisition and husbandry through development of unique educational outreach programs. To promote quality ornamental fish and invertebrate husbandry and health management through the development and implementation of unique outreach methodologies in collaboration with key hobbyist organizations.

Mission

Conservation through quality health management.

Motto

Curiosity. Competence. Compassion.

Guiding Principles: The Critical Path to Fish Health

Define your goals
Learn about your animals
Understand how water quality affects your animals
Understand biosecurity
Plan for healthy animals
Identify reliable resources
Practice daily health management and biosecurity
Recognize disease
Work the problem
Re-evaluate continuously

Support for the Hatfield Marine Science Visitor Center (HMSC)

The Ornamental Fish Health Program provides education, outreach, health management, and clinical support and services for the Hatfield Marine Science Center's Visitor Center and education wing.

Clinical Consultation -- As the HMSC Clinical Veterinarian, Dr. Tim Miller-Morgan is available for clinical consultation with research groups and educators. He oversees the health management of the animals maintained in those areas, ensuring compliance with the Institutional Animal Care and Use guidelines and ensuring all animal care and use protocols are being followed.
Health and Husbandry -- Dennis Glaze is the health and husbandry specialist and curator of animal husbandry programs at the HMSC. Glaze oversees and manages the west wing education area, along with all the holding systems related to that.
Public Tours -- Through the HMSC Visitor Center, the OFHP offers back wing tours to the public, presenting information on health and husbandry, what goes on behind the scenes in a public aquarium as it relates to health management, and how those principals could be applied to someone who has pet fish at home.

Outreach to the Ornamental Fish Industry

The Ornamental Fish Health Program offers the following forms of outreach to the ornamental fish industry -- retailers, wholesalers, and importers.

Blog: -- Our primary outreach to the industry right now is through a new blog -- Words from a Wet Vet -- designed to bring the subscriber up-to-the-minute news about all things related to ornamental fish and their health, reports from fish health workshops, and other events Oregon Sea Grant's "wet vet" is participating in.
- Read the blog
- Subscribe to receive new posts as they are published via RSS feed or e-mail.
Seminars and Workshops -- We regularly offer seminars and workshops for ornamental fish industry professionals (as differentiated from hobbyists) in the Northwest and we have a couple of programs that are regularly offered around the country. Probably one of the more significant ones right now is the Koi Health Academy. Held in Reno, Nevada, this two-day intensive workshop is for ornamental pond professionals -- pond contractors, pond maintenance companies, and retail pond shops that sell fish, equipment, medicines, etc. We also offer an annual seminar for pond professionals here in the Pacific Northwest. It alternates between Oregon and Washington and is co-sponsored by Oregon Sea Grant Extension, a large local pond supply distributor, and pond equipment companies. In addition, we periodically do short evening seminars for industry people around the state. The educational facilities at the Oregon Zoo will serve as the new metro home for the Ornamental Fish Health Program.
Oregon Coast Community College (OCCC) Aquarium Science Program -- One of our most significant areas of outreach -- and the one that will probably have the greatest long-term impact -- is the strong partnership we have with the OCCC Aquarium Science Program. The AQS Program trains entry-level professionals to work in the ornamental fish industry as well as in public aquaria. Dr. Miller-Morgan is one of the individuals who helped develop the program. He helped create the initial curriculum based on an industry-wide survey of both the public aquarium and ornamental fish industries to assess their needs for a more specialized training program. Now in its seventh year, the program has trained approximately 100 professionals, offering either a two-year Associates of Applied Science degree in Aquarium Science or a one-year certificate program in Aquarium Science, which first requires students to have a bachelor degree in biology or a related discipline. Increasingly, some students have begun to move into research facilities that house fish -- for instance, zebra fish facilities or resource hatcheries with salmonids. Both Miller-Morgan and Glaze teach courses in the AQS Program. Dr. Miller-Morgan teaches Fish and Invertebrate Health Management, Fish Husbandry in a Research Setting,and a Grand Rounds course, which offers practicum students the opportunity to participate in regular medical rounds.
Students and Interns -- Glaze oversees the practicum students and interns within the Ornamental Fish Health Program who work in the aquatic health and husbandry teaching and research labs. We've hosted a number of students throughout the years and many of our alumni have gone on to start their own business or work at major public aquaria.

Many of the core principals we teach are just common sense, yet they aren't necessarily being practiced universally within the industry. The concepts we teach have evolved out of the aquaculture industry and some of the higher-end public aquaria. As our students get out there and begin to share what they've learned, we're already starting see a shift in thinking among the fish health management industry as well as in the ornamental fish or pet fish industries.

Outreach to Hobbyists

The third area that we're heavily involved in would be our outreach to hobbyists, or pet fish owners.

Calls / Emails -- We regularly field a number of calls and emails from pet fish owners whose pets are experiencing health problems. If they're husbandry-related, Dennis will usually deal with them. If they're health-related, he'll take an initial stab at the problem and then shoot it on to Dr. Miller-Morgan to work through. We get queries from all over the country. We've also published a number of publications and articles through our newsletter that address issues such as quarantine and health management as well as offering regular Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) that should be carried out if you have pet fish. Many of those articles have been picked up and redistributed through other newsletters and websites.
Training Programs -- We offer a number of training programs for hobbyists, including intensive one- or two-day seminars on weekends. Until recently, Dr. Miller-Morgan was involved in the Associated Koi Clubs of America's Koi Health Advisor Program, a program akin to Master Gardeners. We have hobbyists who belong to clubs – particularly goldfish and koi clubs – who have agreed to go through a year-long online training program that culminates in an intensive weekend wet lab, after which they become a resource for the other hobbyists in their club. We teach them about basic fish health and husbandry, health management, and how to assess husbandry and systems. Each KHA then partners with a local veterinarian who will assist if disease problems get to the point where a professional needs to become involved. There are also a number of veterinarians who serve as veterinary advisors to the program and are available to help support not only the graduate KHAs, but also the private practitioners who are helping out these students and hobbyists.
KHA Program -- This KHA Program has been quite successful. It's resulted in a dramatically increased use and implementation of quarantine procedures, with koi and goldfish hobbyists actually setting up their own quarantine systems at home.
Koi Herpes Virus. -- We've also used the KHA Program as a venue from which to educate the public and the hobby world about the risk of Koi Herpes Virus, which is a particularly serious virus in the industry that can cause dramatic mortalities in ponds. Hobbyists have become much more aware, much more educated consumers in terms of asking the dealers to better assess the quality of the fish they're buying to make sure they're getting a good quality animal. The KHA Program has also affected the way koi and goldfish shows are run around the country, with KHAs being instrumental in educating the clubs about basic biosecurity principals.

Work with the Veterinary Profession

The fourth area of significant outreach is our work with the veterinary profession through the Department of Biomedical Sciences within the College of Veterinary Medicine, Dr. Tim Miller-Morgan's academic home. He is also attached to the Veterinary Diagnostic Lab as an aquatic animal diagnostician. We do a number of things.

Traditional Teaching -- Dr. Miller-Morgan teaches a part of a freshman course which includes a Basic Introduction into Fish Husbandry and Proper Fish Handling, this involves about seven hours of training for the veterinary students. In their junior year he teaches a portion of a required course called Special Species Medicine which introduces them to the concept of pet fish medicine. In their senior year he teaches an intensive week-long course in ornamental fish or pet fish medicine which includes how to incorporate that into their practice and the basic skills necessary to carry out a basic work up.
International Zoo, Exotic, and Wildlife (ZEW) Club Workshop -- International ZEW Club hosts a six-week workshop for international veterinary students and veterinarians. The students are based at Wildlife Safari in Winston, Oregon but travel all over Oregon for seminars and wet labs on topics related to zoo, wildlife, and exotic animal medicine. After a very successful first year partnering with this program, Dr. Modesto McLean, the veterinarian and director of International ZEW Club, asked if OFHP would be willing increase the program from a one-day seminar and wet lab to a two-day seminar and wet lab related to fish medicine, with an addition of elasmobranch health management. We have hosted up to 15 international veterinary students and practitioners here at the HMSC for the seminar, which addresses the basics of fish health and husbandry followed by a wet lab allowing students to practice basic clinical techniques with fish and sharks. Participating veterinarians and students have hailed from Mexico, Canada, Portugal, Spain, Holland, Germany, Switzerland, and the United States.
Outreach to Private Practioners -- Dr. Miller-Morgan is involved in a number of venues teaching private practice veterinarians who wish to add pet fish to their practice. In addition, the Koi Health Academy mentioned above also runs a simultaneous track for veterinarians who want to add pond fish to their practice. Dr. Miller-Morgan also is involved with coordinating and co-teaching an annual four-day fish and aquatic animal medicine section at the American Veterinary Medical Association annual conference. Approximately 24 hours of training is available for the veterinarians who attend these sessions.
Veterinary Diagnostic Lab -- Dr. Miller-Morgan provides diagnostic services and clinical consultation to ornamental fish retailers, wholesalers, importers, and some pond maintenance companies within Oregon and southern Washington. He's available to come out and help work up health problems, make recommendations and diagnoses, and also to screen fish for particular diseases, including newly arrived koi from overseas for Koi Herpes Virus.

Research

Along with Dr. Jerry Heidel, Director of the Veterinary Diagnostic Lab and a veterinary and fish pathologist, Dr. Miller-Morgan is involved in multiple areas of ornamental fish research. One area of research is the examination of shipping and post-shipping mortality among wild-caught marine ornamental fish. This area of research has been centered around three individual projects.

1) Monitoring Arrival into the United States. The first project worked on was looking at fish as they were arriving in Portland and in Los Angeles. Traditionally, losses can be quite high among many species post-shipment to the U.S. and we wanted to be able to assess their health status upon arrival. What are the common disease agents that they tend to carry? Are they suffering from clinical disease upon arrival? We would examine these fish and do full work ups on them, along with full water quality assessments of their shipping water.

Clinical Assessment -- What was unique about this project is that we would do an initial clinical assessment -- which was a rapid assessment prior to any laboratory work -- and we would feed that initial data right back to the owners of the import facilities and they would then feed that information directly back to the suppliers overseas. Often, if a disease agent or disease was identified, those disease processes could often be directly attributable to particular shipping practices, packing practices, and husbandry techniques. The information we provided enabled suppliers to adjust their husbandry practices as needed.
Monitoring Fish Within a Facility -- We would also monitor these fish within the facility and observe how they were handled. This allowed us to make recommendations to the facilities about ways they might be able to improve and reduce their post-shipping morbidity and mortality. The outcome from that project was the reduction of DOAs -- Dead on Arrivals -- at one facility by about 10% and their in-house mortalities by about 35% through making simple recommendations based on basic diagnostic work ups that often times were followed up with histopathology and bacteriology.

2) Examining How Fish are Handled Before Shipment. The above project led us to examine more closely how the animals were handled before they were shipped into the country. Moving up the chain of custody, the next thing to do was to look at the export facilities. We traveled to Indonesia to do similar health assessments at six facilities, as well as interview the owners and the buyers about how the animals were collected, how they were typically handled and to actually observe how these animals were handled.

Simulating Shipping Conditions -- Our current project involves examining the physiological changes these fish experience in the bag as they're being shipped. We're using cinnamon clownfish as our research animals. We pack these animals as they would be packed up in the export facility and then simulate shipping circumstances for the duration of 24, 36, 48, or 72 hours. Following the simulated shipping period we do a full water quality work up of the water and then look at the blood chemistry values of each individual fish to assess how those values have changed during shipment. After developing a model for shipping stress in these animals the next step will be to begin validating that model with actual fish that are being shipped from overseas. If we can validate this model we can use it to assess different types of strategies for mitigating stress during shipping. The research is also pointing to the fact that we need to address how the animals are handled before they enter the export facilities overseas.

Much of this current work is being done by Michael Liu, the research aquarist in the OFHP program. He has extensive experience working not only with invasive species and ornamental fish.

Working with the Koi Industry

Best Health Management Techniques -- The other area that we've gotten much more involved in recently is actually working within the koi industry to help them develop best health management techniques, specifically to mitigate the risks of importing or spreading Koi Herpes Virus (KHV). Koi Herpes Virus is easily the most serious viral disease of Koi. This disease has had profound impacts on the koi industry and hobby as well as the food carp industry on a global scale. This is a disease that's listed by the World Animal Health Organization, but is not considered a reportable disease at this time in the United States and there are no regulations for import. KHV survivors appear to be carriers for life and are able to spread the disease to naïve fish. Unfortunately, the diagnostic tests that are currently available often have difficulty identifying these carrier or latently affected fish. As a result, the onus and the risk falls upon the dealers and the hobbyists who are buying these fish to try to prevent the disease from getting into their facilities.
Koi Herpes Virus Research-Investigating Viral Latency -- Dr. Miller-Morgan and the OFHP has recently partnered with Dr. Ling Jin and Dr. Michael Kent of the Department of Biomedical Sciences at the OSU College of Veterinary Medicine to begin to examine and characterize KHV latency in koi that have survived an infection with Koi Herpes Virus. One of the key goals will be to identify where the virus hides in survivor fish. If the virus hiding place can be located, identification of these survivor fish before may become much easier.
Education -- For the last two years we've been involved in an intense Koi Herpes Virus educational effort within the hobby and industry. We have been involved in developing a training program that was funded by the Associated Koi Clubs of America to educate dealers not only about the disease, but about mitigation strategies as well, particularly as it relates to biosecurity in their facilities. This is beginning to bear fruit, certainly in the Northwest. We have a number of facilities that have modified their protocols and/or facilities or are in the middle of these changes to improve their biosecurity and screening protocols for this disease.
International Outreach -- Our work in this area resulted in Dr. Tim Miller-Morgan being invited to attend an International Koi Herpes Virus Meeting in Israel in February 2008 to talk about our outreach and the educational programs we have implemented or are developing. His focus was on the retailer education programs and the best health practices program that we're currently beta testing with a number of facilities nationwide. Further, a local koi importer recently invited Dr. Miller-Morgan to travel with him to Japan. This trip provided an opportunity for Dr. Miller-Morgan to gain an understanding of the Japanese koi industry -- the birthplace of koi keeping -- and the health management strategies utilized within the industry. This visit and the contacts made while in Niigata and Hiroshima have laid the groundwork for future visits.

Clinical Veterinary Work

Hatfield Marine Science Center -- Dr. Miller-Morgan serves as the clinical veterinarian for the HMSC and consults with other aquatic labs at the University regarding institutional animal care and use and the development of animal care and use protocols and SOPs for their facilities. He assists them in developing these protocols and serves as a resource at this facility for any labs that are having disease problems in order to help them work through those problems and come up with management strategies that will complement the ongoing research.
Oregon Coast Aquarium -- Dr. Miller-Morgan also works very closely with the Oregon Coast Aquarium. He serves as one of their two clinical veterinarians, serving the health needs of the fish, invertebrates, and reptile collections. He regularly partners with utilizing their staff to teach various wet labs at the Aquarium. One wet lab in particular that is very popular is a shark-handling and physical examination laboratory. Here students get to learn how to safely and properly handle sharks, how to do a physical exam on them, do blood collection, etc. He also includes the Oregon Coast Aquarium when he leads Grand Rounds with students, moving back and forth between the HMSC and Aquarium, depending on where the most interesting and educational cases are found.

The Oregon Coast Aquarium has also been very willing to let us utilize medical cases at their facility for teaching purposes. We have a very strong relationship with them and our husbandry programs have worked closely together for over 14 years, consulting back and forth and trading and collecting animals for each other's exhibits. It's an excellent relationship that really adds a lot of depth to our program. When we have visits from industry professionals, we can show them both our facility and the Oregon Coast Aquarium and they can get an enhanced overview of how health management is accomplished in a number of different situations and with a number of different animal densities and system sizes.

Ornamental Fish Health Newsletter (archives)

Published periodically by Dr. Tim Miller-Morgan, the Ornamental Fish Health Newsletter highlights current research topics and events related to ornamental fish breeding, husbandry, and health management.

The new blog is replacing this newsletter, but you can read back issues here:

Issue 5:1 (Summer 2007)
Issue 4:1 (Summer 2006)
Issue 3:1 (Summer 2004)
Issue 2:1 (October 2003)
Issue 1:2 (December 2002)
Issue 1:1 (August 2002)

Aquarium science education

Interested in learning more about the breeding, sale and care of ornamental fish?

Check out the two-year Associate's Degree and one-year certificate programs in Aquarium Science at Oregon Coast Community College.
Contact Dr. Miller-Morgan