How Long In Quarantine

[SherriSixxx]

Hi all! Hope you can help me. How long do I need to keep new fish in quarantine for, before putting them together with other's in the main tank? Which is the most time it may take an illness to show?

 

[bogwood]

imo, about 10 days...

 

[cujoho78]

Hi. For my last batch in the quarantine tank i left them for about 2 weeks. Leave them as long as you can stand it. If they are looking good after the first week then chances are good that they are healthy.

 

[FBF]

Hi. For my last batch in the quarantine tank i left them for about 2 weeks. Leave them as long as you can stand it. If they are looking good after the first week then chances are good that they are healthy.

yeah id say 10-14 days is ideal. im a bad man and dont quarantine my fish anymore (i dont advise this but id rather use the tank) but i used to treat the quarantine tank with an anti internal parasite treatment which was a safety barrier incase, if you also use the same tank as a hospital tank it wont do any harm. even if you use a smaller dose than suggested

 

[Tolak]

Fish from people I know get quared for 2 weeks. Fish from an unknown source, such as an auction, get 4 weeks.

 

[Bignose]

...but i used to treat the quarantine tank with an anti internal parasite treatment which was a safety barrier incase, if you also use the same tank as a hospital tank it wont do any harm. even if you use a smaller dose than suggested

It is almost always a poor idea to prophylactically medicate if the fish is not showing any symptoms at all. It is especially a poor idea to use a "smaller dose than suggeted." All you really accomplish is to selectively breed parasites that are immune to the medicine. Then when you may actually need to use the medicine those parasites will not respond to it. The smaller dose is especially good at letting some of the more-resistant strains survive.

This is the whole purpose of quaratine in the first place, is to observe the fish carefully and then treat only what you have diagnosed.

If I may digress a little here, I can give you a very serious example of a problem over-medication has caused. The casual use of anti-bacterials by doctors and even in your hand soap has led to some incredibly resistant strains of bacteria. Most of these strains are pretty harmless bacteria, but somewhere along the line the flesh-eating bacteria, staph, became resistant. There are more and more cases each year of patients becoming infected with this super-staph that really is uncurable. Yes, medicating your fish is not exactly the same as staph, but the priciple is the same: By casual mediation, you kill off everything but the resistant strains, then that strain grows and then if it becomes a problem, now the entire population is resistant to the medicine you used before. There are some medication-resistant strains if ich going around, if you need another example. Most medications that we apply to our fishtanks don't kill 100%, but they may kill a significant portion, or maybe not even kill but stop the growth of the infection. The point is that the medication gives the fish's immune system a chance to catch up and overfully overtake the problem in the first place.