shipping fish and/or QT vendors: always some issues?

[zalick]

First - please do not post if you don’t have experience with ordering fish online or from a QT vendor. I don’t want this to devolve in to the anti-QT crowd preaching virtues of no QT and immune systems.

I ordered some fish online for the first time ever and from a reputable QT vendor. The fish went through a humble fish protocol and were apparently shipped “looking great”. They arrived at my door in less than 24hrs. My decision to go with a QT vendor was because I haven’t added any fish in 5 years and didn’t want to put my current fish at any risk since the oldest is 12.

4 of the 7 fish had moderate fin damage. 2 of those fish looked rough with one looking terrible. The other 3 fish looked great.

this vendor came highly recommended and I do not believe they were lying about the fish looking great. But who knows these days.

in 25 yrs I’ve only bought fish from my LFS after observation. The 4 fish with fin damage I would not have purchased in the store based upon sight.

after 2 days, 2 of the fish with fin damage look much better and are eating well. A pintail and McCoskers . The clown never went in the DT because it looked so bad and went straight to hospital tank. It likely had major eye damage and bacterial infection.

the mandarin looked fat in the bag. It looked stressed with some fin damage but color and everything else was good. Once in the DT it went straight to the bottom and stayed in one spot breathing heavy but not rapid. Other than fin damage no other signs of issues. This morning it was in rigor.

is this type of stress/fin damage to be expected when having fish shipped?

Is this type of fin damage/discoloration part of the side effects from a full QT and to be expected?

I’m pretty disheartened with the process (shipping preQT fish) and will likely go back to buying healthy appearing fish from my LFS, observing in isolation tank and treating as needed.

the vendor was great and will refund for the bad fish. This is not meant to be a knock on them at all.

 

[Jay Hemdal]

I've already weighed on on the other thread, but that is great that the vendor stepped up to cover the issues, even local LFS often won't do that.

I always quarantine new fish to my own standards, even if they came from another public aquarium.

Here is the story I always tell: I had another public aquarium get 100 midas cichlids from a colony that I had managed at our facility. These were multiple generations of cichlids I had for about a decade. A few months later, the curator at the other facility comments; you know Jay, those Midas cichlids you sent me had gill flukes and infected all of my other fish in the system I put them in. I said, there is no way it was our fish, they are fine. He maintained it was our fish that was the source. In defense, I did a gill biopsy on one of ours - sure enough, gill flukes! Our cichlids were asymptomatic, but when moved to a new system, the disease overran them and spread to his other fish.

The takeaway from this is: seemingly healthy fish can of course carry disease, and if the other aquarium had fully quarantined our cichlids, they wouldn't have had any issues.

Jay

 

[zalick]

Thanks @Jay Hemdal Is this type of stress to be expected from a fully medicated QT or from shipping? I’ve been pretty lucky in that I’ve only ever had to treat for flukes and nothing else.

 

[Timfish]

I QT my fish and I expect them to be in really good shape when done with QT, good body weight, no torn fins, no apparent blemishes, no cloudy eyes or fins. Over the years I've had similar problems as mentioned by @Jay Hemdal and unintentionally transferred exteranal parasites on fish moved from established systems. I've seen what I guess would be considered subclinical infestations in systems that went undetected for months or years.

 

[zalick]

I QT my fish and I expect them to be in really good shape when done with QT, good body weight, no torn fins, no apparent blemishes, no cloudy eyes or fins. Over the years I've had similar problems as mentioned by @Jay Hemdal and unintentionally transferred exteranal parasites on fish moved from established systems. I've seen what I guess would be considered subclinical infestations in systems that went undetected for months or years.

Thanks for the info. Some of the discoloration and damage seems unlikely from shipping alone. But maybe?

My wife is a vet and sees suffering dying animals daily. She doesn’t want to come home to it as well....

 

[Jay Hemdal]

Thanks @Jay Hemdal Is this type of stress to be expected from a fully medicated QT or from shipping? I’ve been pretty lucky in that I’ve only ever had to treat for flukes and nothing else.

A full medicated quarantine is stressful, but parasites are reduced at the same time, so by the end, the fish are in pretty good shape. Shipping is stressful, but since there is no prophylactic treatment at that time, diseases have more of a chance to manifest.
Jay