Its been a while! need ergent help please.

[jamiejay09]

Hello all,

its been a while since ive been on Mft spreading knowledge with some of you other "forumers".

Anyway i need some help with a rather awkward situation, some of my family visited yesterday after a day at the lakes, and my nephew arrived with a plastic cup with a stickleback fish he had caught, now i was upset that he was allowed to take it from its home and place it in the bottle! so i took the little fish and placed him in a spare 10g which is actually up for sale at the moment so he cant stay there for long (4 weeks at the most) now would this be enough 'qaurantine' time to be sure he isnt carrying any infections/parasites or diseases so he can be placed in my large community tank? what i will do is slowly raise the temp in his tank untill he is comfortable with the temp of my community aquarium. Im pretty certain that he will be safe with the inhabitants as the largest fish is my keyhole cichlid, and he wouldnt hurt a fly! the serpaes wouldnt be a problem either as they in a large enough group to keep them from picking on anything else but themselves.

thanks for any input!

 

[aakaakaak]

According to wikipedia...

The three-spined stickleback is a known intermediate host for the hermaphroditic parasite Schistocephalus solidus, a tapeworm of fish and fish-eating birds.

A month of quarantine might be okay. I'm not really too sure.

 

[jamiejay09]

hmmm.. i knew that would be the case, i dont think ill risk it as ive worked for years getting my community aquarium perfect. i may have to look for a small fish tank for the fish as i want to give it a chance! thanks for the help ill see if anyone else has some input for me

 

[aakaakaak]

Looking a bit further shows that other people with coldwater tanks keep native sticklebacks. Apparently they're sort of like cichlids in their spawning and territorial behaviors. My best and completely wild ass guess would put them around kribs in aggressiveness.

Also, their mating habits seem kind of weird. The male builds a nest made from plants.

 

[jamiejay09]

Ah yes, i have read somewhere about that, the female lays the eggs into the males nest, and he is then left to care for them, this is when (im guessing) he would be most aggressive.

 

[IThinkTherefore]

Whoa! That's really cool!