who here quarantines their fish first??? and who doesnt??

Everytime I have quarentined fish they have died. Since then I have purchased a few fish and not quarentined them and all have lived. I suppose if it were to treat something more severe then ich then I would attempt quarentine again, till then I won't.

 

i don't quarantine, either. I feel vaguely guilty about that though. I get my fish from places I trust, although I know that's no guarantee of anything. I did quarantine a blue hippo recently. It was my first time doing that with a new fish. It was so skittish that I put it in the DT because I felt sorry for it. It wouldn't eat and died within a week.

 

I don't QT, however I feel like I should. I just don't currently have the means to do it properly.

I've sucessfully battled ich on 2 fish with no casualties, however I have lost other fish for some reason, so who knows.....

 

Lets don't lose sight of why we are quarentining in the first place.
Its not necesarily to protect the fish or corals we just purchased but to protect the hundreds or thousands of dollars we already have in the display tank. The new purchase is a drop in the bucket compared to wiping out an established tank. Yes it can be rough on a new fish but shielding the tank with towels or a blanket, subdued lighting and plenty of hiding places helps as do things like raising salinity to help respiration.

 

i agree i think QT a new arrival only if there is reason to suspect illness...or if you knowingly buy a sick fish. otherwise its added stress thats not needed.

 

I am QT'ing all new fish for at least 4 weeks for my new system. There are possibly some exceptions I would make depending on how many fish were already stocked in the display tank and how much risk I'm willing to assume with a potentially touchy fish but generally I think it's a bad idea.

On top of trying to avoid adding diseases/parasites etc a QT is a good place to help get fish eating and used to being fed by you without competition from other tankmates. This is more of an issue with some types of fish than others of course.

A properly setup QT is definitely better than not QT'ing IMO. Not QT'ing is taking a risk with your entire livestock list every time you add a new fish.

Here's a pretty good article if you're interested.
An Ounce of Prevention is Worth a Pound of Cure: A Quarantine Tank for Everything by Steven Pro - Reefkeeping.com

As for adding stress, I don't see how a properly setup QT (of an appropriate size and with appropriate hiding spots etc) is any more stressful than adding a fish to a tank that already contains other potentially aggressive established fish.

 

for one, catching and moving the fish. it adds an instance of that. there isn't any getting around that. the more hiding spots, the more (potentially) difficult it will be to catch it. the more difficult it is, the more stress it is...

ideally, acclimation should be moot but it often isn't. And the 'often isn't' makes me give the 'general' advise that it's generally more stress than it's worth.

The DT already containing other potentially aggressive fish isn't relevant IMO. Whether you use QT or not, the new addition will have to deal with the existing livestock (and vica versa (i don't remember how to spell that )


It's just one more rental property before it can move into its new home. Just as it gets use to the new environment (the QT), it's ripped away and put in yet another new environment (the DT).

I don't see how that wouldn't be more stressful.

 

I think if you plan ahead and have the proper tools and setup I think you can eliminate most of it.

It is one more move but after a month of being in a new tank it should be over any stress from the previous move and should be acting pretty normally, if the fish is sensitive enough that moving it twice in one month is going to kill it then I might consider skipping the QT or just going with another fish all together because that's pretty sensitive and probably shouldn't be kept by people who aren't already pretty pro at keeping marine fish, IMO.

The hiding spots/decorations etc should be easily removeable like lots of pvc of varying shapes and sizes or some plastic aquarium decorations or something. That makes it quick and easy to find the fish when you do want to move it to the DT or you can get a fish trap which is relatively stress free IMO.
You can pretty easily herd most fish into a half of a milk jug or specimen container or something if you don't have a fish trap and then just dump them into the DT, no concerns about netting or chasing a fish around for hours etc.

When fish come to an LFS they may have changed hands a number of times and been through a lot, plane rides, holding tanks, etc to get to that point.
At a lot of LFS' they don't QT their fish either they just go right into the sales tanks so they could have come off the plane less than 24 hours ago then you go and take them home and throw them right into a display tank, they might have been in the ocean under a week ago or it may have been through a chain of custody that was weeks long and hasn't been fed very well, if at all in that time putting it already at a disadvantage getting into a new tank. Then putting them right into a display tank with other fish species that they may not have ever even seen before, much less know whether it's predator/prey, having to compete for food and hiding/sleeping spots etc could be very stressful.

In a QT it's the master of it's domain except for you, nothing to bother it, it can be dark, the fish doesn't have to compete for food or hiding spots, the salinity and temp can be a little lower if the fish is OK with that to help raise oxygen levels, that sort of thing. You can fatten the fish up and be sure it's getting enough food to fatten up.
On top of that you are more certain that the fish isn't going to kill the rest of your fish with some nasty disease or parasite or something.

Anything but using a QT is risky for the whole tank, like AZDesertRat said. The whole tank is on the line, not just the newcomer. All of those benefits of QT at the expense of one more slightly stressful move that should only take a few minutes.

 

I agree with Peredhil 100%. I will never buy any fish off the net because of this. When I do buy fish from my lfs I will watch the fish for a hour or two just to make sure thats it's ok eating, swimming, etc. If I feel it's not well or look like it should I would not buy it.

 

Not that this is going to convince you but you can't always determine if a fish has a communicable disease or parasites by a visual inspection over that short a period of time, you need more like days at least of observation to begin to see symptoms of some types of disease/parasites.