Yes, upfront, you'll hear the occasional person saying "I have no qt tank, I don't quarantine, etc."
This is NOT something to skip...especially if this is your first tank. Why? Several really big reasons. Stay with me and read this. Please. I HATE having to tell somebody to break down his tank.
1. You're going to have ups and downs in your water quality. This is going to stress the daylights out of your fish during your first few months. [Another reason not to get your most delicate yet.] This will go on until you learn certain things and possibly until you get certain equipment like an autotopoff, your own ro/di filter, refractometer etc. You can shorten this curve, but there will be a day you forget to turn the autotopoff back on after a water change.
2. Your fish have just been through a very stressful experience, and they've been exposed to things along the way, due to capture, shipping, lack of food, etc, and there may be one little spot of a parasite that's been shipped with them. You can't see it. But they'll multiply insanely fast. They're less sensitive to bad water than your fish are. Two or three invisible animacules will come in, head for your sand and rock and start multiplying. This is why you don't put even your FIRST fish into a tank without quarantining first: you're not only protecting your fish, you're protecting your TANK.
3. Some fish, like tangs, like angels, live high up the reef and haven't much natural defense against sand-and-rock dwelling parasites like ich. Some, like mandarins, bottom-fishes, do. The ones that don't have defenses will get it first and worst, and you won't necessarily see it: it goes for the gills and invisibly chokes these fish to death before you know what's happening.
You are incorrect to think it's cruel to put your pretty new fish into a completely bare glass box in dim light for several weeks of quarantine. You want it to be in the nice world you've made for it. Wrong. No. Think of it as a period to rest up at the Hilton. Your quarantine period allows the fish to be in a dim place, untroubled from others defending territory, it'll have no competition for food, which it will have in good amount, with a daily-cleaned particulate filter to be sure there's no problem, it'll have an elbow of PVC pipe to hide in or near (it's not picky) and it will have daily tested good water, daily tested salinity, a cover to prevent it jumping out due to being startled, and if it should turn up flaring its gills, scratching on the pipe, or covered in spots or having a fin erosion issue, your daily close observation will nip that condition in the bud---you simply assess what ails it, do the appropriate treatment (you can't do it in your tank, because it would kill off the bacteria that handle waste and kill your live rock and live sand)---and CURE the fish of what would have handily killed it and every other fish you own.
So bite the bullet. A simple qt rig is DEFINITELY the way for a newbie to go. And people who are old in this hobby, who don't make nearly so many beginner mistakes, still believe that a qt rig is the way to go. When your investment is bigger and bigger, you'll still be using that rig, because you've been on RC long enough to read all the tragic posts by those who didn't set up a qt.
This is NOT something to skip...especially if this is your first tank. Why? Several really big reasons. Stay with me and read this. Please. I HATE having to tell somebody to break down his tank.
1. You're going to have ups and downs in your water quality. This is going to stress the daylights out of your fish during your first few months. [Another reason not to get your most delicate yet.] This will go on until you learn certain things and possibly until you get certain equipment like an autotopoff, your own ro/di filter, refractometer etc. You can shorten this curve, but there will be a day you forget to turn the autotopoff back on after a water change.
2. Your fish have just been through a very stressful experience, and they've been exposed to things along the way, due to capture, shipping, lack of food, etc, and there may be one little spot of a parasite that's been shipped with them. You can't see it. But they'll multiply insanely fast. They're less sensitive to bad water than your fish are. Two or three invisible animacules will come in, head for your sand and rock and start multiplying. This is why you don't put even your FIRST fish into a tank without quarantining first: you're not only protecting your fish, you're protecting your TANK.
3. Some fish, like tangs, like angels, live high up the reef and haven't much natural defense against sand-and-rock dwelling parasites like ich. Some, like mandarins, bottom-fishes, do. The ones that don't have defenses will get it first and worst, and you won't necessarily see it: it goes for the gills and invisibly chokes these fish to death before you know what's happening.
You are incorrect to think it's cruel to put your pretty new fish into a completely bare glass box in dim light for several weeks of quarantine. You want it to be in the nice world you've made for it. Wrong. No. Think of it as a period to rest up at the Hilton. Your quarantine period allows the fish to be in a dim place, untroubled from others defending territory, it'll have no competition for food, which it will have in good amount, with a daily-cleaned particulate filter to be sure there's no problem, it'll have an elbow of PVC pipe to hide in or near (it's not picky) and it will have daily tested good water, daily tested salinity, a cover to prevent it jumping out due to being startled, and if it should turn up flaring its gills, scratching on the pipe, or covered in spots or having a fin erosion issue, your daily close observation will nip that condition in the bud---you simply assess what ails it, do the appropriate treatment (you can't do it in your tank, because it would kill off the bacteria that handle waste and kill your live rock and live sand)---and CURE the fish of what would have handily killed it and every other fish you own.
So bite the bullet. A simple qt rig is DEFINITELY the way for a newbie to go. And people who are old in this hobby, who don't make nearly so many beginner mistakes, still believe that a qt rig is the way to go. When your investment is bigger and bigger, you'll still be using that rig, because you've been on RC long enough to read all the tragic posts by those who didn't set up a qt.
