aquarist48

Good morning!

I wanted to post an observation. I'm seeing a good many threads of people buying beautiful fish for their tanks. However, I'm not seeing mention of these beautiful fish being "Quarantined". I want to stress how important "Quarantine" is to help prevent the spread of disease and possibly even a complete wipe out of your entire stock.

A "Quarantine" tank does not have to be an actual aquarium set up. There are Do It Yourself (DIY) ideas around the forum, check the DIY section and too you can do a "search" in the top right hand section of this page for "Quarantine" for even more information. The "search" feature is to search this forum only and not the web.

Patience really comes into play here. The "Quarantine" period I see most is 2 weeks. I would really like to see that increased to at least 1 month if not 6 weeks. I read an article the other day that mentioned certain intestinal worms (Camallanus) can take longer than 2 weeks to make an appearance.

Food for thought!

Ken

Shawnie

great reminder ken!

click

You right on the camallanus...it can take from 6-12 weeks for visible signs to develop...and usually by the time you can see them coming out, it's too late, your whole tank is at risk. Plus I heard there's an epidemic with this parasite in some areas, so better be safe than sorry, like I am.

sirdarksol

A great reminder.
It's good to note that, in many pet stores, all of the tropical fish are sharing the same water. All it would take is one sick fish to pass the illness on to the rest of the fish.
Even if the pet store doesn't use this setup, many distributors do.

As I side note, the writer/editor in me is wondering what "Quarantine" stands for in Aquarist's post, since he has it in quotes, suggesting that he's either using the word ironically or to replace something else.