Introducing disease when adding an anemone?

[daniella3d]

Hi,

I have a pair of clownfish in quarantine for 5 weeks now and 3 days ago I introduced a seabee anemone which one of my clown is already hosting.

Now I am wondering if there is a risk of introducing some disease with the anemone? I guess to be safe I should quarantine another 4 weeks?

I acclimated the anemone and then took it out of the water in my hand and put it in my quarantine tank, so only very little of the bag water got into the tank with the anemone.

The tank the anemone was had no fish in it, although not sure if it was not connected to other tanks in the store.

How strong of a risk is that?

[Aquattro]

Well, if it was wet, it's a risk. How great? Dunno, but you seem to put a lot of effort into quarantine, hate to mess it up this once, no?

[George]

I will let them be in QT for 4+ more weeks if your QT has enough light for the nem.

[reefwars]

If you do qt which i also say you should add a tupperware of sand so the sebae has somewhere to set its foot they are sand dwellers

[daniella3d]

I see. The anemone is currently attached to my bare bottom quarantine tank. there is no sand, does that matter? I guess I will take no chance and leave them there for another 4 weeks...sigh

The anemone seem to be getting better and better each day. It's regaining a bit of color and I have 4 x 24 watt T5HO over a standard 20 gallons tank.

Originally Posted by reefwars

If you do qt which i also say you should add a tupperware of sand so the sebae has somewhere to set its foot they are sand dwellers

[Myka]

Originally Posted by Aquattro

Well, if it was wet, it's a risk.

Agreed. Anything wet technically should be quarantined to maintain complete diligence, however most people are not this diligent.

Personally, I dip all corals, and quarantine all fish. Shrimp, crabs, anemones, etc aren't regarded in my quarantine/dipping efforts. Albeit, I do dip snails in coral dips, though not for very long as they can often carry things like flat worms.

[daniella3d]

Usualy when I get a shrimp I don't quarantine it. I take it out of the bag after acclimatation and put it in my tank without droping water from the bag, so only water that is on the shrimp might be a risk.

I also did that for my long tentacles anemone about 2 months ago, acclimated it 4 hours and took it out of the bag in my hands and in the tank. I did the same thing for my clam, and for my others previous anemones, 2 rock flowers and one maxi mini.

But after reading so many horror stories about parasites I now realize that I was lucky not getting anything nasty, or is the risk so low that it is not worth to quarantine those...that's what I was wondering about.

Originally Posted by Myka

Agreed. Anything wet technically should be quarantined to maintain complete diligence, however most people are not this diligent.

Personally, I dip all corals, and quarantine all fish. Shrimp, crabs, anemones, etc aren't regarded in my quarantine/dipping efforts. Albeit, I do dip snails in coral dips, though not for very long as they can often carry things like flat worms.

[Myka]

Originally Posted by daniella3d

...or is the risk so low that it is not worth to quarantine those...that's what I was wondering about.

Well, I'm not sure about a scientific standpoint, but I would consider inverts like shrimp/nems to be much less of a threat simply because they don't have any live rock. Snails' shells are like mini live rocks though, so I do consider snails to be a threat. Sorry, that doesn't really answer your question too well. Maybe there is some more authoritative information out there.

[daniella3d]

I will definitly quarantine a few more weeks, but I am really curious about this.

Originally Posted by Myka

Sorry, that doesn't really answer your question too well. Maybe there is some more authoritative information out there.

[paddyob]

LFS don't usually qt nems and inverts.

Usually right into acclimate and then tank. Possible dip.