Are ppl not doing QT helping or not helping the fish keeping hobby?

[Gundy]

Do you HAVE to QT fish? Nope. Do you have to look before crossing the road? Nope. But judging from the number of Facebook posts I see every week about someone having a sick fish, it kinda seems like eventually your luck will run out. Are QT fish more expensive? Obviously! Our test kit a TSM Aquatics costs about $5,000 and reagents about $1,000/month. Do some of our imported fish come in clean? Yes. Do some come in with Ich, Velvet, Brook, etc... Yup and that's why we prophylactically treat upon delivery, observe, medicate and scrape. Sure, you can buy a fish a lot cheaper at Petco, but to that I will say cheap is not always cheap, but that's your call. Do some fish stores treat with copper? Yes, but do they have test kits that measure within a reliable margin of error of therapeutic levels? I doubt most do. just my 2 cents.

Very good points here. The issue I see is that disease can creep into our tanks from a variety of reasons. One can quarantine every fish perfectly and somehow still get disease and lose fish or a complete wipeout. I hear about this on this forum all the time. But realistically, people who never do any form of quarantine are bound to lose fish to disease at some point if being in the hobby Long enough. Yes some will get lucky. Perhaps if their tanks are fully stocked and never add fish they could be fine but those who are constantly adding fish or swapping out fish will be more at Risk.

Also, some species of fish are known to almost always ship poorly and infested with disease when it arrives to the shop or consumer. These fish seem fine but die shortly after being put into the display. Everyone should research each fish they purchase to identify these high risk fish. At the very least, an observation tank should be set up to observe for a short period of time. The only exception would be pre quarantined fish from the LFS or online store but even then there are some risks.