Do You Quarantine?

[FishFanatic04]

It's not hard to have a planted 10g for your qt, with a terracotta pot cave and some nice stem plants that are cheap and hardy and would live through a necessary medication.

 

[magpie]

Thanks for the input, everyone!

 

[Twinklecaz]

Magpie, that's one lovely looking tank you have there!

 

[magpie]

Thank you...

 

[CezzaXV]

I've seen evidence to suggest that to be 100% sure that a fish is disease free you need to quarantine it for a ridiculously long time. Nobody seems to know exactly how long. I have a plastic box I can set up as an emergency quarantine/fry tank, but if I had the space to have it set up for that length of time, I'd be using it for a display tank. Having it set up is an inconvenience to me due to space so I only set it up where strictly necessary.

 

[OldMan47]

You do not list my approach as a choice. I always start with an empty tank and add a single species from a single source. That means that I need never worry about the past history of fish that I add to my tank. If they have a disease problem, it is limited to their new tank. If they are healthy, there was no need for a QT. Once a tank has been set p and running for a few months, I do not hesitate to pass along fry to other hobbyists.

 

[snazy]

As far as I know fish can resist getting many types of diseases as long as they are not stressed and there is no problem with the water quality/flow/decoration,etc.. of the tank they are added to and they are acclimated in the best possible way. Some of the germs causing diseases are present in the water/or fish itself at all times and fish get sick only when a stressor is involved, for example: hexamita and columnaris.
Their immune system can even overcome a alot of diseases itself if the fish are healthy and cared for, same as humans fight off a disease without medication.
Also, fish develop immunity to certain types of diseases and germs after they have been subjected to it so it is quite possible that adding new fish kills your old ones or kills the new ones as they are not immune to the germs in your long established tank.
Fish can be carriers of germs without getting sick themselves. Until you add them to your community tank you won't know what they carry. Unless you medicate your quarantined fish regardless of whether they have signs of sickness or not, then quarantine may not make a difference.
And some diseases have a very long life cycle, for example camallanus worms may take up to 3 months to show any signs of disease and infect other fish.

So it is all good luck and prey for the best

 

[N0body Of The Goat]

About six weeks on, I still re-run the events in my head leading to my devastating 48x12x15 rapid Ich wipeout, where I lost all six young Synodontis decora I was growing on to join my older one; Lionhead Cichlid "dad" who was removed from their nursery after killing his biggest son (now know to be due to protecting a new batch of eggs); one Synodontis nigriventis and several Ilyodon xantusi fry (who may well have simply died because of the extreme full dose medication I had to dose to try and save as many fish as possible).

2 to 3 weeks before the devastation, I had moved "dad" over there and bought four more Synodontis nigriventris to add to what was a group of nine. Was "dad" still in a "semi-psychotic protective parent" state and causing major stress amonst the catfish? Did something come in with the new catfish? Did the new catfish create major stress in the group because of re-jigging the pecking order (one newcomer was the largest of the 13, another two were mid-size)?

I keep thinking about what if I had done things differently..

• "Dad" was moved to the 5x2x2 last time he cause trouble while raising young (beat up "mum" badly). Why did I not do the same this time round?
• I came really close to moving the six Synodontis decora down to the 5x2x2 to finally meet the ~18cm specimen weeks earlier, but then "chickened out" because one fo the decora might have been a bit too slender to mix with my four Leopard Bushfish.
• The four Synodontis nigriventris were the first fish I had bought for a while and not quarantined. If I could not isolate them for at least a few weeks, why did I buy them, giving into the temptation to add numbers at such a great price of <£8 for four?

 

[snazy]

@Nobody but the Goat

Which fish got the ich spots first, the new or the old ones? And how long after adding the new fish did it take for the ich to appear?

 

[N0body Of The Goat]

@Nobody but the Goat

Which fish got the ich spots first, the new or the old ones? And how long after adding the new fish did it take for the ich to appear?

The new bought fish (USD catfish) and new added fish ("dad") were added approximately 3 and 2 weeks respectively before I saw spots. It was the decora that I first saw covered "head to toe," because they had usually come out into the open, but then later that same day I noticed fewer spots on the reclusive USD catfish and even fewer on my outgoing Ilyodon. "Dad" never showed any spots at all, I fear he may have died of depleted oxygen levels as I increased the temp from 23 to 29C and/or water quality issues because of 8-12cm decora dying around him.

I still don't know what I will do with "mum", I'm torn between keeping her (knowing she is unlikely to bond again) or selling her with my 48 youngsters and the unbonded female. My other thought was to see if the unbonded female will bond with one of these teenage males.

 

[snazy]

It is very possible for ich to take 2-3 weeks after the fish being infected to appear as white spots on the skin. So perfectly healthy fish in the shop could be already diseased.

As for "dad" dying, actually ich can settle in the gills instead as well and not be visible so "dad" may have suffocated because of the parasite too. Was he heavy breathing looking before dying?
By the time you see spots on the fish the parasites have been "feeding off" the fish for a long time, depending on temperature as well it could be from a few days to weeks. Seeing you keep your fish at 23 degrees makes sense with the time frame of you seeing the spots.

Now, talking from experience as well, long before spots appear the fish already show signs of stress like flashing, hiding, rapid breathing, even loss of appetite and losing weight.
Have you noticed any of this before the spots. Fish may have been hiding not because of the new enviroment but there were sick already maybe?

And Ich is not a virus at the end of the day so healthy and not stressed fish should not get it even if exposed to it.

There is another type of "ich" looking like disease that is caused by tetrahymena instead which will cause a rapid wipe out as once fish are showing the spots it's too late as normally it had damaged their internal organs by then. This one could be resistant to salt and heat, some strains of ich are too.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

Yes it is possible for new fish to come in as a carrier of a disease to which they have resistance and which those in your tank do not.

This works between wild and TR fish often. The disease common in wach environment differ as do the resitances the fish may have built up.

For tank raised fish, they must have 30 consecutives days of no deaths or symptoms. For wild caught fish this should be between 2 and 3 months.

For either case should there be a death or any illness, the Q period restarts at 0 after proper treatment is completed and the problems is "cured".

I have some of the fish in my tanks for 10 years now, I am danged if I am going to kill them just to get something new into a tank faster. I have tanks with fish that cost a couple of hundred dollars each in them, I am danged if I let a new $5 fish make one of them sick or kill it.

Everybody does it their own way for their own reasons. But if you are able to use a Q tank, I never see a reason not to do so.

 

[alihar]

I don't normally quarantine and have not done so in 16 yrs without any problems until recently.
I do have a small 21 litre tank hospital tank that i could use for quarantine of smaller species.
I had a problem with my last addition to the main tank wich developed whitespot the day after purchase.
This has made me think twice about introducing new fish immediately to the main tank, however I had previously had an ich outbreak a few weeks prior after adding plants purchased on an Internet auction site wich could have contributed.
It is possible I hadn't completely got rid of the ich before adding a new fish rather than the new fish bringing it in.
Quarantine of plants would be an issue as the 21 litre doesn't have a light.
I normally rinse new plants in pp but on this occasion was a little lazy as I had given the pp to a friend to use.
In future I will try quarantine.