Quarantine to transfer fish?

[jdbot]

Hello everyone!

Seeking your collective wisdom here. I've been building up a new tank since last year (October), which I've been gradually populating with new fish that have all been quarantined (following the protocol outlined by @Jay Hemdal ).

I have another, well-established tank, with 2 clownfish that I would like to transfer to the new tank at some point. Wondering if folks would quarantine these clownfish before transferring? One of the clownfish has been on that tank for 4 years, the other for 1.2 years. I never quarantined fish with medicine before. Only observation. Never lost livestock, except for a mistake I made dosing bacteria once (without further oxygenating the water--yeah, I know), which took out every single fish and shrimp I had on that tank, except for the one surviving clownfish, and hence the more recent addition. Can't guarantee the tank is clean, but no issues or apparent disease throughout the tank's lifecycle.

Thoughts? Would you quarantine the fish before transferring to the new tank? Thanks!

 

[EeyoreIsMySpiritAnimal]

Hello everyone!

Seeking your collective wisdom here. I've been building up a new tank since last year (October), which I've been gradually populating with new fish that has all been quarantined (following the protocol outlined by @Jay Hemdal ).

I have another, well-established tank, with 2 clownfish that I would like to transfer to the new tank at some point. Wondering if folks would quarantine these clownfish before transferring? One of the clownfish has been on that tank for 4 years, the other for 1.2 years. I never quarantined fish with medicine before. Only observation. Never lost livestock, except for a mistake I made dosing bacteria once (without further oxygenating the water--yeah, I know), which took out every single fish and shrimp I had on that tank, except for the one surviving clownfish, and hence the more recent addition. Can't guarantee the tank is clean, but no issues or apparent disease throughout the tank's lifecycle.

Thoughts? Would you quarantine the fish before transferring to the new tank? Thanks!

Are you asking if you should medicate the clowns? Because you have essentially been quarantining the clowns for as long as they have been separated from the rest of your fish...

 

[HankstankXXL750]

Hello everyone!

Seeking your collective wisdom here. I've been building up a new tank since last year (October), which I've been gradually populating with new fish that has all been quarantined (following the protocol outlined by @Jay Hemdal ).

I have another, well-established tank, with 2 clownfish that I would like to transfer to the new tank at some point. Wondering if folks would quarantine these clownfish before transferring? One of the clownfish has been on that tank for 4 years, the other for 1.2 years. I never quarantined fish with medicine before. Only observation. Never lost livestock, except for a mistake I made dosing bacteria once (without further oxygenating the water--yeah, I know), which took out every single fish and shrimp I had on that tank, except for the one surviving clownfish, and hence the more recent addition. Can't guarantee the tank is clean, but no issues or apparent disease throughout the tank's lifecycle.

Thoughts? Would you quarantine the fish before transferring to the new tank? Thanks!

The only good answers here are to Quarantine or TTM. Either will provide you a clean fish to transfer. TTM is more work, some say stresses the fish, but I don’t think it is that bad if you have temp and salinity matched.

As you have run the QT protocol, you are probably comfortable with it so probably ought to go that way.

Just moving them because they haven’t broken out with something, although I would “think it’s safe” is IMO too much of a risk. New tank all WT’d then take a short cut and end up with ich or velvet.

Don’t think it is worth the risk.

 

[Jay Hemdal]

Hello everyone!

Seeking your collective wisdom here. I've been building up a new tank since last year (October), which I've been gradually populating with new fish that has all been quarantined (following the protocol outlined by @Jay Hemdal ).

I have another, well-established tank, with 2 clownfish that I would like to transfer to the new tank at some point. Wondering if folks would quarantine these clownfish before transferring? One of the clownfish has been on that tank for 4 years, the other for 1.2 years. I never quarantined fish with medicine before. Only observation. Never lost livestock, except for a mistake I made dosing bacteria once (without further oxygenating the water--yeah, I know), which took out every single fish and shrimp I had on that tank, except for the one surviving clownfish, and hence the more recent addition. Can't guarantee the tank is clean, but no issues or apparent disease throughout the tank's lifecycle.

Thoughts? Would you quarantine the fish before transferring to the new tank? Thanks!

The risk is pretty small that those 2 clownfish would bring an infective disease into your other tank - as long as you haven't added any new animals to it from a third tank recently.

How far apart are these two tanks physically? If near each other, it may not matter at all as exposure may have already occurred.

That said, moving and/or combining clownfish always has some risk of them fighting with each other or the new fish.

Jay

 

[jdbot]

Are you asking if you should medicate the clowns? Because you have essentially been quarantining the clowns for as long as they have been separated from the rest of your fish...

Thank you. Yes. That's what I was asking.

 

[jdbot]

The risk is pretty small that those 2 clownfish would bring an infective disease into your other tank - as long as you haven't added any new animals to it from a third tank recently.

How far apart are these two tanks physically? If near each other, it may not matter at all as exposure may have already occurred.

That said, moving and/or combining clownfish always has some risk of them fighting with each other or the new fish.

Jay

Thank you, Jay, and everyone, for your thoughts on this.

I haven't added any animals into that tank for about a year now (since the last clownfish). The tanks are in different rooms/areas (about 15-20 ft apart).

Glad to hear this may be lower risk than I thought. I was thinking more along the lines of @HankstankXXXL750 on this.

+1 on the risk of fighting with themselves (already tricky at times) or others. I'm planning on building an isolation box (full tank height acclimation box) in the new tank to get everyone familiar with each other for a couple of weeks to hopefully mitigate this. Will report back and update the thread once all is done.