To quarantine or not to quarantine, that is the question...

[laxing22]

I have never QTd. I always felt it was more stress to add on to a fish that has prob seen a few tanks and would just like to hide in some rock for a day or two. My tanks have always been full of LR and live food and I tend to always add cleaner shrimp and cleaner gobie's first and I think that goes a long way.
I have also been told in the past that most peoples tanks have plenty of ick and lots of other bad stuff in them all the time, but a healthy and un-stressed fish has an immunity system that fights off many nasties.
Of course, I think this is where the LFS comes in being able to see if a fish is fat and healthy.

 

[TampaReefer79]

Cleaner shrimp, cleaner gobies, and cleaner wrasses do NOTHING in the fight against parasites. Also, the 'qt adds more stress' theory is bogus. QT is a great place to watch your fish for signs of diseases/parasites for a few weeks, and this way it will already be isolated for treatement, and is also a great way for the fish to acclimate to aquarium life. Lack of food competition and lack of tankmate aggression go a long way it letting your new fishy acclimate and get fat and healthy before putting into your display.

 

[mr.maroonsalty]

Room for at least one QT/HT tank should be planned into the space for every build, but if there isn't room and putting another tank in the house means you'll be living with it out of the back of your truck what is there to do. Careful handling of bag water during acclimation along with even more careful examination with a good magnifying glass of the coral and bag water is a good step, but nowhere near perfectly reliable.

 

[Gary Majchrzak]

Dan- you already know my reply.

IMO fish are just eye candy for non reefers. Corals are where its at baby.

I'm stayin' outta this thread! :lmao:

 

[Capt_Cully]

I had a feeling my views would be unpopular. I'm just being a straight shooter vs an idealist. I'm not throwing stones at all!!! Just opening my dirty little closet a crack. Ideally, I WOULD QT everything. Do I? Ashamedly, no. Have I gotten lucky with fish? Yes. Corals....not so much. FWIW the mojanos were intentionally introduced under false identification sold to me at a nameless FS from Rochester.

 

[Gary Majchrzak]

I understand completely :fish2:

 

[Willistein]

Cully, your honesty is refreshing - thanks for the feedback. I've never QT'd fish either, but probably should. I think putting a fish on hold at the LFS and observing it for a couple weeks is a good idea too... though I've never done that either.

 

[MD Ocean Girl]

After losing a few fish due to not QT'ing them, as well as almost losing a $120 pair of clowns, every fish now gets at least 2 weeks in the QT tank and treated with coppersafe. As for corals, I haven't lost any yet other than a few zoa's that melted away for some reason. However, unless the corals come right from a friend's tank that I trust well, all new corals go into the frag tank....much easier to manage in there, and since it's separate from the DT, nothing in the DT will be affected. To me anyway, what's the point of keeping a reef tank unless you try to design it like a natural reef? Last time I checked, reefs include fish. :fish1:

Coming from a freshwater perspective, most plants cost a max of $5 and a $20 fish is expensive unless it's extremely rare, hard to keep, or very large. Therefore, just about any fish or coral in saltwater keeping seems expensive to me, and I'd rather not waste money due to me being lazy.

 

[laxing22]

Cleaner shrimp, cleaner gobies, and cleaner wrasses do NOTHING in the fight against parasites. Also, the 'qt adds more stress' theory is bogus. QT is a great place to watch your fish for signs of diseases/parasites for a few weeks, and this way it will already be isolated for treatement, and is also a great way for the fish to acclimate to aquarium life. Lack of food competition and lack of tankmate aggression go a long way it letting your new fishy acclimate and get fat and healthy before putting into your display.

What are my cleaner shimp and gobies doing climbing on fish? Also, how is thinking that putting a fish from one tank to another to another not adding a little more stess to the fish. Esp the sterile tanks QTs are suposed to be - no natural food, little hiding area's, prob much smaller.

 

[Gary Majchrzak]

but

but

QT should include hiding areas, natural foods and be as roomy as possible...........

I gotta agree with TampaReefer79.............

 

[Capt_Cully]

Thanks. I'd be willing to bet that a majority, not all, but a majority of people who say they QTeverything, everytime, are not 100%. Ideally, it SHOULD be done.

To say QT is stressful on particular species is "bogus" is also not accurate. I can recall reading, more than once where an experienced reefkeeper has had a fish in QT. When the fish is not doing well in QT a last ditch effort to get the fish to thrive has been to add it to the DT. Do I condone it? Not really. Does it happen, yep. Is it therefore bogus, Nope.

Am I right, usually not, but these are factual accounts. I don't plan on adding very many fish to my new system. My fish are being held in a system where a few fish have been temporarily held from time to time. I fully anticipate that my purple tang will get ich when he goes throught the move again. Calm waters and feeding garlic is my plan of attack.

Corals and LR are completely different story.......

 

[TampaReefer79]

Thanks. I'd be willing to bet that a majority, not all, but a majority of people who say they QTeverything, everytime, are not 100%. Ideally, it SHOULD be done.

To say QT is stressful on particular species is "bogus" is also not accurate. I can recall reading, more than once where an experienced reefkeeper has had a fish in QT. When the fish is not doing well in QT a last ditch effort to get the fish to thrive has been to add it to the DT. Do I condone it? Not really. Does it happen, yep. Is it therefore bogus, Nope.

Am I right, usually not, but these are factual accounts. I don't plan on adding very many fish to my new system. My fish are being held in a system where a few fish have been temporarily held from time to time. I fully anticipate that my purple tang will get ich when he goes throught the move again. Calm waters and feeding garlic is my plan of attack.

Corals and LR are completely different story.......

I'm being 100% honest when I say NOT A SINGLE THING in my tank skipped qt. (my tank is empty) :spin1:

Saying that qt is more stressful on fish than 'just adding them' is the slogan of people that don't qt. :spin2:

 

[block head]

i know i've made mistakes. i try and draw from my nights of partying. waking up the next day ,wondering ***k? and scubbing down with bar of soap was not a good plan . keeping a cheap qt, and bringing a wingman to the lfs keeps me out of trouble 90% of the time.

 

[Gary Majchrzak]

true grit

true grit

i know i've made mistakes. i try and draw from my nights of partying. waking up the next day ,wondering ***k? and scubbing down with bar of soap was not a good plan . keeping a cheap qt, and bringing a wingman to the lfs keeps me out of trouble 90% of the time.

:lmao:
ever scrub down with a bar of 'Lava' soap?

 

[Conesus_Kid]

I can recall reading, more than once where an experienced reefkeeper has had a fish in QT. When the fish is not doing well in QT a last ditch effort to get the fish to thrive has been to add it to the DT.

I would contend that the QT setups in these situations were less than ideal. A properly set up QT system is less stressful than a display tank 100 times out of 100. Appropriate hiding places, flow, lighting, temperature, foods, and water parameters for the species in QT are a must. In other words, a good QT system is the next best thing to the wild reef, or possibly even better since there's no predators or intra/inter-species competition.

More people, (even experienced reefers) kill fish in QT because they set up half-assed non-cycled systems that can't handle the bioload after they see some white spots on their fish. I would bet that ammonia kills more fish in QT than any pathogen or parasite. Or even better: people use Ammo-lock or some similar ammonia dissipating product in conjunction with copper and end up poisoning their fish.

Now, I'll air some of my own stinky laundry: I've never QT'ed a coral. I've been lucky getting empty chambers playing Russian Roulette, but I really should set something up before adding anything else to the system.

 

[Capt_Cully]

This is a great thread that will no doubt attract many less experienced readers. My goal is to present all sides. The righteous and the lazy. You can't go wrong by doing the right thing, so to QT? Absolutely! But you must QT EVERYTHING to stay on the path of righteousness.

 

[tmz]

I've done this thread too many times .

The rationales for no qt just don't hold up for me. With over 40 fish in the system and no disease the risk of disease posed by a new specimen is much too high. In my opinion the risk to even one fish and to the tank as a whole is unacceptable .Infestations are horrible to watch and I reckon even more horrible for the fish.

New fish captive bred or not are exposed to many other fish in confined closed systems during their journey to the home aquarium.

The most common causes of increased carnage due to disease in the hobby include: crytocaryon irritans(marine ich), amyloodinium(velvet), flukes, brooklynella, and a few others. I've seen them all over the years with stunning frequency as they are all very contagious and deadly. All of them are treatable in qt and can be erradicated. Simply, new fish are at high risk for infestations wether they show symptoms or not. Prophylactic treatment in qt for the more common ailments is very worthwhile and effective in my opinion.
FIWW I qt all new specimens and treat prophylacticaly via fromalin bath, copper and prazi pro without ill effects.

A few myths:

Ich is in the tank anyway and is caused by stress.(myth)

Ich is a parasite that needs a fish host . If you never put it in your tank it won't be there. If you do put it in it lasts for a very long time unless the tank is left fishless for 72 days. Even if you don't see it will persist in small numbers hiding in the delicate tissues of the nose ,mouth and gills of fish which may have partial immunity from an earlier exposure. Each parasite multiplies by 200 or so when it leaves the fish and encyst. Often new specimens even those that are healthy and have been qtd get ich when introduced(they have no immunity) and can spark an outbreak where the increase in the number of parasites overwhelms the immunity of the other fish bringing down large numbers of fish if not the entire fish population.

Reef safe remedies.(myth)

There are none.

Cleaner shrimp (myth)

They don't eat the parasite according to studies. They pick at the white spot which is an exit wound left as the parasite leaves the fish.

UV (semi myth)

Won't kill ich unless the uv is well oversized since this protozoan is large and needs a large dose of uv to kill it. Even then the uv only kills what passes through it and only a portion of the parasites are in the water column at any time.UVs may reduce bacterial populations and algaes such as the dinoflagellate amyloodinium
(velvet) which are smaller than protozoans, thereby lessening the incidence of secondary infections brought on by ich.
Using a UV on a qt tank if you have one is a good practice,imo, but not a necessity.

Only take disease free fish that have been in the lfs tank for a couple of weeks and that appear healthy(myth).

While this is a good practice,these tanks have high turnover of specimens and the new fish may have been exposed to a contagious disease which is pre symptomatic when you observe it.

Qt requires only a small bare tank which stresses the fish(myth).

Qt needs to be carefully planned and implemented to create a temporary envirornment to meet the needs of the particular specimen (s) including: space,resting places,foods , takmates , in some cases sand pools,etc. . It takes some work and monitoring and lots of control over urges for instant gratification. A very big danger in qt is ammonia. Monitoring and control is a must Establishing a cycled qt tank with a functional biofilter before use makes this unlikely .Knowing the meds and water treatments you choose to use is important. Mixing meds and/or water treatments can be deadly. So read up and don't use them together when they are contraindicated.
Having a qt tank also enables quick from the bag water to the tank water acclimation when the qt water is equal to or lower in sg than the bag water. This method alleviates the potential for osmotic shock and ammonia poisoning while the fish languishes in the bag water (where ammonia toxicity increases quickly once the bag is opened) during lengthy drip procedures. You then have plenty of time to adjust the sg in the tank slowly to match the display.

I don't qt corals ,maybe I should, but dip new specimens with revive ,lugols and sometimes flat worm exit.

 

[Jacwil]

This is a great thread that will no doubt attract many less experienced readers. My goal is to present all sides. The righteous and the lazy. You can't go wrong by doing the right thing, so to QT? Absolutely! But you must QT EVERYTHING to stay on the path of righteousness.

Well stated Mark!

 

[Capt_Cully]

I was wondering when Tom was gonna b#tch slap me

 

[naprestsleep]

Fish yes, coral no.

I wish I had/would QT coral, I have not had any "diseases" yet but plenty of algaes that magically show up after a coral addition.