When you get new fish, what do you do?

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boxman

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What do you do when you by fish for your tank(s)?

Some people put them in quarantine, others just leave their fish in the bag for an hour and put them straight in (LFS water and all), others put medication in as a preventative etc.....

I personally leave the new fish in the bag for an hour or so and net them out and throw the LFS water away (I know the LFS water is very close to mine). I've also been toying with the idea of setting up a quarantine tank :sick: .

I'd be interested in your opinions / experiences of adding new tankmates!! :nod:
 
I'm naughty and impatient as I dont quarantine, I float the bags for 10 minutes give or take, then over the next half hour to an hour (longer for sensitive fish) I add water from my tank to the bag (half a cup to a cup at a time)

Katchan
 
When i buy new fish they are usually either brackish fish that have been kept in freshwater or are expensive/sensative fish that require a little extra care so i use the drip method to introduce new fish to the water in the tank they will be placed in. I rarely quarentine as the places i normally buy fish from have their own quarentine fascilities and the standard of their fish is high enough for me not to worry about introducing disease, also my UV sterilisers will catch 99% of water borne paracites and pathogens.

This is from an artical i wrote on how to acclimatise new fish to your tank.

Many species of fish are sensative to changes in water parameters and may need acclimatising from the water they are in to the water you have in your tank, this is especially important if the fish have been bought via mail order or from a shop many miles from your home.
The safest and most effective way to acclimatise a newly purchased fish is to use the drip method to slowly add water from your aquarium to the bag the fish is being held in. All you need to perform this method of acclimatisation is a length of airline and a bucket or other waterproof container such as a polybox.
Place the bagged fish into the bucket/container and take a length of airline that is long enough to reach from the top of your tank to the floor and tie a loose knot in one end, place the unknotted end into the tank and then start a syphon through the airline. Place the knotted end into the bag and tighten down the knot until the water drips out at a rate of around 1 drop per second. Leave the bag to fill with water for at least one hour and then test the water parameters (pH, GH and nitrates) to see if they match those of your tank, if they match you are done and the fish can be safely added to your tank, if not you will have to leave the bag to fill for longer. If the bag is full of water before the parameters match then you can empty the fish and water into the bucket/container until the process is finished.
 
Any new fish I get, gets acclimated to my water with a drip system I made up. It works somewhat like a IV drip they use in a hospital. It works a little fast and the acclimation take around 1 hour. Then the fish is put in a quarantine tank for a week, before I introduce them to their new home. I've lose complete tanks of fish from disease when I was younger because I didn't do this. Yes, some people just float the bag for an hour or so, then just release the fish and water into the tank. I would rather be on the safe side then lose the fish I bought, or kill the ones I already have. I don't buy too many fish from the LFS. Since most of mine come from private breeders, or different auctions I attend.

Mike
 
I qt feeders and anyone who looks odd...I float then net. Mail orders (I've only bought mail order fish once) I followed directions 1/4 cup of water every four minutes until the bag is full, dump half, keep going until the bag is full again.
 
I quarantine all new fish. The time in quarantine depends on which LFS I buy them from (due to past experience etc).....The minimum time is 2 weeks where the fish get monitored closely for signs of disease and illness. If anything appears that needs treatment the fish will get treated for the period required then kept in there for another 2 weeks. If I don't trust the LFS but "HAVE TO" have a fish from there, I will quarantine for anything upto 4 weeks (even without signs of disease or illness)

When introducing the fish into the tank, I float the bag for 1/2 hour over which period I add small amounts of tank water to the bag (about 4 times).....I then net the fish out and discard any of the water from the LFS tank.

I would highly recommend using a quarantine tank. I haven't had any diseases in my main tanks since I started using one :nod:
 
I Add half a cup of water ever 4 or 5 minits then empty half and refill it and leave it for half hour to an hour floating then let him out. I dont trust LFS water, i think if my fish are doing fine then any risk is a big risk.
 
in my opinion CFC's post is the correct way to do it (sorry everyone else who posted the same method, cant name you all)

in practice i'm a bit lazy and tend to float the bag for 15 mins then with a pin punch 2 holes in the bag and leave for another 10 mins, punch 4 more leave for another 10 then release the fish (minus the poop which will have accumilated in the bag)

it's a short cut but i've never lost a fish this way (apart from 2 german blue rams) which proves that typically sensitive fish should be acclimatised properly :*) other more hardy fish will be fine.
 
I quarentine if I am not certain the fish has no desiese - a lot of the fish I buy have been in the shop for over a week - I visit very regularly - so I treat that as 'quarentine'. Any fish that I haven't seen in the shop for a few weeks, or a have reason to suspect an illness, I quarentine.

I acclimatise them the usual way - float the bag, then drip water gradually and eventually release the fish.
 
Do you guys thnk most lfs would hold fish for a week or two to quarantine them for you. I would like to wait until I have seen the same fish in an LFS for a couple weeks before I buy but I also don't want the fish that I want to be sold.
 
I doubt they'd hold fish for you that long. Generally, a fish that they are holding is taking up space that another fish could be using, so they're losing money. It's hard to make money on fish. The profit margin is not big. A really good shop might hold it for you, but not for long.
 
I dont quarentine unless I have extra tanks avaliable. But i do the drip method on the weak fish. Though I feel bad if they are stressed out and going crazy in the bag, so if they are hardy, like my goldfish, I let them go right in.
 
I qt for a minimum of 30 days. I keep swordtails and it doesn't seem to matter how good they look at the store (or what store I get them from) 1 out of 3 usually will show symptoms of columnaris within the 1st 2 weeks. Fortunately if I catch it early I have good luck with treating it. They also almost always have internal parasites so this gives me an oppurtunity to treat them for those without exposing all my other swordies to new problems. It also gives them a nice settling in period before having to meet the gang in the big tank. I started doing this after buying a few plague fish that wiped out my tank full of fish that I had gotten quite attached to. It's also a lot less expensive to medicate a 10 gallon qt tank for 1 or 2 new fish than to medicate either my 55 gal or 75 gal.
 
I have tried the drip method but since the bucket is sitting on the floor and that is the coolest place in the house (hot air rises), I found that the water temp drops to around 72 or 74 degrees. Obviously, you don't want to take the fish from 73 degree water and put them into a tank at 78 degrees and shock them. How do you get around the drop in temp? Since the bucket is empty when you start, you can't put a heater in it to keep the water temp where you want it. I have mainly been using the method of floating and adding tank water to the bag every 10 to 15 minutes but that is kind of agrivating since I have to set a timer every 10 or 15 minutesto remind me to add more water.
 
Im very suprised that your water temperature manages to drop 5 degrees in a hour, how cold is your home?!!!

Ive never experienced this as a problem as since the water is continually dripping from the tank the water in the bucket is the same or within 1 degree of the water in the tank.
 

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