Quaranteening Plants?

[rallyingmick]

Ok so i always put my newly aquired plants in my little quaranteen tank,i give them a good clean let them cycle and then i add some tea tree oil etc.
And leave them for a week or so.

What i dont understand is how can you be sure that there is still no bad stuff i.e bacterial on them. Surely if theres disease around on the plants its not just going to dissapear, or does it?
I know alot of diseases need to find a host i.e fish.

Just bored and after an explanation of how it all works.
Ive never had a problem myself , but none of my books give you any help or how to quaranteen properly.

Cheers

Mike

 

[Bignose]

You've got it right. You are quarantining the plants simply because so many fish diseases are fish-specific, meaning that they have to have a fish to parasitize to continue their life-cycle. The best classic example is ich. If there is no fish present, at tropicsal temperastures, every ich organism will die in 3-5 days. Ich does not have a dormant state.

This works with any fish-specific disease, no fish, the parasite will die out. That is all you are aiming for.

However, why did you add some tea tree oil? It is a mild antibacterial and in some cases helps promote injured tissue growth of fish. Plants have bacteria on them (heck, everything does), oftentimes a lot of that bacteria is the good cycling bacteria whose growth you would want to promote. All you really accomplished by adding that antibacterial agent is that you cultured the growth of the strains of bacteria that are resistant to the tea tree oil. The real problem with this is that now that the resistant strains are going to grow, the tea tree oil may be ineffective someday when you really need it. In almost every case, never add medication until you have diagnosed a specific disease.