Best way to re-acclimate a fish from QT back to main tank?

[eco23]

I've got a neon that's been in QT for 5 days because he had pop-eye in one eye. I've reached the conclusion that it was just an injury that got inflamed because the swelling quickly went down and none of the other fish showed any signs of problems.

Just to be on the safe side, I treated him with aquarium salt and Maracyn for 5 days. Now I think he's ready to go back with the others.

In the time he's been in there, the others have grown substantially larger and he is quite small by comparison. Should I reintroduce him at night with the light off so he can settle back in for a while? How soon should I feed them once he has been reintroduced?

Thanks as always.

 

[Shetland James]

5 days? How much larger can his old pals really have grown? Even fast growing fry wouldn't grow too noticably in just 120 hours...

 

[eco23]

They were SUPER small neon tetras when I got them. I mean tiny. So in the 5 days the school has been eating heartily while the little guy in QT hasn't been consuming near as much food.

 

[eco23]

Obviously fish grow very rapidly in short time spans when they are that young. He's not half the size or anything dramatic, but he'll be the smallest of the group.

 

[Fishguy2727]

This brings up an important part about any QT or hospital tank: the water quality has to be at least as good as the DT. In order to not cause stress the QT has to get a lot of water changes. Ideally you use water from the DT. This keeps the water in the QT as close as possible to the DT so acclimation to the DT should not be an issue. The only stress in a QT should be the illness, not water quality. This goes for hospitalizing a current fish or quarantining a new addition.

 

[eco23]

This brings up an important part about any QT or hospital tank: the water quality has to be at least as good as the DT. In order to not cause stress the QT has to get a lot of water changes. Ideally you use water from the DT. This keeps the water in the QT as close as possible to the DT so acclimation to the DT should not be an issue. The only stress in a QT should be the illness, not water quality. This goes for hospitalizing a current fish or quarantining a new addition.

Thanks. The water in the QT is virtually identical to the main tank. I've been doing ungodly amounts of pwc with water from the DT.

My concern was with the stress associated with rejoining the other fish, as opposed to water quality acclimation. am I correct that doing it tonight with the tank light off and holding off on feeding until the morning is the best process?

 

[Fishguy2727]

I would feed and then add the fish back right before lights out, this will distract the fish. You really don't have to worry much with tetras.

 

[eco23]

I would feed and then add the fish back right before lights out, this will distract the fish. You really don't have to worry much with tetras.

Thanks, thats what I'll do.

 

[Tasha]

5 days? How much larger can his old pals really have grown? Even fast growing fry wouldn't grow too noticably in just 120 hours...

We have had some batches of fry that had the odd fry that almost did double their size in 5 days... We couldnt believe how fast they were growing, and they werent "tiny" to start out with.... it was like there were steriods in their food LOL