Quarantine New Fish

[skjl47]

I'm simply saying some people seem to like to over complicate things and it is not needed the majority of the time.

Hello; I use to get this sort of response after listing the normal preventative things I do for cars and trucks. Happened just a couple weeks ago. I get that many get by with little or no QT much of the time. They will not get away with it for a long time is my guess. As has been posted it is not so complicated to do QT, just a long time to wait.

If you or anyone else feels it takes 6 weeks, 6 months, 6 years then that's perfectly fine, it's your fish and you do what you feel is best.

Hello; Fair enough. You took exception to those of us who advocate long QT because it may scare off new fish keepers. My view point being they likely should be scared off from the hobby if such practical procedures are too much.

Had an fellow thinking about setting back up a 55 gallon tank that is sitting empty. It had held two Oscars for a time until they died. The tank was allowed to sit with the dirty substrate in place until the water evaporated. This fellow wanted to know if he could just fill it up with water and add some fish.
I made a bigger deal than absolutely needed about what should be done to get the tank ready. I knew from experience he would cut my to do suggestions in at least half based on how he treated his cars I use to work on.

Oh well you have quit this thread so I will forgo additional comments.

 

[RD.]

New update on an old thread. Not sure if my friend from Malaysia is still around? H]-[H

Not sure how much a QT period would have helped in this case, but it certainly demonstrates that some of these pathogens are travelling & surviving further away from their original source.

Maryland Woman Hospitalized With Tropical Infection Caught From Her Aquarium (msn.com)

A woman who was hospitalized with a life-threatening disease in 2019 has her aquarium to blame, say experts with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In a recent report, they detail how her freshwater home aquarium was contaminated by the same bacteria that caused her illness, known as melioidosis. Hers is one of several recent cases in the U.S. that have puzzled doctors, since melioidosis is typically only found in tropical areas.

But Dawson does say that further investigation is needed to understand the potential scope of risk that these aquariums may present in importing the bacteria stateside. About 12 million homes in the U.S. own freshwater fish, according to the American Pet Products Association, and the U.S. is the largest importer of exotic fish, which tend to be freshwater and come from Southeast Asia. This recent discovery has now changed the CDC’s perspective on investigating outbreaks of melioidosis moving forward.

 

[jjohnwm]

New update on an old thread. Not sure if my friend from Malaysia is still around? H]-[H

Not sure how much a QT period would have helped in this case, but it certainly demonstrates that some of these pathogens are travelling & surviving further away from their original source.

Maryland Woman Hospitalized With Tropical Infection Caught From Her Aquarium (msn.com)

A woman who was hospitalized with a life-threatening disease in 2019 has her aquarium to blame, say experts with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In a recent report, they detail how her freshwater home aquarium was contaminated by the same bacteria that caused her illness, known as melioidosis. Hers is one of several recent cases in the U.S. that have puzzled doctors, since melioidosis is typically only found in tropical areas.

But Dawson does say that further investigation is needed to understand the potential scope of risk that these aquariums may present in importing the bacteria stateside. About 12 million homes in the U.S. own freshwater fish, according to the American Pet Products Association, and the U.S. is the largest importer of exotic fish, which tend to be freshwater and come from Southeast Asia. This recent discovery has now changed the CDC’s perspective on investigating outbreaks of melioidosis moving forward.

Oh, great...you've just made this another thread that I can't afford to have my wife ever see...

My own quarantine regimen is pretty strict IMHO...minimum of 5-6 weeks, and usually much longer...and I always have a few extra sponge filters being kept in established tanks so that I can yank them out and immediately set-up a cycled tank for quarantine of new fsh or other emergency purposes. The area in which I fall down completely is when I bring fish inside in the autumn from outdoor tanks and ponds. They often go straight into tanks containing "always-indoor" fish. I know they should also be quarantined...have no excuse or alibi for why I don't do it...

A factor that seems to be overlooked in this thread is the frequency of purchase of new fish. I buy new fish very, very infrequently, and what I do purchase is in small quantities and at small sizes, so setting up a quick 10, 20 or 40 gallon tank is not an onerous task. But many members here seem to be buying fish every other day, and in many cases don't even know the name or requirements of what they are buying. Are they setting up QT's each time? Or, are they adding these constant new additions to an existing QT, in which case the quarantine period must begin anew each time they do so? We all know they are doing neither of these things; they're dumping the new guys into their display communities willy-nilly and then starting threads detailing the weird symptoms that quickly begin to crop up, crying "Help!!!"

Of course, since this is MFK, many of the fish being purchased are...well, you know...monsters! These obviously require a lot more work, more time, more space, more everything to arrange quarantine accommodations for.

In any case, it seems futile to try and quantify how long or short of a quarantine period is "enough". This is one of those cases where more really is better. It also seems silly to argue that anybody's quarantine procedure is "too extreme". There is no such thing as overkill; dead is dead.