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Alternative to quarantine?


Dwayne Brown
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I started keeping fish 6 months ago and have never quarantined I buy fish from petco petsmart and my local fish store. However I take precautions. Like only buying healthy looking active fish in tanks with no sick fish. I also always  add aquarium salt whenever i do a water change and I have started running the uv filter for a few days whenever i add new fish. So my question is is this a viable alternative to quarantining? I know it wont help with any internal parasites. Have I just been lucky? Any thoughts or advice associated.

 

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No and Petco and Petsmart don't quarantine either. They throw methylene blue in and call it a day. With a U.V filter depending on your flow rate if you keep it on all the time usually you will kill any bacteria or fungus but parasites in their juvenile state tend to linger in the substrate thus you will still have problems with ich and helminths (parasitic worms).

 

When I worked at one of the chain stores I would at least look at the fish prior to addition to make sure there was no infections. I commonly saw ich and columnaris, sometimes fungal and bacterial fin rot. I doubt most associates know to do this though.

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I was never a quarantine person until it happened to me. The naked eye can only see so much. You may have been lucky til this point, but it’s just a matter of time before something pops up. I’ve been seriously into aquariums for about 6 years or so and had my first incident just this year. After losing a ton of money in fish (which came from an extremely high quality source), it became time to quarantine everything before things spread. I had to medicate and quarantine everything in their aquariums. This isn’t ideal because ich-x will turn your silicone blue. It’s much easier to set up a 20 gallon ($1 per gallon sale), and use it to quarantine everything. Also keep in mind that different fish have different levels of hardiness. For example, an Oscar may never get sick without quarantine, however those CPD’s or Fancy Goldfish are a completely different story. Unfortunately there is no way around this. If there was, no one would quarantine. Good luck to you. 

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7 hours ago, Biotope Biologist said:

Just something to be aware of. Not all of us can afford the space for a quarantine tank or have the luxury of a LFS that actually quarantines upon arrival. 

I feel very fourtante that my lfs quarintines their fish, I've never had a sick fish from them. I almost feel like I dont need to QT from them, but I usually do. Just maybe not so long.

I still quarintine all my fish (well, at least try  to). You have to keep in mind that the health of their livestock varies from place to place. I've been to PetSmarts where their fish look healthier then most of the fish stores in my area,  They even kept their bettas just like the co-op (same racks) and I beleive quarintines. Where as I've been to other stores where its fish death everywhere. 

If you have the space/ money to get a QT tank, its better to be safer then sorry. @Maggie linked a great video for a cheap, easy and space effective way to QT fish. 

The great thing about petsmart too (well at least the ones in my area) have a two week waranity on all livestock.

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One other option would kind of depend on your final tank--you could just dose the whole thing when you pretty much have it "set," especially if your main concern is parasites.  You may actually end up using LESS medication this way since you could do all the fish at once instead of having to run batches through quarantine as they come in.  I've had not issues with Ich-X turning silicone or anything else blue.

I think the practicality of this would probably depend on the total cost of your fish and size of the tank.

Edited by KaitieG
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