Preventive fallow?

[Lowlandreef]

Recently I setup my first QT for an injured fish. This was also partially because I bought a new fish who was sick and died in my tank. Just to be sure I wanted to have a QT running so I could treat any fish that might have got infected. As you probably already can tell I never quarantined my fish. The reason for this is that I buy all my fish pre-quarantined. Unfortunately a sick fish slipped through recently and from now on I will quarantine all my new additions. I will probably try to observe for 2 weeks and only treat if necessary.

My question is if I should go fallow to prevent any possible future outbreaks? I do see white spots on my tomini tang from time to time, but they always disappear in 1 or 2 days. I feed all my fish very well and they are very fat and healthy. If there are any parasites/diseases in my tank, their immune systems are probably good enough to fight it off (for now).

I do lean towards going fallow, just to have a clean start. But I'm kinda nervous about using copper. Worst case scenario I would overdose copper and kill all my fish. Where I live (Netherlands), I can only get cupramine. I saw the advised dose is 0,5 mg/l and the toxic range is 0,8 mg/l, but some people stating 0,6 mg/l was already toxic for their fish. This sounds like a small error margin to me.

For so far all my rambling and thoughts haha. Does anyone have good advise for me?

 

[Fish Think Pink]

Recently I setup my first QT for an injured fish. This was also partially because I bought a new fish who was sick and died in my tank. Just to be sure I wanted to have a QT running so I could treat any fish that might have got infected. As you probably already can tell I never quarantined my fish. The reason for this is that I buy all my fish pre-quarantined. Unfortunately a sick fish slipped through recently and from now on I will quarantine all my new additions. I will probably try to observe for 2 weeks and only treat if necessary.

My question is if I should go fallow to prevent any possible future outbreaks? I do see white spots on my tomini tang from time to time, but they always disappear in 1 or 2 days. I feed all my fish very well and they are very fat and healthy. If there are any parasites/diseases in my tank, their immune systems are probably good enough to fight it off (for now).

I do lean towards going fallow, just to have a clean start. But I'm kinda nervous about using copper. Worst case scenario I would overdose copper and kill all my fish. Where I live (Netherlands), I can only get cupramine. I saw the advised dose is 0,5 mg/l and the toxic range is 0,8 mg/l, but some people stating 0,6 mg/l was already toxic for their fish. This sounds like a small error margin to me.

For so far all my rambling and thoughts haha. Does anyone have good advise for me?

I'm sorry for your loss.

fallow and using copper are two different things. I wouldn't put copper in your main tank because then you might have main tank copper always interfering with inverts going forward.

If you aren't going with a super regimented QT/HT (when needed, hospital tank), then I don't see the point in taking all your fish out for couple months to go fallow in main tank, esp if you aren't sure what is in there (would guess marine ich, based on description). Things happen. Healthy fish can live with ich, if it is already in your main tank (its in mine). I still feel better doing observation QT and getting my newest fish from TSM Aquatics that handles all medication hospital treatments in advance of shipping (don't think you can use them being in Netherlands; sorry).

However, if you just need peace of mind with doing fallow, then do it. Its your tank.

"start where you are, use what you have, do what you can" - Arthur Ashe, tennis player

 

[Lowlandreef]

I'm sorry for your loss.

fallow and using copper are two different things. I wouldn't put copper in your main tank because then you might have main tank copper always interfering with inverts going forward.

If you aren't going with a super regimented QT/HT (when needed, hospital tank), then I don't see the point in taking all your fish out for couple months to go fallow in main tank, esp if you aren't sure what is in there (would guess marine ich, based on description). Things happen. Healthy fish can live with ich, if it is already in your main tank (its in mine). I still feel better doing observation QT and getting my newest fish from TSM Aquatics that handles all medication hospital treatments in advance of shipping (don't think you can use them being in Netherlands; sorry).

However, if you just need peace of mind with doing fallow, then do it. Its your tank.

"start where you are, use what you have, do what you can" - Arthur Ashe, tennis player

Sorry I wasn't clear. I meant to move the fish to my QT to give them a copper treatment, and meanwhile go fallow in my DT. Since going fallow and not treating the fish will probably just bring any potential parasites back.
I'm planning on making it an observation tank. If needed and possible I would like to treat fish in the future, but medicines like in the US aren't really available here unfortunately. So all the QT protocols I read here, are difficult for me to do.

Basically my dilemma is if it's worth it to go fallow and treat all my healthy fish preventively. Since I don't have experience on using copper, I also kinda wonder how hard it is to do? If don't want to risk killing all my fish...