Medication

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EmJay

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Do you recommend medicating an aquarium each time new fish are added, as a precaution?
 
No, medications are stressful to fish, not a good idea to throw meds at them without knowing what and why you're treating.

I do recommend quarantining any new fish for 2-4 weeks before adding them to the main tank. Observe them there and treat in the quarantine tank if any issues arise. I prefer four weeks, some problems take time to show, and some quarantine for even longer.

Some people medicate in quarantine as a matter of course, but that's a very debatable point that would have people on both sides. Personally I would worm any livebearers in quarantine going forward, simply because I've learned how common it is for guppies/mollies/platies etc to be carrying worms after being bred in large fish farms abroad, and they can carry the worms without showing many signs of it for months, by which time, all of your main tanks have been exposed and need treating. So I've changed my view there, having battled worms from livebearers not long ago. But I wouldn't treat for ich without signs of ich (and even then I'd use heat and salt rather than meds), etc.

But quarantine, quarantine, quarantine. It's so risky to throw random fish you've just bought into your main tank, and too many people learn to quarantine the hard way, after a nasty disease has wiped out their whole tank, or they discover that the meds they need would kill their shrimp/cories/snails, and that it costs a lot more money to medicate several large tanks than it would have to medicate the one ten gallon tank with the new fish.
 

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