Rehabilitation - the most important reason for quarantining?

A freshwater rehabilitation performed by reddit user /u/ErrantWhimsy
This is his photo of Phoenix, one of six bettas ErrantWhimsy has rehabilitated.
Thank you for letting us use this photo. ©2019, All Rights Reserved.

Question to you, the reader:
Which fish would you rather put into your display tank? Day-1 Phoenix? Day-25 Phoenix? Day-80 Phoenix? Which do you think would have a better survival rate against competing inhabitants?

This photo illustrates the power of quarantine + rehabilitation.


So now what? Are you really gonna toss these two fish into your main display tank, are you? Absolutely not. That's an easy ride on the way to a shiny new dead display tank.

There are a few different approaches to quarantining fish:

1) No quarantine:

• Skipping any form of quarantine entirely, putting a severely weak fish into the fray for territory as soon as they get home.
• Very high chance to introduce diseases and parasites.
• Very high chance that the weak fish will not be able to compete against current tank mates for food, territory, or social hierarchy.

2) Quick observation period, halfway-committed quarantine: (4 weeks)

• Quarantining for a short period of time to observe the fish for disease until the ammonia levels get too high - so we hit the eject button and dump them into a main display. LOL - may or may not be speaking from personal experience with this one.

3) Expedited quarantine (4-5 weeks)

• Dosing medications immediately whether or not the fish shows any signs of disease and providing a completely sterile environment throughout a 4-5 week period. Enough time to fix some disease and pest problems, but not enough time for the fish to reach its full fighting potential.
• Still not the best chance of survival when introduced to tank mates than can be achieved.
• No guarantee of preventing disease or parasite transfer as most diseases take longer than 4-5 weeks to completely dissipate.

4) Attempting total parasite/disease elimination: (8 weeks)

• Dosing medications regardless of signs a few days after introducing the fish. Providing a completely sterile environment throughout an 8 week period. If the fish shows signs of disease, the quarantine period starts over - no exceptions
• A proven and tested method that works well at preventing disease transfer as much as possible.
• Sometimes enough time to let the fish gain strength, depending on how much medication was used and for how long.

But there is more to it than meets the eye.

By skipping either of the quarantine processes, or dosing medication immediately, one takes away the most beneficial part of quarantine: the opportunity to rehabilitate. An 8-week or longer quarantine is a necessary step of the acclimation process. Nothing increases a fish's chance of success in a main display more than the opportunity to be nursed from a stressed fish back to their full strength, before slowly acclimating them to find space in a tank with other fish; especially if a display consists of mostly aggressive species.

Here is where we split into two different types of thought, when compared to immediate medication and disease prevention, versus a low stress quarantine.

5) Low stress rehabilitation/quarantine (8-12 weeks)

• Aims to rehabilitate fish over a long 8-12 week period. Rather than providing a sterile and disease-free environment, this method prioritizes low stress techniques over absolute sterility.
• Using medications only when necessary, and definitely not right off the bat. Restarting the quarantine period to 8-12 weeks when major diseases or parasites are identified.
• Use of fully cycled, algae ridden live rock in the quarantine tank to reduce psychological stress, encourage natural dwelling behavior, and foraging behavior. Also to help balance ammonia and nitrite levels and supply a small population of pods and beneficial hitchhikers. You can even go as far as introducing sand, but this is not recommended, and probably not veeerry beneficial for a majority of free swimming livestock.
• 1-hour long drip acclimation into the bag the fish came in. Start by floating the rubber banded bag in the tank for 25 minutes. Afterward, use a syphon, or turkey baster to introduce small amounts of water incrementally every 10-15 minutes to the bag, while removing excess bag water as necessary to achieve total water replacement that matches all of your display tanks parameters.
• After drip acclimation, pour the entire contents of the bag directly in to the quarantine tank. No pouring the fish into a net, no pasta strainer... we want that fish's slime coat to be perfectly untouched.

The focus of this method is not on entirely 100% attempt to guarantee the complete elimination of all possible diseases and parasites right off the bat. Notice my redundancy and emphasizing 100%. I would say that 100% is actually impossible, leading to unexpected tank crashes when a sick fish or a small spot of ich accidentally makes it's way through a quarantine or on a coral and reaches a sterile display - hitting all the sparkly clean, never before exposed fish.

The real goal could be aimed at increasing fish strength as much as possible so that they can hold their own against existing fish and ward off low-risk diseases already present in the main display; however, notes about providing a stress free quarantine can be combined with an immediate medication, or total sterility practice to still reduce stress and remain sterile - so really everybody wins by reading this article

Since the focus is usually on medicating fish and preventing diseases or parasites from making it into a display tank 100%, we often forget that fish need to be pampered, delicately handled, and allowed time to recover from their long journey from the ocean, or in rare cases, an actual breeder. The journey from the ocean is a very stressful process that swings though many different temperatures, salt levels, and multiple, continuous exposures to ammonia. This journey can take up to six different shipping transfers of stressful transportation, especially to big box stores. At this point in the process, the fish is very likely to be at the weakest point it has ever been in its entire life. I would even go as far to say that there is even the potential at this point to permanently mute a fish's personality and cause psychological damage.

With a focus on disease prevention, and not rehabilitation, we forego necessary stress-reducing measures in favor of being as sterile as possible. This involves dumping fish into hard plastic pasta strainers or nets to remove bag water, handling them outside the tank to get a photo for disease id, (both of these damaging the protective slime coat of the fish) introducing copper as a protocol without any sight of potential diseases, and keeping them in a brightly lit bare, sparse and empty tank with no where to hide, or a few pieces of PVC.

What about a low stress quarantine? One that lasted 8-12 weeks? A quarantine process so gentle and luxurious that fish would think they're at the Ritz Carlton? Only using meds as a last resort? Would one be nuts for getting a few ounces of bag water into the QT tank instead of dumping them into a plastic pasta strainer? I don't think it would be too crazy.

If the fish are under as least stress as possible, if they don't receive more damage to their slime coat, then they should have a better chance at fighting disease and parasites before needing medical intervention. This is going to require sacrificing some live rock... to keep QT ammonia stable, to provide a more familiar environment to the quarantined fish, and also to grow diatoms and GHA to encourage natural feeding behavior.
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So let's have a live case study.

One clownfish, and one lawnmower blenny, straight from fish hell - ladies and gentlemen, and Petco rehabilitation.

Upon observing them at the pet store, both fish had ripped fins, and both were breathing heavily from ammonia poisoning. The blenny's tail fin was almost nonexistent (due to ammonia burn) but had no signs of disease. The maroon clown had a single spot of ich on his dorsal fin and shredded fins. Depending on who you ask, many people do not have the time to deal with sick and beaten up fish. I decided I could commit to them since they're affordable, I've been researching and looking for these two, and I've got spare time. If you do decide to pickup fish in this condition, keep in mind that it will take way more attention and care.

A typical response to this situation would be to dip them into a chemical dip or freshwater, toss them into a tank already medicated with copper and under hypo salinity, and throw in some PVC tubes, and that can work just fine. Others may wait a few days before adding medication, regardless of diseases being present. The goal being to create a completely sterile environment...

This study took a different approach focused solely on rehabilitation over the course of twelve weeks, together, in a 20G tall quarantine tank, 20lbs of healthy mature live rock with a GHA/Diatom population for the blenny, a few free swimming copepods, and no immediate medications. The pet store already keeps their fish in hypo-salinity and copper, so I brought salinity to 1.020. I will bring the salinity up over the course of the next four weeks to meet my display (1.025-1.026).

It took two weeks for the lawnmower blenny to not run for his life as soon as I entered the door. He would stick against the underside of the rock upside down as much as possible to hide, literally glued onto the rock--a survival tactic common among camouflaged blennys due to being stressed beyond the limits.

The clown was tank raised and very friendly after only a few days, but the blenny was much slower to adjust. The clown's spot of ich dropped off within an hour or two. When a more serious diseases or parasites arise and take hold, I planned on intervening with medication accordingly.

After three weeks, both fish were already showing their personality and swimming around again. I continued the process to a full 8 weeks, where by that time, both fish were happily grazing on the developed quarantine's ecosystem. Both fish were fully finned out, appeared to have strong slime coats, strong grazing behavior, strong eating behavior, no flight at the sight of sudden movements or even tapping on the glass, low stress, and therefore strong immune systems,

I wouldn't recommend this process if the fish you purchase is severely ill, is covered in parasites, or if you are dealing with disease-sensitive fish. In that case, I would most likely perform a dip and administer medication at the start of QT. But in my case, I saw very limited possibility for disease overtaking these two hardy marine creatures and decided to try a low-stress quarantine.

This low-stress process still entirely prevents diseases and parasites from hitchhiking into the main display after 8-12 weeks with no signs of disease or parasites, and the rock used in the quarantine should probably not be moved to the display; however, my tank strategy in general is to reduce fish stress as much as possible so that they have a better immune system that can fight diseases if and when disease or parasites surprisingly find their way into my display - not to mention that they'll be strong enough to take on my damsels for social hierarchy and compete for food against the others

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Author Profile: @Fish_Sticks

With a decade of experience keeping small ponds, arrays of juvenile wild caught freshwater species, freshwater planted aquariums, and reefs, my goal is to spark interesting and productive discussions in hopes that we each learn something new. In addition to patience, getting involved in discussions is the best way to find success with your reef!

Thank you all for reading this article and contributing to the discussions. For more interesting stuff, check out my build thread and see how I run a low cost 210 gallon reef ;Greedy;Greedy;Greedy:
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