Quote:
Originally Posted by daniella3d
I don't know what you guys are doing because I never lost a fish in quarantine. At some point I had a hippo tang, a kole tang and a clownfish in quarantine in a 20 gallons tank for 5 weeks.
I did 5 weeks quarantine on my copperband and this was the perfect opportunity to teach it to eat well and fatten him up since he was so skinny and infested with flukes.
How can one lose a fish in quarantine? too far gone with the ich parasite so they can't come back? I had fish in quarantine with ich and they all make it in top shape through the hyposalinity process.
To much copper? ammonia? what? Saltwater fish are tough, they don't just die from being in a small tank for a few weeks. They endure like 48 hours of being bounced around in small bags in their peee when they are shipped. And what about how they are often kept while waiting to be bought? they sometimes spend days or weeks in small containers...yet they survive to reach our homes.
currently I have 2 clownfish and a mandarin in quarantine for 3 weeks. I am teaching the mandarin to eat different type of food and I put my female clownfish in quarantine with the new smaller male to make sure they would go well together before putting the new one in the tank. It would be a nightmare to fetch him out of the tank if they would not be compatible and would be fighting so it is a lot easier to bring the female in with the new fish (I can treat fast if something come up) and see how they get along together, right there.
Asking the store to keep the fish for a while is a moot point, because at anytime that fish can be contaminated by any new addition and although it would seem healthy it might just have cought velvet or other nasty disease minutes or hours before you go pick it up. Unless you buy from a reputated seller fish that go through very strict quarantine process like liveaquaria diver's den, it's a very big risk to trust LFS for quarantine. Just too many fish and a connected system for most.
The way I see it, it's a lot less trouble to quarantine apparently healthy fish than to have to catch all the fish from the main tank and once they are really sick it's a lot harder on them all. Most people wait until their fish start dying before they decide to catch them and treat them but they are already too far gone.
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the point is that putting a fish in quarantine will stress it out more than if you put it directly in the large display tank. Given that its less stressed in the display tank, it is more likely to start eating and in result more likely to fight off any parasite or disease naturally. Like you said, "saltwater fish are tough". they dont need chemicals or hyposalinity, they need to feel comfortable and fed. Nature then takes its course