A lot of known people dont QUARANTINE!!!

[ca1ore]

I did learn how to service my portable generator from a video on u-tube. Reefing videos mostly peddled crap by people who don’t know what they’re talking about.

 

[vtecintegra]

My analogy is like wearing a sea belt. You might go a long time not doing it, and nothing happens. But the day it does, it just might be catastrophic. I've stopped brook, uronema, and ich at the quarantine tank, saving my DT fish from possible death. Heck, I was just at a LFS and counted six tanks with dead fish. Watched a gramma and coral beauty die while I was shopping. Definitely some bad going on in their system. I wonder how many bought fish out of those tanks today, and dumped them in their DT. Me, I walked out empty handed even with a strict quarantine process. It's all about your acceptable level of risk.

 

[hds4216]

I don’t qt anything and haven’t in the 15 years in this hobby.

But don't you also have like a vendetta against qt for some reason?

 

[ariellemermaid]

Just one year into the hobby and a handful of fish and I’ve already found flukes that killed 3 fish in QT. It’s a huge headache and a lot of extra work to QT, but I don’t see any other way. As above, it’s like a seatbelt or condoms for that matter. Others might get lucky for a long time, you just haven’t seen the video yet where they got burned.

The bigger question for me is about QT of corals and inverts if they come from non-fish systems. The risk is still there and you don’t know where they came from before the seller got them. It might be overkill, but for me I’m not going to risk all the time and effort I spent doing QT just to take the risk of it all being for naught.

 

[Timfish]

9 out of 10 lifetime smokers never get lung cancer, that's not proof that smoking is ok. Over the years I've seen ich inadvertantly introduced and then disappear in reefs with lots of corals, presumably between fish building an resistance to paraasites, cryptic sponges, biofilms trapping the larva and corals actively feeding and removing larva from the water, a healthy reef system is able to break the life cycle of some parasites or at least keep it at a sub clinical level. I've also seen beautiful reefs decimated because an unquarintined animal introduced a parasite that quickly overwhelmed and killed the established fish. One thing you need to keep in mind is there almost certainly are tank adapted variants and some are more virulent than others (like the aquarium adapted calurpa taking over the Mediteranian). I've been maintaining reef systems for decades and I'm definitely in the quarintine camp based on the uneccessary losses I've seen.

As far as the notion "ich Maintenance" that seems to me like saying a fleas or ticks are ok to leave on dogs and cats. If there are parasites in a system not taking steps to erradicate it as the same as leaving ticks and fleas on our pets.

 

[jmichaelh7]

I did a quarantine with cupramine and 6 months later the blue hippo developed ich during a stress moment. Was the 90 days a waste of time ? It’s really up to you

 

[ca1ore]

One thing you need to keep in mind is there almost certainly are tank adapted variants and some are more virulent than others.

I have been occasionally making this argument for many years as a way to, perhaps, explain why some folks are successful with ich management and others not. No way to prove it unfortunately, but it does make observational sense to me. Excellent post, BTW.

 

[WVNed]

My analogy is like wearing a sea belt. You might go a long time not doing it, and nothing happens. But the day it does, it just might be catastrophic. I've stopped brook, uronema, and ich at the quarantine tank, saving my DT fish from possible death. Heck, I was just at a LFS and counted six tanks with dead fish. Watched a gramma and coral beauty die while I was shopping. Definitely some bad going on in their system. I wonder how many bought fish out of those tanks today, and dumped them in their DT. Me, I walked out empty handed even with a strict quarantine process. It's all about your acceptable level of risk.

A very good analogy
There are people that ride these things too

We are called organ donors but I still have all mine.
It's not luck. It's skill.
Skill reduces the level of risk until it is acceptable. There will always be some risk. You have to just live with that.
Or never do anything and hide in a hole forever. But holes cave in.

 

[Timfish]

I have been occasionally making this argument for many years as a way to, perhaps, explain why some folks are successful with ich management and others not. No way to prove it unfortunately, but it does make observational sense to me. Excellent post, BTW.

Thank you! It seems to me a reasonable and the most plausable explanation for what I've seen but you are correct we do need further study to verify or disprove it. When I started my maintenance business back in the dark ages getting ick in a system was the kiss of death and often I'd see or hear about entire systems being wiped out. It's rare I hear that happening now.

 

[lynn.reef.nerd]

Hello guys I am so so so confused. Should i quarantine or not? A lot of “famous” people on youtube like reef dork, inappropriate reefer, and fish of hex dont quarantine their fish and they have proof of how successful their reef tanks are.

Based on my experience I am an advocate of 1-4 months of quarantining your fish, because i have personally lost thousands and thousands of dollars after not quarantining before on my Fowlr and my nano reef years back.

Now once again I am seeing a lot of people not quarantining fish. I just started my new aquarium and I heard before that I should quarantine before putting it on my DT but what if there are 0 live stocks in there other than a quarantined sps and CUC.

I am pro-QT, but I don't think your information regarding these entertainers are true. For one, Fish of Hex is HUGE regarding QT. He even QT his corals.

Also, YT is entertainment.

Some are there to entertain (i.e. Inappropriate Reefer). He has never advocated his videos as educational. It is a documentary on his experience as a reefer.

Fish of Hex is more informational and showcase his methods and opinion to which you should take into consideration. Never has he said his way is the "right" way or the "only" way.

I am not familiar with Reef Dork so I cannot comment.

At the end of the day, use your judgement when it comes to any type of information.

 

[Bars]

I'm a big fan of PaulB's method of not quarantining and providing your fish a healthy, varied diet of fresh/live/frozen foods. I've never quarantined a single fish and ever since I feed them a quality diet (no flakes or pellets at all), I haven't lost a single fish due to disease. ''Fun'' fact: when I fed mainly ''good quality'' pellets and flakes, a bunch of my fish were constantly sick and struggling and eventually died.

Now my fish are fat, active and look great. One of my flasher wrasses had ich a few months ago after a small rescape of the tank. Within a few days the ich was gone and that fish is doing just fine. A month and a half ago I bought a wrasse from a tank with a not too healthy looking fish in there as well. Again, no quarantine. That wrasse is doing fantastic and it hasn't caused any sort of disease in my tank either.

It actually surprised me how strict most people are about quarantining on here. I don't know of anyone in my country that quarantines their fish and those are serious reefers with impressive tanks and fish.

 

[kenchilada]

Velvet came in on a swallowtail angel. Because of quarantine and lots of help from humblefish, I was able to treat and save a swallowtail and a filefish, and prevented velvet from entering my display.

I’ve also treated flukes, intestinal worms, bacterial infections, ammonia burn, and conditioned many weak fish in quarantine.

I know there are successful reefers that claim parasites should be present in our tanks as they are in nature, but I do not find any sense in that.

In the past I have not quarantined, because I didn’t have space, I was too busy, it is expensive, fish were cheaper, and I had smaller tanks. Those are poor excuses.

 

[kenchilada]

I'm a big fan of PaulB's method of not quarantining and providing your fish a healthy, varied diet of fresh/live/frozen foods. I've never quarantined a single fish and ever since I feed them a quality diet (no flakes or pellets at all), I haven't lost a single fish due to disease.

You can still feed quarantined fish a quality diet.

 

[PupChow]

Inappropriate Reefer here - I don't have a QT set up, I buy my more sensitive fish from LFS that already QTed & conditioned them, and if there is an option to buy a QT vs. non-QT fish, I'd gladly opt for the former for a bit more. For fish that did not come QTed, I have been using Safety Stops dip on fish that are OK to use them on, it is not QT but to me it is better than nothing.

I have not had any bad encounter with fish disease in any of my systems up to this point, maybe my view would change down the road. Regardless, if you are on the fence and have the ability to set up a QT system, it would only help and there is no reason not to go for it, unless you are dealing with certain species that have a better chance going straight into the DT and you are comfortable with the risk associated?

I call my channel the "Inappropriate Reefer" for a reason, it is mostly to document my own journey as a hobbyist, who, like most hobbyists, may not always follow the best-practices when no one is looking (except I share mine). There are things I know I do/did that are questionable (namely, I used to use tap water for my tanks for years -- worked, but I learned that there are better ways; I also had a 65g tank with no sump, no skimmer, no media... also worked, but water changes sucked... etc). You are smarter than me, do what you think is appropriate to your situation and choose your source of information wisely.

 

[Bars]

You can still feed quarantined fish a quality diet.

I'm not saying you can't

 

[Lemon]

I don't qt for my freshwater tanks (well I observe them for a week and if nothing is wrong I add them) because they are established and if a fish wanted to they could hide for months (its almost like I designed my planted tank like @Paul B reef) but it sounds like with saltwater there are more territorial and aggressive fish (I only keep schooling fish currently so almost no aggression) so I would run a qt tank for saltwater or buy from a trusted source and I add the aggressive fish last

The Other Way to Run a Reef Tank (no Quarantine)

I responded here: https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/quarantine-poll.808134/ Post #36 I have thought a lot about the background of a person who is an employee in a public aquarium. I put myself in their shoes best I could, and I have discovered something very important. Perhaps this is why we...

www.reef2reef.com

 

[jarviz]

I don't quarantine anything... because i live in a small apt with no space for a QT tank. but i also only have a 10gal. I like to think of quarantining as basically buying insurance. It's useless and a waste of money, until you need it, then you're super glad that you have it.

 

[blasterman]

I don't qt for my freshwater tanks

Virtually all FW fish come from large, captive breeding facilities where they carefully null out disease prone fish and essentially everything is quarantined.

With rare exception SW fish come from the wild....where I wish they would stay.

 

[Lowell Lemon]

I would like to encourage you to read about the Tanji system used at Monterey Bay Aquarium. The link is listed in this thread. You will notice the proper use of U.V. and the article does not mention any prophylactic treatment of the fish...they may, it is just not mentioned and would not play well with their bioreactor filtration design. The systems I designed for my customers follows the same path and those stores experienced less than 3% loss rates. I would strongly recommend this type of QT system if you can afford it instead of the cross your fingers and hope chemotherapy does not kill your fish during or after treatment. The shotgun approach of trying to kill any and all possible disease vectors is in practice very detrimental to the long term health of the fish. I killed way more fish with this approach and much higher loss rates than with proper holding system design. So you could say I advance QT in a proper holding system versus prophylactic chemical means. You can accommodate this just by using proper U.V. on your display system.

 

[ca1ore]

As far as the notion "ich Maintenance" that seems to me like saying a fleas or ticks are ok to leave on dogs and cats. If there are parasites in a system not taking steps to eradicate it as the same as leaving ticks and fleas on our pets.

LOL .... though if I had to fallow my entire house to rid my dog of fleas, I might choose 'flea management'