[reefermadness]

Originally Posted by howdy20012002

If you don't quarantine, by the time you notice something wrong with your fish, your entire system will most likely be infected.Are you speaking from experience or just guessing?
turning the second tank off from the system will not work as it will already be too late. Therefore, there is absolutely no point in having a second tank attached to your main system as a quarantine. I laid out some reasons but you choose to ignore them. The tank is mostly to allow the new fish to acclimate to captive life with out aggression and competition (for food) from other fish. This a lone came be life saving for some fish. Parasites will swim around the water, find the overflow and be in the other tank in no time.

appearance of a fish means nothing...fish can show absolutely no signs of illness and then be dead within 48 hours.
Fish that die from marine velvet often don't even show signs.
those that do show signs, by the time they do it is often too late for treatment unless you agressively treat with copper.

The store could have the fish for months..but what else have they recently added to the same system.
there are too many variables for you to know the status of fish that you are buying out of most fish stores unless they have separated the fish and quarantined them for at least 3 weeks and not added anything else that hasn't been quarantined.

I have had fish come in...be fine in quarantine for 2 weeks..just about to put them into one of my main system and all of a sudden they have ich.If you experience is with ICH than I say to you that even fish and systems that show no signs of ICH for years carry ICH. Also ICH will go away on its own 99% if there are no underlying factors (agression, stress, bad water quality) and the fish is eating

if you can financially afford to run a quarantine...run it.I agree....like I said best practice is a seperate system where the water quality is as good as the display....my suggestion is in second place sure but there are some obvious benefits. Also I would like to point out that a tank tied in like that adds to the water volume which is good all the time. When you do decide to buy a fish, which most of use dont know when that happens exactly, this tank is ready to be used right away
realistically, to be completely sure that your fish doesn't have something you miss, you should treat the quarantine with copper or by hypsolanity.
both should be done for at least 4 weeks, if not 6 weeks to make sure that you have a parasite free fish.Be careful as copper can affect water quality
otherwise you are taking your chance everytimeseems like we are always taking chances in this hobby.

.