How Long Is Reasonable To Quarantine New Fish ?

[the returner]

hi guys..had a massive loss due to severe case of whitespot and secondry infection of finrot...all sorted now...diseases eradicated and remaining fish fine....main 180 litre tank cleaned and re-setup but no fish added as yet...all stats in water are good and levels of nitrate nitrite amonia and ph are spot on ive left the main tank running for 1 week empty apart from plants..no fish !....the question i have is how long is considered a reasonable amount of time to quarantine new fish ?...1 week ...2 weeks ?...i normally quarantine for 10 days but am interested on what you guys would recommend !

thanks

ps..im confident the source of the initial infection was down to some plattys i bought from a guy who had a tank in hos garage claiming to import fish and know everything...i broke the rule of quarantine as i was waiting for a new tank to arrive ...my own stupid fault !!!..very hard way to learn a lesson i already knew !!

 

[Scales9]

I do two weeks initially then longer if I see something wrong, although I am now suffering with breaking my own rules as well, after adding an un quarenteened Plec into my fry tank and now my babies have Ich....so now at least you know that you are not the only one who knows better and still breaks the golden rules!

 

[CezzaXV]

I'm going to admit that I'm naughty and don't quarantine new fish at all. I have two reasons:

1. I have heard that to be truly sure a fish is disease free, you have to quarantine it for 90 days. That's three months, assuming it doesn't show any signs in that time.
2. If I had the space to have a second tank set up for 90+ days, I'd be using it for a second tank. While I do have a small Q tank which I set up in emergencies, I don't have space to set up a tank large enough to house a fish comfortably for that length of time. Whenever I've had to set up my Q tank it's been a complete pain because I don't really have space for it.