What will it take to change your mind about qt?

[Lost in the Sauce]

Not on purpose, I bought a coral from a tank that had velvet, according to many on here and elsewhere it’s said that coral can’t bring velvet/ick with them, well… surprise surprise coral will bring disease into a tank! Not lost a single fish to it, they just got a few spots for a few days and den it was gone, the regal tang, coper band butterfly, wrasse and the chromis got sold to the lfs this summer, the clowns still with me from the downgrade. The ccb and the regal was iconic at the lfs as they never seen such a fat fish in they’re time in the trade.
Edit: I did had a make up quarantine at hand at the time(if needed). It was just not needed in my case, the place were the coral come from I later found out that it had all his fish wiped out by the exception of one.

Not to diminish any experience on the matter you may have but it's Extremely unlikely you actually introduced velvet. The regal would have been dead once a week. You're not going to out feed velvet. It's not going to bounce about then disappear.

When the spot you got it from brought velvet In, they likely had ick in there already and was under management. Luckily you only brought ick home or your story would be much different.

 

[HuduVudu]

@Dragonsreef

From the other perspective.

Yes, it is very hard to tell the difference between velvet and ich. The common names don't help.

For the record I don't use special food to correct problems because I see disease as endemic to some problem in my (the) system. I have learned over the years to ensure that the system is diverse, balanced and stable. I will get into that further down.

I have had to think back to remember when I have seen this disease. I also went over to humble fishe's site to see what he says because he seems interested in this stuff. Here is what I found over there: https://humble.fish/marine-velvet/

This caught my eye. I think this is the key to diagnosis. The count thing may be as well but definitely this.

You need to move with a sense of urgency when a fish has velvet. This is not the same as dealing with ich. A fish with velvet may have days or just hours to live without prompt treatment.

The article is pretty grim.

Yes I have seen that. Honestly once it is going stopping it is pretty much impossible. I definitely understand how it strikes fear into reefers. It also speaks to pre-empting it before it gets a foothold.

Ok, how do I deal with it without using medication and QT to pre-empt it?

First off fish selection. If the fish has spots I don't think anyone is going to take the chance. I am dumb and a sucker for the creatures and yes I would be stupid enough to try. Honestly though, I want the LFS that is crappy enough to sport a fish like this for sale to eat it. I hate that the fish will die but I want the store to feel the pain financially so that they will try to deal with this or at the very least not put it up for sale. Trust me this does take a toll on the stores that won't deal with it. Good! Most stores have felt the pain of this disease in their systems. Because of this they take extrodinary precautions to deal with it. Copper, quarantine, UVs, hyposalinity ... For many people this is their first line of defense against velvet and disease in general. Essentially they find good LFSs to buy their creatures from, let the LFS eat the loss. This is very Darwinian as well it should be. Even this though can fail and the disease can slip through. Many still use this as an argument for QT. Legit, because failure with this disease is catastrophic. In a lot of cases I can use this but honestly I am not a fan of LFSs. It is hard to find good ones and eventually I am disappointed. It's not to say I will walk into a LFS and buy a sick fish it is just to say that sometimes there are other factors at play. In my personal case because of where I live and some other factors I don't have easy access to a quality LFS. I order online, sight unseen. I could order from QT'ed sites but I feel comfortable enough with my skillz to not do that. That said crappy retailers are crappy retailers and if I don't like my choices I will buy QT just to not have to fight with poor quality creatures. Just remember you can't fix stupid, and I definitely don't want to pay for it.

Second gas exchange. I used to mistakenly believe that oxygen is what is needed for the fish. Especially the sick ones and with velvet they swim in the current because they can't breathe. Oxygen is indeed important but the amount of atmospheric oxygen that is available is pretty high so getting oxygen in the tank is relatively easy. It is however really important to new fish that might be dealing with stress related diseases that the oxygen be as high as it can be. dang near every parasite attacks fishes gills and this totally impedes their ability to breathe. Therefore it is really important to have high oxygen. There is however another really important factor to gas exchange. This is my speculation but it is formed over many many years. You need really good gas exchange because you need to outgas CO2. IMO this is really really really important. Having balance with atmospheric air conditions is paramount IMO to successfully fighting disease. A fish that is fighting for air because of parasites doesn't need to have strikes against it because the aquarist didn't deal with his/her gas exchange problems. Deal with gas exchange at the tank level, deal with gas exchange at the room level. I have spent a ton of time and energy understanding gas exchange problems. FWIW ... I got this idea by watching the wave action in the ocean. Didn't seem important then, much later I realized how very important it is.

Tank maturity. Tanks definitely aren't the ocean and really don't have dilution in their favor, but they do have something that ocean doesn't have ... density. A mature tank isn't going eat all of the free swimmers but it is definitely going to put a dent in them, especially if you have a lot of filter feeders. Filter feeders are indiscriminate and if it is floating in the water column it can potentially be food. This is going to help cut down the load. No science here and perhaps I am wrong but this seems to be a likely reason. Tank maturity could also be helpful because of a reduction in ...

Stress. Fish need to feel safe. It takes many (me included) many years to understand when a fish is stressed. The more skilled you are at this observational skill the more quickly you can see stress. Also this skill will help with spotting low level stressors that a fish might be experiencing. For example, I have a Pakstani Butterfly. He was new and after the initial acclimation about 3 months he was still stressed. I kept scratching my head as to why he was stressed everything seemed in order, but my experience told me otherwise. I pondered it for almost a week until it dawned on me. I took a flash light and looked into the tank at about midnight. Sure enough, idiot fish wasn't sleeping in the rockwork he is was out in the open and the light pollution from all of my equipment was keeping him up. Argghhhh so I started putting a sheet around the aqarium to black it out at night. It took a month for him to calm down and the stressor went away. Experience is the only way to spot this.

Food. Fish need healthy nutrious food. This is no easy task and getting them to accept it can be a real chore. I used to just do mysis and flake. Paul B. has gotten me on to white worms. Live is definitely better. I am now bold enough to cut up grubs from my compost and let the fish eat them. They also get bugs that fly to close to the sun or in this case my light. You need healthy nutrious food for the fish. If you don't have this then they will have low level stressors. This won't kill them but once again if a something nasty comes you want to the fish to have every chance available to it.

Stocking levels. This is the one that I think most people violate the most. Every tank has it's limit. Much like a credit card it isn't wise to run to the limit, but the temptation often suckers people in and then they get a disease spiral. Just like a credit card this rarely comes at an opportune time and is like a freight train to stop and when it does the destruction is almost always catastrophic. I like my stocking levels like I like my credit card very very very low, and easily with in my reach of dealing with. Because when catastophe comes it is rarely fun to have your pants around your ankles. Just remember carrying a high credit card balance is fine until you lose your job.

All of these things work in concert are how I ensure that my creatures are happy and with their happiness and by extension their health, my happiness.

If this sounds harder than QT then you understand.

My 2 cents.

 

[Lyss]

Honestly, I believe that 90%+ of the hobby KNOWS and believe that quarantine works. The issue is time and space. I think, based on my experience, that when you start out in this hobby the prospect of having to setup another smaller tank, that will occupy space other than what the significant other allotted becomes an problem, not to mention the fact that the excitement of setting up the new reef overrides the desire to basically sit and wait. What I have noticed is that quarantine becomes more important as the reefer advances and gains knowledge in the hobby. Just like any other hobby, the more you get invested, the more you advance and diversify within the hobby. I know a lot of reefers that understand the need for quarantining, but are limited in space and resources. If I can afford gems, Achilles tangs, peppermint angelfish, etc... I am pretty sure that I have the space and resources ($) to have the best quarantine system around.

This. And then there are ppl like me who live in a small apartment -- Qt is possible for me, but having a separate tank set up and running 24/7 is simply not at all possible. These types of threads all seem to end in arguments and honestly I really believe that most folks are not gonna be like "I am AGAINST quarantine." It's just how do we help those new to the hobby who can't have a 2nd tank up and running all the time? That is a huge barrier to entry and it's a shame. I figured out a way to QT to fit my specific situation, and hopefully if others are earnest about it, they will figure it out as well.

I always keep an extra sponge in my sump to use for setup, and use a 7-gallon container with a lid I cut holes in, a sponge filter, and some decorations. Sometimes you need to get creative and do the best you can.

 

[brandon429]

“I figured out a way to QT to fit my specific situation, and hopefully if others are earnest about it, they will figure it out as well”

That is really a good post to show readers they just need fortitude to press action into place, readers should not give credence to methods posted that are opposite from the stickies in this forum or we lose a critical source of exclusive patterns to inspect.

All the other posts in other forums blend various recommendations for disease control and no solid ground remains for pro qt crowd, this forum is opposite, it’s staunchly pro quarantine anywhere we read here. We need to maintain that particular data set / reefing approach / in order to be able to compare and contrast to other methods.

the ways outside of quarantine aren’t found in the stickies on this site because they won’t work as well as following stickies, which involve outstanding quarantine practices and a couple different fallow options. all other forums and responding posters rationalize skipping quarantine in one way or another when keeping mixed display fish, but here there’s clearly a higher standard-consider the majority of this thread, listen to teachers here, and quarantine somehow in an excellent manner.



Consider a freshwater fish keeping venture if quarantine or buying pre quarantine isn’t possible. It’s a perfect idea to maximize tank flow and design and maturity to fight disease but that doesn’t change direct advice to quarantine effectively on this particular forum.

 

[Jeffcb]

Consider a freshwater fish keeping venture if quarantine or buying pre quarantine isn’t possible. It’s a perfect idea to maximize tank flow and design and maturity to fight disease but that doesn’t change direct advice to quarantine effectively on this particular forum.

Do you recommend quarantining fresh water fish?

 

[brandon429]

Did you quarantine platys and swordtails and guppys and algae eaters? How about gouramis and diamond tetras and plecos

apples v oranges

 

[brandon429]

In reef cycling threads / where I spend the bulk of my time here / this forum is the recommended source for new cyclers to read, so that marine fish are harmed less than when foregoing preps

the handiest part is how referring to this forum shows fallow and quarantine both being used to treat and handle current disease outbreaks in help posts, and used to prep the original tanks in stickies. Clearly this place is fallow and quarantine all the way around, It saves a lot of convincing to just aim them here and let them discover results and best practices.

 

[Garf]

Do you recommend quarantining fresh water fish?

My daughter is just finishing up a 4 week stay in quarantine for her snails to go in her goldfish tank, lol

 

[Jeffcb]

Did you quarantine platys and swordtails and guppys and algae eaters? How about gouramis and diamond tetras and plecos

apples v oranges

How about African Cichlids? I do like neon tetras

 

[HuduVudu]

All the other posts in other forums blend various recommendations for disease control and no solid ground remains for pro qt crowd, this forum is opposite, it’s staunchly pro quarantine anywhere we read here.

I do love to be blocked. It makes for some hilarity.

 

[Jeffcb]

All the other posts in other forums blend various recommendations for disease control and no solid ground remains for pro qt crowd, this forum is opposite, it’s staunchly pro quarantine anywhere we read here. We need to maintain that particular data set / reefing approach / in order to be able to compare and contrast to other methods.

IDK. I think most R2Rs do not quarantine and just don't tell the QR crowd.

 

[blaxsun]

Nothing. Already been through ich and velvet, and having had the latter trojan horse its way in despite quarantine and copper made me realize quarantine in an attempt to keep my tank disease-free is an effort in futility.

An oversized UV, good filtration, maintaining water parameters and keeping the fish happy, well-fed and relaxed is the ticket.

I'm not dissing quarantine - just that I've adopted a different approach that works better for me.

 

[ReefRondo]

Velvet for me. Lost nearly every fish I owned to it in my 1000L. Heartbreaking and still feel guilty about it as it was 100% my fault.

 

[sixty_reefer]

Not to diminish any experience on the matter you may have but it's Extremely unlikely you actually introduced velvet. The regal would have been dead once a week. You're not going to out feed velvet. It's not going to bounce about then disappear.

When the spot you got it from brought velvet In, they likely had ick in there already and was under management. Luckily you only brought ick home or your story would be much different.

Probably I got lucky and it wasn’t velvet, the important part was that the coral brought the disease to my tank, this expresses towards my views that if you quarantine, you should quarantine everything in your tank, there’s no point to stress all your fish going trough the process if you only going to do half of the work. I know from a previous thread I made that most people that quarantine fish won’t to the same process to coral and other invertebrates.

 

[GHOSTLY]

I don't have enough time to set one 6p but I fully support it!

 

[Lyss]

Did you quarantine platys and swordtails and guppys and algae eaters? How about gouramis and diamond tetras and plecos

apples v oranges

Yes, it is recommended to QT freshwater fish as well. Ich and velvet are also prevalent on the freshwater side (among other things) and can wipe out a tank if a sick new fish is added. In any case, most will need to be dewormed if not purchased from a LFS that does it. But as you can see on the SW side, QT is not something the average newcomer will do or even know much about. But if I built a big, beautiful, Amazon tank, I wouldn’t want to risk adding new fish that could bring disease.

How to Quarantine New or Sick Aquarium Fish the Easy Way

Help prevent your fish from getting sick by temporarily isolating any newly purchased or ailing fish. Find out how to make a quick & easy quarantine tank.

www.aquariumcoop.com

for some reason, many folks on the SW side seem to tend to think SW is more special — better, harder/more of a challenge, etc. But honestly, I have personally not found that to be true. Marine ecosystems are certainly stunning, but one only needs to look to the Amazon basin to see how diverse and fascinating FW ecosystems can be, too.

In the end, Keeping fish is actually pretty easy if one takes the time to learn and understand proper cycling and care.

 

[Tamberav]

This. And then there are ppl like me who live in a small apartment -- Qt is possible for me, but having a separate tank set up and running 24/7 is simply not at all possible. These types of threads all seem to end in arguments and honestly I really believe that most folks are not gonna be like "I am AGAINST quarantine." It's just how do we help those new to the hobby who can't have a 2nd tank up and running all the time? That is a huge barrier to entry and it's a shame. I figured out a way to QT to fit my specific situation, and hopefully if others are earnest about it, they will figure it out as well.

I always keep an extra sponge in my sump to use for setup, and use a 7-gallon container with a lid I cut holes in, a sponge filter, and some decorations. Sometimes you need to get creative and do the best you can.

My friend joined the hobby a few years ago before QT places like TSM were around.

I told him to order all captive bred fish directly from ORA and he chose to buy all his corals form cultivated reef.

Thriving tank and no disease problems. Bigger tanks don’t have enough fish choices but for a beginner with a nano. It can be done fairly safely if a person is fine with some limitations vs frustration of potential disease. Now there are even more options with QT venders available.

 

[WVNed]

I would love to add a fish that has velvet to all these people claiming their fish can fight it with their special diet!!! lol..

Why would I ever want to interact with someone that hopes all my pets die? Cant you join a serial killer forum somewhere?

 

[polyppal]

Yup was velvet for me too (on a $300 fish!)

Fortunately I was able to save him after a crash course in disease treatment

 

[brandon429]

Lyss and Jeff there really are lots of qt threads on theplantedtank.net, more than I ever thought there would be, nice call.