Quarintine

Should a fish be quaratined if it's going to be the only one in the main tank?

If it's the only one in the main tank...isn't that being quarintined?

If it's the only one in the main tank...isn't that being quarintined?

Okay, just wondering if there would be any problems with it, like the affects of any medicine I might have to use (in case he is sick) on the plants. I also have a lot of driftwood the is attached to the tank in there, so I hope it wouldn't be too hard to clean up.

Ok, I wasn't looking at it that way. If it is sick and you use medicines, just check the label and see if it is harmful to plants. If it is, you may need to quarintine the fish. I dont have plants so I'm not sure. I have some big driftwood in my tank. I just scrub the algae off of it with a scrubpad everynow and again. It will make your tank cloudy for a little bit, but the filters will eventually do their job.

The only issue I see is that if the fish is carrying something to justify the quarantine, then the main tank might need broken down and disinfected. More likely, even if the fish comes up sick, just getting it cured before adding more fish would be enough. It really depends on the nature of the ailment and the potential for further infections. Like people who develop immunity following a sickness, certain fish may recover from bacterial or viral agents and remain perfectly healthy. However, any other fish introduced to the infected environment might not be so lucky.

Regular readers may be sick of me saying the same things again, but since the snow drifts have my front door buried and my truck looks like a bump in the snow...I got nuthin better to do.

If you make an effort to recognize healthy specimen, avoid certain troublesome species and provide stress free husbandry and adequate and varied diet, you'll never need any medications or designated quarantines.
In fact, I'll wager that more fish are killed with medicine and/or in quarantine tanks than ever died from new fish additions. So much stress from extra handling, chemicals and the often compromised bio-filtration of quarantine tanks is worse than no treatment.

Obviously this assumes you're not buying your fish from bait shops, chain stores, collecting in hot weather, from half dried up polluted low DO water etc. Use common sense, and of course if you have something madly rare or valuable, maybe quarantine makes sense.

Which leads me to my last piece of controversial advice; cull ruthlessly. When in doubt, throw it out. No mercy.

When in doubt, throw it out. No mercy.

I'd like to lend my support to this statement. Well, the 'throw it out' part. Removing sick fish from the main tank is very important. I personally don't cull them; I put them in hospital tanks. But it's the same idea, you prevent the sick fish from infecting the healthy ones. Let me give an example of why this is important:
Camallanus worm: http://www.acquaport...allanus 009.jpg
If you remove the sick fish the moment the worm sticks itself out of the vent, then the pest does not have a lot of time to release eggs into the water and your other fish are much less likely to get sick. If, on the other hand, you don't get the infected fish out of the tank right away... The camallanus nematode has enough time to release many many eggs into the water, possibly infecting every single one of your fish in the entire tank, and leaving a multi-generational plague. Ew. Don't leave sick fish in the same tank as healthy ones.

As to the original question, about quarantining a fish when it's the only one in a tank... I wouldn't. If it starts to show symptoms and you diagnose it with an illness, well of course then you can move it to a small hospital tank to treat it. Medications, if you do use them, are way too expensive to dose a large 50+ gallon tank. For example, I once used an antibiotic on my 55 gallon tank. It required three doses for something like two weeks of treatment. Dosing that huge of a volume of water cost me a lot of money, when maintaining the antibiotic at the required concentration in a 10 gallon would have only used a fraction of the antibiotic (and a fraction of the cost). That's one of the reasons why people recommend quarantine tanks; they're smaller so they save you money if there is a problem.

And again, I agree with mikez. Sick fish are usually sick because their water's dirty. Dosing a fish with meds is not going to help it when the ammonia is five parts per million, you know? Clean the water first before dosing with meds. Ammonia should be 0 parts per million, nitrite should be 0 ppm, and nitrate should be less than 30 ppm. Anything more and you need to do a partial water change. The fish will get sick, but it won't be anything that medication will be able to help because the underlying cause is nitrogen poisoning.

Edited by EricaWieser, 12 January 2011 - 08:11 PM.

I'd like to lend my support to this statement. Well, the 'throw it out' part. Removing sick fish from the main tank is very important. I personally don't cull them; I put them in hospital tanks. But it's the same idea, you prevent the sick fish from infecting the healthy ones. Let me give an example of why this is important:
Camallanus worm: http://www.acquaport...allanus 009.jpg
If you remove the sick fish the moment the worm sticks itself out of the vent, then the pest does not have a lot of time to release eggs into the water and your other fish are much less likely to get sick. If, on the other hand, you don't get the infected fish out of the tank right away... The camallanus nematode has enough time to release many many eggs into the water, possibly infecting every single one of your fish in the entire tank, and leaving a multi-generational plague. Ew. Don't leave sick fish in the same tank as healthy ones.

As to the original question, about quarantining a fish when it's the only one in a tank... I wouldn't. If it starts to show symptoms and you diagnose it with an illness, well of course then you can move it to a small hospital tank to treat it. Medications, if you do use them, are way too expensive to dose a large 50+ gallon tank. For example, I once used an antibiotic on my 55 gallon tank. It required three doses for something like two weeks of treatment. Dosing that huge of a volume of water cost me a lot of money, when maintaining the antibiotic at the required concentration in a 10 gallon would have only used a fraction of the antibiotic (and a fraction of the cost). That's one of the reasons why people recommend quarantine tanks; they're smaller so they save you money if there is a problem.

And again, I agree with mikez. Sick fish are usually sick because their water's dirty. Dosing a fish with meds is not going to help it when the ammonia is five parts per million, you know? Clean the water first before dosing with meds. Ammonia should be 0 parts per million, nitrite should be 0 ppm, and nitrate should be less than 30 ppm. Anything more and you need to do a partial water change. The fish will get sick, but it won't be anything that medication will be able to help because the underlying cause is nitrogen poisoning.

Okay, thank you!

Just a word about hospital tanks- make sure they are cycled and can handle the intended bioload.

Just a word about hospital tanks- make sure they are cycled and can handle the intended bioload.

Right. That's my point. Who keeps an empty tank running with seasoned filter?
Normally the hospital is a hastily put together bare tank with maybe some media from another tank. But of course the first thing yer gonna do is whack that media with a bunch of chemicals, maybe even antibiotics!
And don't underestimate the stress involved with netting and moving a fish, right when it's most vulnerable too. Even the bare tank aspect is big time stressful.
And then there's the snake oil, er I mean medicine. Fish medicine is what makes LFS profitable. If fish lived out their normal life span, the shops would sell way less fish.
What amazes me is how often the customer comes back and says, "well, the medicine didn't work and a bunch of my healthy fish died too." "Now sell me a bunch of new fish and some different medicine."
My time spent on the retail side as well as with a vet office is a big part of how I came to these conclusions.
The last LFS I worked for, a highly successful 30+ years business that serves afluent customers from greater Boston, is so unethical, they tell trainees they MUST sell water conditioners, salt and medicine with every new setup. They also insist on selling medicines to every customer with a dead fish story, even when they bring in water sample sky high with ammonia. I've even heard someone high up in the org admit that most of the medicines they sell don't work. The clerks work on commision so the more snake oil they can push and the more dead fish they replace, the more money goes in their pockets.

... They also insist on selling medicines to every customer with a dead fish story, even when they bring in water sample sky high with ammonia. I've even heard someone high up in the org admit that most of the medicines they sell don't work. The clerks work on commision so the more snake oil they can push and the more dead fish they replace, the more money goes in their pockets.

That's awful.

The people in pet stores get mad at me frequently because when I see something wrong, I'll point it out. I was at a certain chain store the other month and I asked why there were submerged containers to release salt in their Amazonian river tetra tanks? They said that it was store policy to salt all of the fish water because it makes the fish healthier. I said, "But the Amazon River system is mostly rainwater; there's extremely low salt concentration and that's what the fish adapted to." And they shrug and tell me it's store policy and please stop bothering them.

I was at an Ohio Cichlid Asssociation recently and there was a member who told a joke. He said, "When I first started breeding fish, and whenever I couldn't get them to breed or had a health issue, I went to one of the more experienced members of this club to ask them what what wrong. Well, before I could finish asking my question they would say, "Change the water!" And I would say, "But you didn't hear my question!" and they would say, "No, but that's the answer.""

Which just goes to show. Most of the symptoms presented by sick fish have been exacerbated by poor water conditions. Clean the water and they will often heal on their own. Keep the water clean and they won't get sick in the first place.

That's awful.

The people in pet stores get mad at me frequently because when I see something wrong, I'll point it out. I was at a certain chain store the other month and I asked why there were submerged containers to release salt in their Amazonian river tetra tanks?

That's too funny! Just the other day I was browsing the tanks of a chain store with my enquisitive four year old. He asked what those little containers were. I told him salt. He asked why and I answered "supposedly it helps the fish but it really doesn't, it just helps them sell more salt". Both the manager and young clerk heard the remark. The manager shot me a dirty look but the clerk had a grin that suggested she agreed.

"When I first started breeding fish, and whenever I couldn't get them to breed or had a health issue, I went to one of the more experienced members of this club to ask them what what wrong. Well, before I could finish asking my question they would say, "Change the water!" And I would say, "But you didn't hear my question!" and they would say, "No, but that's the answer.""

I eventually made enemies of managment of the store from my above post because I defied rules and gave that exact same advice [along with other banned practices such as suggesting looking things up online]. I had to do it on the QT but managed to get away with it long enough to establish a core group of knowledgable customers that would only come to me for advice and make purchases from. Not a way to make friends among my fellow fish sellers working on commision.
For my advice above I should have said "When in doubt, change the water, THEN throw it out." I don't just carelessly toss fish at the first sign of trouble. First I check all equipment to be sure filters and heaters are OK, then I do a water change. Then I wait and see. 9 times out of 10, that does the trick. If not, that's when the offending individual gets a one way ticket to the ceramic flushing fish bowl.