What if I told you right now that I could give you a simple strategy that could reduce marine life mortalities in your aquarium by like 90%, would you be interested? And how about practically eliminating the chance of disease occuring in your aquarium for life as well…..sound good?
The funny thing is there are a great number of hobbyists who know already how to achieve this but don’t bother because its too hard, time consuming, expensive (all of which simply just aren’t true!) Let me explain:
Purchasing an additional small (10-40 gallon) tank with the bare minimum of equipment (a heater, hang on filter and basic fluoro light) could easily be the saviour of this hobby.
I get so many emails from aquarists telling me about their decimated aquariums, and the huge majority of the time the solution really is this easy: purchase the above equipment, fill it with water from your (healthy) aquarium, seed the filter with bacteria from your display tanks water, acclimate the fish to your QT water, place new fish etc in water for 30 days (the lifespan of marine velvet and marine Ich parasites), observe daily for this time: if you see disease symptoms treat untill no more symptoms then quarantine for an additional 30 days, if you see no disease symptoms show up by day 30 put into display tank!
Easy huh? I think you will agree this is a lot easier than having your entire tank die on you then having to strip the aquarium down, clean the crap out of it, then get new substrate and livestock!
Quarantine tanks also have other valuble uses such as a place to put livestock if something were to go wrong with your display tank and a place to isolate and medicate sick fish away from other marine life that could stress the sick fish, catch the disease themselves or be harmed by the treatment chemicals.
The advantages are huge and the potentual of quaratine tanks to literally save millions of marine lives around the world is staggering. There is a really good reason all public aquariums and professional breeders quarantine their livestock….. Because it saves lives, stress and money!
I hope I have now convinced you to get a QT and that you wont be yet another person who thought that a massive disease outbreak “wont happen to them” as they put their pets straight into the display tank and then email me to ask what went wrong when everything gets white spots!
hey, nice blog…really like it and added to bookmarks. keep up with good work