Fish to gallon ratio?
- Thread starter mantis32
- Start date
Clearly you haven't read the stickies then.
In summary, most fish in the sea have been demonstrated to carry subcritical levels of various unfriendly pathogens on them , notably crypt, or ich. Put them in an aquarium, rather than the sea, and there is a decent chance they will blow up to critical proportions, and all your fish get sick.
There are not many effective treatments for diseases like ich, velvet or brook., and the ones that are demonstrated to work are usually utterly toxic to most invertebrates, so getting sick fish in a reef will usually result in a wipeout. To get round this it's a good idea to keep the fish in a fairly sterile isolation for 4 to 6 weeks so anything present will show, and can be effectively treated.
Most people don't realise the value of QT till they've had a total wipeout tho'. It's not real nice, and a prime reason so many people drop out of the hobby inside a year.
In summary, most fish in the sea have been demonstrated to carry subcritical levels of various unfriendly pathogens on them , notably crypt, or ich. Put them in an aquarium, rather than the sea, and there is a decent chance they will blow up to critical proportions, and all your fish get sick.
There are not many effective treatments for diseases like ich, velvet or brook., and the ones that are demonstrated to work are usually utterly toxic to most invertebrates, so getting sick fish in a reef will usually result in a wipeout. To get round this it's a good idea to keep the fish in a fairly sterile isolation for 4 to 6 weeks so anything present will show, and can be effectively treated.
Most people don't realise the value of QT till they've had a total wipeout tho'. It's not real nice, and a prime reason so many people drop out of the hobby inside a year.
I had a run in with ich early on and it's not fun. Luckily I was able to cure my fish, but not after daily water chages for 6 weeks in a 10 and 15 gallon. A QT is cheap to setup. Just add 2 fish at a time and QT them for as little as 3 weeks, but as soon as you notice white dots or any fungus then you start the clock over and go for 6 weeks. Like the fool said, read the QT stickie and that should fill you in.
It is short term pain for long term relief.....and it is better to start out this way, just ask Lotus.....she had a really nice grouping of anthis that she had in quarantine and all succumbed to ich while in qt. Had she intro'd these into her main display she could have lost everything.
There are some that say even corals should be quarantined and I can understand why if once you have a nice display you were to introduce something that had some parasite attached and it wiped out a couple thousand dollars worth of corals........an ounce of prevention
There are some that say even corals should be quarantined and I can understand why if once you have a nice display you were to introduce something that had some parasite attached and it wiped out a couple thousand dollars worth of corals........an ounce of prevention