Quarantine Neons....

[Schmill]

Ok, just something that occured to me the other night.

I don't plan to have a quarantine tank running 24/7, as frankly I don't have the space. What was recommended to me was to run a second small filter on my main tank, and then when I need the quarantine / hospital tank I can get the tank out, fill it with water, wack my spare heater in it and move the second filter over to it, and viola, it's ready to care for fish.

However I've also learnt from here that apparently 'neons' as a whole group don't do well in a freshly cycled tank, and need a mature tank of at least 6 months, which presents a dilemma..

How do you quarantine neons? If I can put them in my quaratine tank as setup above, and keep them in there for 1 month's quarantine, then that would seem to make a mockery of the whole "needing a 6 month mature tank" situation.
The only "6 month mature tank" that I would eventually have would be my main tank, but putting them straight into that would mean no quarantine, and therefore put all the other fish at risk.

Just wondering how people do it?

 

[Syphoniera]

Unfortunately, wild fish are too often captured by life-threatening methods such as those involving toxic chemicals, with those surviving often suffering immune system and other damage.
So certain fish, especially otos, cardinals and neons, gain a reputation of being 'delicate' due more to such circumstance than to a 'natural fragility' which would preclude their survival in the wild.
My usual LFS regularly sells neons at 99 cents each 'because they die'.
I have two (enormous and very beautiful) survivors of an original 6, which have been living lonely (with other tetras, for what little that's worth) for either (can't remember when, darn it) 1 and a half or 2 and a half years, 3 of these dying promptly and the 2 survivors chasing off the third until her eventual, symptomless death a couple of months later.
(Try figuring out a suitable treatment, other than trying salt and Pimafix, when you have no hints of any potential disease/parasite except from the behaviour of other fish chasing one away.)
I gathered my courage to give the poor little devils a school, and got a further half-dozen which promptly all died in the q tank.
Same with the next batch.
I couldn't bear to get any more for a long time, if they were, as it appeared, doomed to die, (plus discovered my bent glowlight tetras actually had a mycobacterial infection and was nervous about risking more fish, although healthy fish are typically not susceptible) but felt so badly about those two lonely neons I decided to try again, and like you, wondered how much the bare q-tank reduced their chances of survival.
So most of the new batch were skinny, which I hoped was from the travails of shipping and not anything worse, and thought the blackening on their fins was likely due to ammonia poisoning and foolishly put them directly into another, very low-stocked, well-planted tank, (separate from my tetras,) and now the whole tank's a Q tank with 2 surviving neons, although the few other original inhabitants seem to be OK so far...
It's not that I don't know better, just a question of figuring out where I left that brain the last time I used it, which was quite a while back...

It IS a tough call - but then again, I have trouble getting to places selling better quality neons, which would have saved me heartbreak and the cost of various meds - cheap at the higher price, even if you do feel sorry for the overcrowded 'cheap' ones.
Good quality, well-treated fish are a whole nother ball game game - and neons are all too often abused in capture, shipping and sales tanks, when regarded as 'cheap'.
These problems don't seem to be common to other tetras, with the exception of typically similarly treated Cardinals, where, of 4 purchased, 2 were dying in the bag when I got them home following a 15-minute drive, one dying shortly thereafter and the other within a week, after breaking out in big, white pustulated spots.
I do like Q tanks...
But if you can get to a smaller, privately owned place to buy more expensive, and therefore valued, fish that are more probably healthy, they're less likely to either risk infecting your fish, or to die in the Q tank, leaving you wondering how you could have saved fish which may even have been unsavable over the long term due to treatment in, and following, capture.

 

[Colin_T]

Neons don’t need a 6-month old mature filter or tank. If you buy disease free fish then they should be fine in a tank with a normal established filter. Keeping a spare filter running in the main tank is fine and when you are going to get new fish, fill up the quarantine tank with half old tank water and half tap water that has been dechlorinated. Aerate this water and add the heater. When the water is the same temperature as the main tank, add the spare filter. Then go and buy the new fish.
Have a thin layer of gravel on the bottom of the quarantine tank and add a couple of plastic or live plants. Use plastic if you don’t have a light on the tank. Put a picture on the back of the tank to help the fish feel more secure.

If possible ring the petshop and find out what the PH is in their neon tank. Then match your quarantine tank to that PH. Once the fish are in there, the weekly partial water changes will move the PH to whatever your tap water is.

Neons often suffer from bacterial infections and if one fish is sick, then chances are all the fish in the tank will have the same problem. Unhealthy neons often have a faded blue or red line. It can appear as a white patch on the blue line or the blue line will just have a lighter section. If any neons in the tank have this then don’t buy any from the tank.
Neons suffer from bacterial infections because they are kept in large groups in wholesalers and shop tanks. The high tank populations keep the fish in close proximity to each other and makes them more susceptible to disease outbreaks. Dirty tanks and poor filtration will also encourage disease problems.

Try not to buy tetras or any other fish that have just come into the shop. Wait until the fish have been in the shop tank for at least a few days. This gives the fish a chance to settle down before you buy them. If the fish have just come in and you buy some, they will still be suffering from the stress of being shipped to the shop. Then put into a new tank with potentially different water from where they came from. Then they get caught, put in a bag and taken home to your tank. This can be too much for the fish and they can die in the bag, or freak out when put into a new tank. If the fish have spent a few days at the shop then they should have recovered from the stress of being shipped to the shop and have less problems going to your house.
It is a good idea to put the new fish into a dark coloured bag before you leave the shop. If you carry the fish around in the plastic fish bag they can freak out when you go outside into the sunlight. Putting the bag of fish into another dark coloured carry back will prevent them being exposed to bright light. Wrapping the bag in a towel can help keep the temperature stabile on the way home, as can putting the bag inside an esky.

Other fish, including tetras, suffer from the same problems but neons are one of the most commonly sold fish and are kept in huge numbers at shops. Quite often there are several hundred fish in a tank. Compare that to most other tetras, which might only be kept in small groups of 30 or 40 per tank. Fewer fish means less stress and cleaner water. Guppies are another fish that suffers from the same problems and it is associated with overcrowding. The shops buy in hundreds of male guppies and stick them in one or two tanks. They look good because of the bright colours but suffer from overcrowding and if one has a disease, then within a few days they all have it.

When you get the fish home float the bag in the tank for about 30 minutes. Every 5 minutes add about half a cup of tank water to the bag with the fish. Do this for the 30 minutes and then pour the contents of the bag into the quarantine tank. If the bag is big then you might need to add a cup of tank water every 5 minutes. You want to double or triple the volume of water in the bag before you release the fish into the tank. Floating the bag gets the temperature the same as the tank. While adding a bit of tank water every 5 minutes helps acclimatise the fish to the new water conditions they are going into.
Once the fish are in the new tank don’t bother feeding them until the following day. Most fish won’t eat straight away and require some time to settle in and adjust to their new home.