puffer21
Active member
So I know that a lot of people are not going to agree with this, but I'm ok with that. Everyone on here is always talking about how you need to QT fish. Now I am not saying that this is not a good idea and that you shouldn't QT. What I doing is giving my experience, and the experiences I have working at a LFS.
What I can tell you is that most of my customers don't QT; they don't want to spend the money, don't have the room, don't believe in it, they try to do the QT but the fish ends up dying because they don't do the water changes the small QT tank needs.
Working at a LFS I can tell you how many horror stories I have heard about peoples tanks and there fish dying. The first thing I do when someone has a fish die is go over there tank. What size is it, what is in it, equipment, test results, and so on. This is how I figure out what caused the fish's death or why all of a sudden all their fish have ich.
99% of the time I notice that when people's fish die there is an issue with the tank. Wether they do a water change with ice cold water, they haven't done a water changes for the last year, there nitrates are off my chart, I get the "œyour supposed to feed them everyday", "œyou don't just give them three of those frozen cubes for a 20 gallon tank"," you don't just add 10 fish at once", "œya I got that salt from market basket". There isn't any times I can remember someone getting an ich outbreak when there wasn't something wrong with their tank. (what I do hear is that many people will get ich on a fish they have just added and then it goes away)
What I can tell you is that when you have a healthy tank typically you will be fine (not always, but typically)
If you cant QT, don't want to whatever your reason at least flow some of the steps below.
"¢The fish breathing heavily at the bottom of the LFS is dying, unless you are going to hospitalize him, he doesn't need your saving
"¢The fish that isn't swimming right, don't buy him
"¢When someone at the LFS says that the fish just came in and were taking deposits, we are trying to tell you to wait to buy him because we just acclimated him 10 minutes ago
"¢When someone at the LFS says the fish is sick, don't be like I will get it anyway
"¢Feed good foods, I always also supplement my foods with garlic, vitachem and selcon. You get vitamins why shouldn't our fish.
Once again I am not saying that you shouldn't QT. From my experience if you are having a healthy tank then you typically wont have a problem.
One other thing that I wanted to add is I am taking about QT's not hospital tanks. Many times with tangs the tang will develop ich when placed into the aquarium, when the tank is healthy typically other fish will not be affected. The ich will last a few days and go away. On rare cases when the person bought the tang the day after we put it into our system then was put into a tank with some larger slightly aggressive fish, the tang will develop ich and stop eating. In this cause the fish should be hospitalized, he was to stressed from other factors to build up their immune systems, even in a healthy tank. Many people with healthy tanks will add a fish that happens to be a terror in there tank. I know someone who added an small algae blenny that terriored a power blue tang. The fish ended up inside a rock and had to be removed and had scratches and look terrible. In this cause even in a health tank the fish needs to be hospitalized.
I hope this helped
What I can tell you is that most of my customers don't QT; they don't want to spend the money, don't have the room, don't believe in it, they try to do the QT but the fish ends up dying because they don't do the water changes the small QT tank needs.
Working at a LFS I can tell you how many horror stories I have heard about peoples tanks and there fish dying. The first thing I do when someone has a fish die is go over there tank. What size is it, what is in it, equipment, test results, and so on. This is how I figure out what caused the fish's death or why all of a sudden all their fish have ich.
99% of the time I notice that when people's fish die there is an issue with the tank. Wether they do a water change with ice cold water, they haven't done a water changes for the last year, there nitrates are off my chart, I get the "œyour supposed to feed them everyday", "œyou don't just give them three of those frozen cubes for a 20 gallon tank"," you don't just add 10 fish at once", "œya I got that salt from market basket". There isn't any times I can remember someone getting an ich outbreak when there wasn't something wrong with their tank. (what I do hear is that many people will get ich on a fish they have just added and then it goes away)
What I can tell you is that when you have a healthy tank typically you will be fine (not always, but typically)
If you cant QT, don't want to whatever your reason at least flow some of the steps below.
"¢The fish breathing heavily at the bottom of the LFS is dying, unless you are going to hospitalize him, he doesn't need your saving
"¢The fish that isn't swimming right, don't buy him
"¢When someone at the LFS says that the fish just came in and were taking deposits, we are trying to tell you to wait to buy him because we just acclimated him 10 minutes ago
"¢When someone at the LFS says the fish is sick, don't be like I will get it anyway
"¢Feed good foods, I always also supplement my foods with garlic, vitachem and selcon. You get vitamins why shouldn't our fish.
Once again I am not saying that you shouldn't QT. From my experience if you are having a healthy tank then you typically wont have a problem.
One other thing that I wanted to add is I am taking about QT's not hospital tanks. Many times with tangs the tang will develop ich when placed into the aquarium, when the tank is healthy typically other fish will not be affected. The ich will last a few days and go away. On rare cases when the person bought the tang the day after we put it into our system then was put into a tank with some larger slightly aggressive fish, the tang will develop ich and stop eating. In this cause the fish should be hospitalized, he was to stressed from other factors to build up their immune systems, even in a healthy tank. Many people with healthy tanks will add a fish that happens to be a terror in there tank. I know someone who added an small algae blenny that terriored a power blue tang. The fish ended up inside a rock and had to be removed and had scratches and look terrible. In this cause even in a health tank the fish needs to be hospitalized.
I hope this helped
