Fish freak . I am just saying my thoughts on what I do when I purchase fish , . Yes I prefer to purchase locally so I see what I am buying . Glad that you are switching to that method . I also only qt in one tank all fish form one lfs . I never mix different LFS fish together in the same Qt . If I do buy from different LFS they go in different tanks . I only Qt a few fish at a time . Never more than I can handle . Max 5 of same species or max 3 of different species in the same tank . Never more than two QT tanks going at the same time cause they are to much work and stress on me . I hope you find your balance .
Yeah, I usually run 3 to 4 quarantine tanks at a time and do batches. I normally will mix stuff between different vendors as long as they initially appear relatively healthy, as I've gotten the big 3 (ich, velvet, flukes) from all my local shops at one point or another. Everyone goes through the same prophylactic meds whether they show signs of disease or not in order to go in the display.
Doing batches of fish like that allows me to add multiple fish simultaneously, helping mitigate aggression on the newcomers and helping the fish in quarantine adjust better to captivity. Keeping a batch of chromis with butterflies and a tang, or fairy wrasses with more peaceful damsels and an angel or 2 in quarantine helps calm the butterflies/angels/wrasses, since the damsels and chromis act as dithers and make them feel safe enough to swim around and come out to eat.
On that same note, what size is your quarantine you use? I am currently running a 20 gallon and a 50 gallon, and have a 75 gallon, 2x 100 gallon stock tanks, and a 150 gallon stock tank I can use at any time, and keep cycled rock to add to those on hand for when I do decide to do larger batches or quarantine larger sized fish.
Most fish are pretty easy to quarantine honestly, as long as you get stock in relatively good condition to start with. With the fish I lost from the online vendors, one had some pretty severe ammonia burn and O2 deprivation from the bag leaking, 1 was an obligate corallivore, 1 had velvet, and one vendor shipped fish with flukes, velvet, and pretty bad ammonia burn. Pretty sure those same fish had been beat up by other tankmates at the same vendor as well before being shipped, just based off the small tears in the fins and missing scales on arrival.
I don't consider that a failure on my part by any means. I've quarantined plenty of fish mixed before without issue. Tiles, butterflies, moorish idol, angels, leopard wrasses, heck, even mandarin dragonets went through cupramine, acriflavine, praziquantel, and formalin baths and did just fine when done properly.
My post was purely to show people that buying butterflies online is probably not the best option, and to buy locally if possible. Unfortunately many of the butterflies I like are unavailable locally, and none of my LFS seem to be able to get them in. Half the time, they tell me it came in, I get there, and it's a totally different species of butterfly, or it's mostly dead and they still try to pawn it off on you before it dies since they ordered it for you, instead of taking it up with their wholesaler who sent them a sick fish and demanding credit for unhealthy livestock.
Also want to add that I almost always shop locally, and hadn't bought any live fish online in a while, but had seem some pretty good reviews and gave it a shot. Ended up just as disappointed as last time I tried ordering online from supposedly highly reputable and highly recommended vendors. It's funny, my inverts I buy online always do well (thank you reefcleaners.com and reeftopia.com ) and the delicate poison dart frogs I buy over the internet do fantastic (I keep 40+ different varieties of poison dart frog and small tropical tree frogs as well), but most fish I've bought online have done quite poorly and are in much worse shape compared to anything I buy locally.
