How many fish can you QT at the same time?

[itz frank]

Obviously, in the same tank. I'm ordering my shipment of fish and it wouldn't make much sense to order multiples if I can not keep multiples QT'd at the same time.

The list would include two clowns, a wrasse, and a cardinal.
The QT could be anywhere from 5gal to 20gal since I have buckets and I also have another tank.

 

[reefwiser]

One fish at a time. IF all in the same QT tanks and one gets sick they are all sick.

 

[Chris27]

You can QT them all together. The labor intensive task of keeping tabs on 4 different QT's will be far worse for your fish then a single larger QT with a simple outbreak of crypt.

 

[Deinonych]

I prefer to quarantine no more than 2 fish at a time (one at a time is best). As mentioned above, if one gets sick, it will affect the rest. Increasing the number of fish in QT increases the likelihood of one of them bringing in a pathogen.

 

[ca1ore]

Depends ....

I do not QT fish together unless they came from the same place (most commercial fish systems are all connected) but I do if they did. I do not overcrowd my QT tanks either - both in terms of fish stress and overtaxing the bio filter (a guess, admittedly). If you do QT together, then one sick fish means treating them all, but, if they can from the same system, that's probably not a bad thing.

 

[Spar]

i generally do 1 or 2 fish at a time, but with some fish like Anthias you want to do a school at a time. really just comes down to the space you can provide. i QT'ed 6 YT's at a single time recently but used 30g tanks for TTM and observation... was a pain in the rear, but got it done. obviously the risk exists that if one had velvet then the rest would likely get it; this is the main drawback to > 1 fish, as said above.

 

[itz frank]

Well, to be fair this won't be a hospital tank and more of a observation tank. The stock will all come from the same place, either ordered online or from an LFS that I know has them.

 

[DasCamel]

Keep it manageable unless you want to treat multiple sick wish at once. Not fun. I'm sticking with 2-3 max if small, one if bigger.

 

[snorvich]

I prefer to quarantine no more than 2 fish at a time (one at a time is best). As mentioned above, if one gets sick, it will affect the rest. Increasing the number of fish in QT increases the likelihood of one of them bringing in a pathogen.

This.

 

[snorvich]

Well, to be fair this won't be a hospital tank and more of a observation tank. The stock will all come from the same place, either ordered online or from an LFS that I know has them.

Multiple fish from the same source are very likely to have the same pathogen if any.