Quarantine

[weezawoo]

I have new neons and pygmy corys.i got them from a place i dont normaly use so decided to qt them to make sure they r ok.how long would u recommend to have them there for,just the tank is quite small.

 

[star4]

4 weeks is a good quarantine time.

 

[N0body Of The Goat]

4 weeks is a good quarantine time.

These days, I'd whole-heatedly agree with star4, you just don't know what new fish may be carrying which they might be completely immune to but then your established fish may come down with or vice versa (the stress of being moved could lower the immune system of a new fish).
Because of acquiring my latest tank (620T) just before my recent purchases (although I did add 4 Brochis from Aquajardin; 3 Brochis from "hamfist" (whose tanks are immaculate); Chaetostoma L444 from Aquajardin; all striaght into my 5-footer) , I was able to effectively use it as a QT with an mature Fluval U4 filter.

I wonder how many times adding a new fish to a tank causes illness breakouts in established fish (especially in a cichlid community), due to the tank hierachy being altered through the new introduction?

 

[saltynay]

How long is a piece of string... keep them in as long as you feel comfortable with them not infecting your established fish.

 

[star4]

A fish can look clean and healthy, upon purchase, but you never know what it could be carrying.

 

[KittyKat]

4 weeks is a good quarantine time.

+1, I usually take 4-6 weeks over quarantine.

 

[weezawoo]

If in those 4 weeks I bought some other new fish that would mean starting the 4 weeks again for the fish already in the QT, I'm going to end up with a whole new tank starting thanks for the help guys!!!

 

[star4]

Thats what happens to me, I have (had) a 180l quarantine tank, then some other fish arrived and so on so now that is an established tank and I have had to set up a second quarantine tank for the fish that arrived yesterday otherwise the 180 would need another 4 weeks

Quarantine the longer the better, ich usually shows up fairly quick, intestinal worms can take upto 2-3 weeks to show any symptoms (stringy poo etc) same really with bacterial problems. Some parasites also take a couple of weeks to show symptoms such as gill or body flukes.