Quarantine Tank? FW Dip? Is it all really necessary?

When you've gone through watching all your hard work and critters die in front of you one by one from something pretty much preventable... it's a really sick feeling. You learn from it. Those who had great loss and are still risking it... never fully felt the blow emotionally or financially from the first one.

I had to pick up my two seahorses that I raised from birth, and place into a container of MS-222. They came willing and trustingly to my finger as they did every day. Curled around expecting a treat... which I gave them and then I slowly lowered them in the solution to watch them drift off to death. I did this on their 1 year birthday because it had to be done.

 

i felt the blows from my wife about the money we lost. So now all fish are QT'ed in copper for a month or so. It does 2 things for us. 1) it lets me feed the fish and make sure its nice and healthy 2) the copper kills off many bad things on the outside of the fish and also if he develops ich in the qt i have no problem using non reef safe treatments.

 

3) keeps the wife from beating you....

 

big time agreed on that one

 

Since you asked for opinions... I'm just becoming interested in the hobby (see my post in the newbie section). I live in a small home, and am planning a 29 gallon with a couple clowns and some shrimp. We'd like a bigger tank with more fish, but there simply isn't room for one, much less for a QT. So between not planning to add much to the tank, and not having any space to put one, a QT simply isn't going to happen with me.

 

For those who say they don't have space for a QT it's not like you have to leave it up and running...I don't have space either...I have to move a nice comfy rocker to the garage till the fish are healthy again.

If I were in my apartment the QT would be on the kitchen counter or an end table just somewhere for the QT period then you wash it all up and store it.

Also note I had planned on using a QT before the fish deaths just hadn't gotten around to getting the FW fish out of the tank to use for a QT. The 2 initial fish looked healthy when purchsed but just a few days later were dead taking 3 more. So in my case visual inspection wasn't enough.

 

meh.... maybe if i had 'thousdands of dollars of fish' but who does? 7 people?

All the SW fish I ever owned put together might be a couple hundred...

I don't keep rare or expensive fish. I don't see much reason to spend that kind of money on something that has a finite time with me.

It's cool some of you do, but I don't and I'm not worried about spending that kind of time (the money is irrelevant to me) on a 20-60 buck fish.

EDIT: a dead fish is turned into coral food... at least I gain something in death (not to mean I encourage death for cheap food, just saying they are recycled)

 

Beyond the environmental impact of taking fish after fish out of the water, there's the issue of how long you keep the fish for. You could have a fish upwards of 10 years.

Now, if you give them a 25% chance of dying from a parasite, you could end up getting a whole lot of fish trying to stock the tank for that period of time.

But when you QT, you bring that risk to nearly none, and eliminate a factor that can reduce the lifespan of the fish drastically.

You can also consider that when a fish comes in with a parasite, it will spread; the number of 25% is just thrown out there as a ballpark guesstimate. A tang is likely to be much higher, while damsels, clowns and mandarins are much lower.

But throw in a tang last, when they are the most susceptible, and you may very well have given all of the fish in the tank a death sentence, meaning you need to start over.

All that, to "save time" (not IMO), while you just wasted time stocking the tank full of fish and need to start over from near-scratch.

Also, the money to run a QT is negligible (I know that's not your point, but I'm just mentioning it for everyone else). You're looking at ~$150 for a 29G breeder QT, with a very small time investment for maintenance. I could spend that on fish to stock my 55G tank with easily.

I could also spend that 4 times over, and wind up without a single fish in the tank, because of parasite outbreaks.

 

i honestly think that this is just another one of those things that everyone has a different perspective about, or everyone feels that it should be done but we all just have different ways of doing or not doing things. It all comes down to opinion, but like i said... this thread has been very helpful to me, i really appreciate everyones comments and i am definitely going to be looking into getting a QT. I just feel like im digging too far into my wallet these days to lose everything over something i could have possibly prevented.

 

A QT does not guarantee a longer life for a fish. Most people don't even know the signs of internal parasites and are only looking for things such as velet, ich, and other visible ailments. All a QT really does is allow you to monitor a fish and treat fish if the need arises. This does keep other fish in your DT safer, but is still not a sure thing.

It is much harder for some to find space for a QT than some may think. "I'd put it on the counter". What if you have a small kitchen and need that space to cook? if you have pets that like to get in to trouble, you need to keep the tank out of reach. there goes just putting it on the floor in an open area. You need two tanks to QT fish and inverts. One for fish and one for corals. That way you can treat a fish if need be as well as QT any new corals. That is two more setups that you need to purchase and find space for. That is not an easy task. Not everyone has a garage, or large counter, or a pet safe area to put another tank.

If removing certain fish from the ocean was depleting the breeding population of a species to the point where there are less and less YOY each breeding season there would become a limit to how many can be taken as well as imported. if you are so worried about the environmental impact of removing fish from the ocean stop eating seafood, stop stocking your tank with wild caught fish, and don't buy any fish or pet food that has fish meal in it. More fish are caught to produce fish meal to feed meat eating fish in hatcheries than any other reason. The amount of fish removed each year is astronomical and has more of an effect on the ocean than removing some wild caught reef fish used to stock your aquarium. Your heart is in the right place, but I think you need to set your sites on something more detrimental to the environment.