Quarantine Tank

[dskidmore]

30 days of double upkeep, or risk infecting all your previous critters, and having to catch them all or treat in the main tank? Maybe with your first aquisition there's no risk, but with each additional aquisition, your risk goes up.

[cmor1701d]

The biggest risk is in NOT doing a QT on the first aquisiton (IMO). Stress is the genesis of many dormant diseases is fish. If you can avoid the intorudction of a pathogen into the tank to begin with there is less to worry about later.

Of course I did not do this. I did buy my original livestock from a lfs that ran copper in all his FO tanks. I also was able to reserve fish and pick them up a couple of weeks later, so the lfs pretty much did my qt for me. I did end up with a case of Ich a couple of years ago. I had to tear my tank apart (put all the LR in tubs so I could catch the fish). LESSON LEARNED.

Now I QT everything except coral before it goes in the main tank. Corals get a slightly different treatment but no original water enters my tank. I keep the biowheel in my sump for when I need it. It's like an instant cycle for the QT tank, but I still do daily 20% pwc's for the first week just to be sure.

[haykay]

not QTing is terrible! Much worth the "double duty" as you call it! I put one fish in my dislay without QTing (in the beggining) and it killed all my other fish the plants... Not worth losing all that. get a QT it's a must and a life saver