When to quarantine?

[JCAB]

If you buy a fish from an lfs that has had the fish for a week or two with no issues, do you still need to quarantine it when you get it home? I can see the value of putting in quarantine fish that have recently just gone through shipping stress, but wasn't sure if there was any in this situation (I.e., does the lfs having it for a few weeks serve the same purpose as a quarantine tank?).

[Planeden]

I think it is really personal preference. But:

School of thought 1. What if the fish next to yours had the sniffles. Yours old be infected and not show signs.

School f thought 2. It's a lot of stress on the fish to be shipped, sit in the store, go home to QT, sit for a few weeks, then move to the new home. And some fish only do well in established tanks, so if QT is not set up it may hurt the fish.

My thought would be...if you QT your fish, QT all of them. If you don't, then don't unless it seems sick. Of ourselves, if it seemed sick you probably wouldn't buy it.

[+o0zarkawater]

Ive never quarantined and up until recently never had an issue.

Luckily it was in the short term a small issue, but long term I introduced Ich into my tank.

I purchased a large Horseface blenny from one of the LFS and tossed him in the tank as I normally do. About 3 weeks later my sailfin tang broke out in ich. I've had the sailfin for over 3 years and never seen a spot of ich on anyone in my tank, so I know it came in on the blenny. I fed heavy for a few days and he got over it, but I know that I now have ich in my system.

However.... I do religiously dip all my corals. Even if moving from one of my tanks to another.

GO figure.

[Sascha D.]

The main reason to quarantine isn't because you are worried about the new fish, it's because you're trying to protect your current pets. Our aquariums are closed systems. Everything in the biome has gotten there because we have introduced it one way or another. Wild caught fish carry internal parasites and bacteria due to their feeding habits. When you bring them home and don't quarantine, then you add those critters to your system and they infect your currect stock.

If you buy a new fish or frag and it "looks" okay, bring it home and put it directly into your tank then you're taking a gamble that you're not introducing anything foreign to your closed system. For example, you trade frags with a friend on ARC. He has red bugs, you didn't quarantine, and now you have red bugs. Now you have to take every coral out of your tank and dip it, put them back, and hope you got them all.

In the end, it is less work and less headache to do it the first time.

[jestep]

Best practice is to QT everything for about 6 weeks. This will allow you to rule out almost any disease, specifically ones that have a dormant period.

However, if you don't have an adequate and existing QT setup, or at the very least pre-seeded filtration, you're often dooming a healthy new fish by trying to hack a QT together in a hurry. Stress allows for opportunistic infections and pathogens that would not normally occur if the fish was in a comfortable environment.

If you can do it right, do it every time. If not, be obsessively picky when purchasing a new fish.

[RobR]

Here is my 2 cents on this topic. If you have the means to quarantine, then do it IMHO it is well worth the effort.

Even if a fish shop has a fish for a few weeks and it appears to be healthy does not mean it is. The life cycle of Ich for instance can be many weeks and a fish may not show signs of the disease in that two-three week period that it stays at the LFS. The fish will most likely be stressed again once you purchase him and move him from the LFS to your tank. I had an experience where one small (appartanly healthy) fish infected my entire tank. I lost the infected fish plus three of my existing fish. Now I QT everything, and have not had any problems since. IME QT is well worth the trouble, and I would recommend that if you have the means to set up a QT you should before adding all new fish.

[Timfish]

Always. Just with "Ich" there are variants, some very virulent and can take out a lot of fish quickly, some variants seem to have rather prolonged reproduction cycles and seem to be very difficult to eradicate. Brooklynella is anther parasite and is considered a debilatating parasite so it primarily attacks stressed out fish, which will happen with any fish added whether it's been through QT or not. Although fairly uncommon there are parasites like Uronema marinum that are not obligate parasites like "ich" and can live even if all the fish have been removed. Here's a link describing the life cycle of "ich":

http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/fa164

Here's a thread that discusses QT systems:

http://www.austinreefclub.com/topic/19819-setting-up-a-quarantine-tank/?hl=ich+quarantine

[Planeden]

Best practice is to QT everything for about 6 weeks.

Six weeks?!? i'm getting antsy doing it for a month and seeing my main tank mostly nekid.

t-minus 5 days.

edit - sorry this is supposed to be a joke, not an attempt to hijak this thread with quarentine times.