The cons of quarantine

[reefermadness]

Originally Posted by Aquattro

Agreed. It segregates the fish from the general population, which might help it settle in, but does nothing for disease management.

The idea stems from the fact that unless you have a completely separate system where water quality is just as good as the display than you are putting the fish under even more undue stress. And even if you have a separate system you have to be careful what meds you add to the system that might effect water quality.

The biggest thing is to keep the fish in segregation to allow it a place to acclimate to aquaria without stressful tank mates competing for food. Once you have this fish adapted to captive life and nice and fat it sure has a better chance in the display.

Also most of us try to buy fish with no apparent sickness. If something does pop up on it you can take the tank offline at the first sign....vastly reducing the chance of it getting transmitted to the display. At this point you can do what ever you have to do to the QT to get the fish healthy.

Really I think a fat and healthy eating fish is in most cases a healthy one and this is the number one thing we struggle with once we add a new specimen to the display (lack of eating and shyness or all out aggression from others).

And lets admit it...how many of us are going to set up a quality system just as good (in terms of water quality) as the display, just for the odd time we are adding a fish? I can see you didnt Brad, but dont feel bad...that is the norm (I've heard this story quite a bit) and where most people fail with QT. Ya two equal systems is the ideal....but not too many people have the ambition, funds or space to do that. My idea is a close second.

[Reef Pilot]

Even after QT, I had an ich outbreak this summer. I had bought some new fish and a couple conch snails a couple months before and put them all in my QT tank for a month. Everyone looked good, fishing eating well, so I added them to my display tank.

About a month after that, I noticed some scratching and flashing with a couple of my fish. Unfortunately, I was away a lot this summer, and not in a good position to fight the disease in the best way possible. Most of my fish caught the ich, and two ended up dying (my long lived Copperband, and a Royal Gramma). Ironically, none of the new fish died or even displayed symptoms. Also, I have a very old Yellow Tang (10+ years) that did not show any symptoms either. I thought they were supposed to be more susceptible, but obviously not this one.

Thankfully now, my tank has recovered and all the fish are fine. I have some other butterfly fish (Pearlescales) that had it pretty bad, and thought I might lose them, but they also pulled through. The infected fish never did stop feeding, and I think that helped them fight the disease.

In the past, when I QT'ed new fish, I put them through the hyposalinity routine, with 100% success. This time because I had the conch snails, I couldn't do that. Obviously, the new fish (gobies) were carriers, even though they didn't show symptoms in the QT.

Anyway, another lesson for me. Despite all my past preaching about QT, I still got caught. I guess I will just have to be more careful. And summer, or late spring, is not a good time for me to acquire any new livestock.