Test kits

fl3xlinton · Nov 12, 2019

T

brandon429 said:
The issue with marine fish is it doesn't work like freshwater.

Gotta read for one hour in the fish forum, sticky threads before adding any more. The lfs is selling fish chock full of disease and current best known ways to prevent loss are there in fish forum written by Humblefish. The fish don't look bad agreed, but to see the scope of marine fish disease from mixed lfs fish only two options exist-going through the loss within a year or preventative measures when the tank is new.

The fish always look healthy, but if they're marine fish from a lfs they're received and sold quickly, no time to implement the actions that stop disease transfer.

the lfs nearby is a small business and they say they run all their marine fish in copper and do a freshwater dip. And most of them stay there for more than a month so I figured they’d be pretty disease free? Is that not always the case

BeejReef · Nov 12, 2019

"Pretty disease free" is a very relative term.

Lots of lfs will run low levels of copper. This will often keep sick fish from showing symptoms, though it likely also does inhibit cross infection to some degree.

If your lfs really does run 30 days of therapeutic copper on all fish, that's incredible and quite rare. I'd ask them the copper level.

You want to think in terms of what it could mean to you. Their fish may well be fairly disease free. BUT, if that first fish you add does break out in ich two weeks after you get it, now your tank has to sit empty for 2.5 months. If it's not your first fish, it may infect or even kill your existing fish.

All that said, I admit I didn't qt my first 3 fish and it has worked out. They were pretty disease free

Subsequent additions did go through a qt tank.

fl3xlinton · Nov 12, 2019

BeejReef said:
"Pretty disease free" is a very relative term.

Lots of lfs will run low levels of copper. This will often keep sick fish from showing symptoms, though it likely also does inhibit cross infection to some degree.

If your lfs really does run 30 days of therapeutic copper on all fish, that's incredible and quite rare. I'd ask them the copper level.

You want to think in terms of what it could mean to you. Their fish may well be fairly disease free. BUT, if that first fish you add does break out in ich two weeks after you get it, now your tank has to sit empty for 2.5 months. If it's not your first fish, it may infect or even kill your existing fish.

All that said, I admit I didn't qt my first 3 fish and it has worked out. They were pretty disease free
Subsequent additions did go through a qt tank.

I wouldn’t say they won’t let them sell for a month but reefing or saltwater isn’t a very big hobby in my town so they don’t catch much business. The only things that sell fast in the lfs are clowns and damsels. But as of right now my clowns are doing fine and I’ve had them for a few weeks now. They are a little aggressive towards one another but I read online if they aren’t a mated pair they are trying to figure out which one will turn into a female. I’m not sure how true that is but I do know that one should turn eventually.

fl3xlinton · Nov 12, 2019

i think they put a dns on em for a week and then they will let them go but I’m going in today to see what they think about my paremeters because they won’t sell fish unless I bring in water and my water quality is good

Nooooooooob1 · Nov 12, 2019

BeejReef said:
"Pretty disease free" is a very relative term.

Lots of lfs will run low levels of copper. This will often keep sick fish from showing symptoms, though it likely also does inhibit cross infection to some degree.

If your lfs really does run 30 days of therapeutic copper on all fish, that's incredible and quite rare. I'd ask them the copper level.

You want to think in terms of what it could mean to you. Their fish may well be fairly disease free. BUT, if that first fish you add does break out in ich two weeks after you get it, now your tank has to sit empty for 2.5 months. If it's not your first fish, it may infect or even kill your existing fish.

All that said, I admit I didn't qt my first 3 fish and it has worked out. They were pretty disease free
Subsequent additions did go through a qt tank.

Haha I'm in the same boat. When I started out two years ago, I didn't QT any fish and I guess I got lucky because they were all happy and healthy. But I've moved and my new LFS is much lower quality. I think I've pushed my luck with fish diseases enough and will be doing QT from here on out.

Nooooooooob1 · Nov 12, 2019

fl3xlinton said:
I wouldn’t say they won’t let them sell for a month but reefing or saltwater isn’t a very big hobby in my town so they don’t catch much business. The only things that sell fast in the lfs are clowns and damsels. But as of right now my clowns are doing fine and I’ve had them for a few weeks now. They are a little aggressive towards one another but I read online if they aren’t a mated pair they are trying to figure out which one will turn into a female. I’m not sure how true that is but I do know that one should turn eventually.

So how many days old was your tank when you put the clowns in?

Mine is four days old right now and I'm cycling it using the raw shrimp method, but I have fish in my old tank waiting to move over. I'm considering taking that shrimp out and just throwing the fish in the new tank to let them cycle it. It's 105 gallon total system volume and only 2 clowns and 1 chromis.

russthefishguy111 · Nov 12, 2019

I like API the only issue is the ammonia test kit is hard to read. Red Sea also makes great test kits that are easy to read

fl3xlinton · Nov 12, 2019

Nooooooooob1 said:
So how many days old was your tank when you put the clowns in?

Mine is four days old right now and I'm cycling it using the raw shrimp method, but I have fish in my old tank waiting to move over. I'm considering taking that shrimp out and just throwing the fish in the new tank to let them cycle it. It's 105 gallon total system volume and only 2 clowns and 1 chromis.

My water was pumping through floss for a week before I added fish. No filtration dry rock love sand I used fritz turbo start. Overdosed it 100 gallons worth in my 40 and acclimated the fish then put em in and everything has been good since. I probably should feed them more I feed them a few pellets once a week I was thinking about doing 1 pellet every few days but it’s hard to get one to each of em

BeejReef · Nov 12, 2019

fl3xlinton said:
i think they put a dns on em for a week and then they will let them go but I’m going in today to see what they think about my paremeters because they won’t sell fish unless I bring in water and my water quality is good

That's a pretty impressive LFS.