Quarantine ..... Do you or don't you?

AquaticFinatic · #1 01-01-2011, 08:56 PM

Thanks guys and gals. I did the no qt thing on my last tank which was a 90gal and lost most of my fish to ich. This time round I'm doing a 180 and am trying to find out if it was just my luck or everyone has had this problem. Our local supply is always hit and miss with health so don't really want to make that mistake again. So far I guess the majority don't and I think I agree after reading your thoughts.

daniella3d · #2 01-01-2011, 10:29 PM

I always quarantine. I have a hippo tang and it does not have ich at the slightest stress. why? because I treated it with hyposalinity and got rid of ich for good. No more ich and it,s been 2 months since it was introduced in my main tank. I simply don,t want any disease in my main aquarium, period, end of story.

Now I have a copperband butterfly and I take the quarantine as an opportunity to fatten the fish up while checking it for disease. It will be there at least 4 weeks, probably more. He's much better in quarantine because he's not stressed by other fish and can have all the food for itself. I think that's a lot less stressfull to a fish than being dumped in a main system with lots of fish that might not be happy about a new intruduction and if the fish is not so strong yet, that might just be the end of it.

I don't see what's stressfull in quarantine. A quarantine tank does not have to be full of ammonia or just bare empty. I put liverock in mine for filtration and shelter and the fish are in peace alone in there.

When I did the hyposalinity treatment for my hippo tang, the biofiltration kept on without problem with a few pieces of liverock. Bacterias survive quite well at 1.09.

peasofme · #3 01-31-2011, 10:05 AM

lots of misinformation in this thread. look here for the facts:

http://www.reefland.com/forum/marine...ths-facts.html

whatcaneyedo · #4 01-31-2011, 02:29 PM

I often dont quarentine fish although I believe that I should. Quite often when I add a new one my other fish get ick for a little while but then get over it. However I rarely buy new fish anymore. On average just two a year lately. My biggest problem has been from not quarantining coral and other inverts. I've introduced a lot of problems and parasites that way... so lately I've been trying to QT everything for at least two weeks.

My QT tank is just a bare 20gal with two powerheads, heater, hang on filter and T5 light. Whenever I use it I do 10% daily water changes by using water from my main system to keep the water in the two the same.

ponokareefer · #5 01-31-2011, 04:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by peasofme

lots of misinformation in this thread. look here for the facts:

http://www.reefland.com/forum/marine...ths-facts.html

Couldn't agree more. Maybe you won't ever have a problem, but if you do, you could wipe out your entire fish population. Is that something you want to risk? Disease/parasites aren't always easy to see and spot and fish can act quite normal when the disease isn't full blown. You'll typically want to use a quarantine tank that is 20% to 30% of the size of your main tank. As others have already pointed out, they are quite simple and unless you have fish in them, they can just sit there running only having to top them up. For the small cost of them and little maintenance compared to the cost of all the fish in a system, it is a no brainer for me.
I also don't understand why a quarantine tank would be more stressfull? They are the first fish in, so there is no quarrell for dominance or being picked on. There are no bright lights to get used to like most people run. There is minimal competition for food. How is that more stressfull than your main tank?

ScubaSteve · #6 01-31-2011, 09:15 PM

I don't QT as I believe that it often stresses them out (as said previously). Stressed fish are more likely to contract something. I will QT, however, if I by from certain places that I know are bad for it or depending on the species of fish... I find some fish are just ich magnets.

Corals on the otherhand... I've learned to dip. Can't afford a coral QT but Coral Rx is waaaay cheaper than losing all my corals... Dark times those were....

Twinn · #7 01-31-2011, 10:03 PM

+1 of SubaSteve

I do not QT but I do dip corals with coral rx. I may be lucky because I do have good local fish stores in my area. The problem for me was this the lighting and water quality in my QT tank was never as good as the lighting and water quality in my DT. When it came to corals I found making the adjustment from crappy QT lighting to intense DT lighting was hurting the corals themselves too much. That being said every coral gets a good did before entering my system.