purple_drazi
Fishaholic
I recently lost the last of my cardinals to old age and wanted to replace them so I bought 10. I don't want to chance putting new, possibly diseased fish in my established 65g so I set up a quarantine tank and spent hours slowly acclimatising them to the water temp & adding the new water to the bag before I released them.
Overnight 5 died.
I went back to the store and got 5 more. The guy at the lfs suggested (and I agree) that it's probably because the water in the quarantine tank is too "new", it's not the kind of matured biosystem that cardinals need. I took 1/2 of the water out of the quarantine tank & replaced it with old water from my main tank, and then took 1/2 out again and replaced it again. I also replaced the clean filter from the quarantine tank with the filter from another tank that's been running for years to try and create as much of a matured system as possible. Then I spent another - I dunno, 4 hours acclimatising the new arrivals to the water temp and then slowly adding tank water to the bag before releasing them.
Since then (in the last 4 hours) I've lost three.
I really don't want to just put the new guys in my main tank - I've had too much experience with parasites and whatnot in fish from the lfs and I don't want to risk infecting my main tank.
otoh, I don't want to lose any more cardinals because those little beggars are expensive!!
any ideas of other things I can do to keep them happy in the quarantine tank until they're ready to go in the main tank?
Overnight 5 died.
I went back to the store and got 5 more. The guy at the lfs suggested (and I agree) that it's probably because the water in the quarantine tank is too "new", it's not the kind of matured biosystem that cardinals need. I took 1/2 of the water out of the quarantine tank & replaced it with old water from my main tank, and then took 1/2 out again and replaced it again. I also replaced the clean filter from the quarantine tank with the filter from another tank that's been running for years to try and create as much of a matured system as possible. Then I spent another - I dunno, 4 hours acclimatising the new arrivals to the water temp and then slowly adding tank water to the bag before releasing them.
Since then (in the last 4 hours) I've lost three.
I really don't want to just put the new guys in my main tank - I've had too much experience with parasites and whatnot in fish from the lfs and I don't want to risk infecting my main tank.
otoh, I don't want to lose any more cardinals because those little beggars are expensive!!
any ideas of other things I can do to keep them happy in the quarantine tank until they're ready to go in the main tank?