My new quarantine policy--your input needed

[dbacksrat]

After losing two yellow watchman gobies to disease, I have decided to erradicate anything before it reaches my tank. I plan to medicate new acquisitions with various medications (copper, malachite green, and/or formalin, hopefully not all at the same time). I know this approach may be stressful to new fish, but this is the only way I can attempt to prevent more fish loss. As for inverts carrying in disease, I have no idea if a quarantine process will work (especially on diseases/parasites that can thrive without a host organism).
gtg....Any input? Thanks

 

[1979camaro]

i personally wouldn't medicate for the sake of medicating...most inverts don't carry disease

 

[dbacksrat]

I'm thinking of medicating the fish--not the inverts (whom would die from the wonderful chemicals)

 

[1979camaro]

right, i suppose that "..." should have been a "."

i wouldnt medicate fish just to medicate

 

[S.Reef]

I wouldnt medicate unless the fish start to show anything.

 

[dbacksrat]

hmm...I guess I'll just have to have medication on hand, ready at the first sign of disease
oh yeah--i've learned to quarantine inverts...and I recommend that you do too

 

[lordroad]

Do you Q corals as well?

 

[1979camaro]

i dont QT inverts or corals...i really should i suppose. i dont have a setup for lighting corals in QT

 

[KahluaZzZ]

neither do i

 

[wayne]

I QT everything now. I don't medicate though, but I do hyposalinity, and I start as soon as I think there might be a problem. I leave meds for when I need them

 

[S.Reef]

Yeah, hyposalination works really well.

 

[Shipley18]

not to sound dubm but what is hypsalinty(sp.)

 

[aresgod]

its where the salinity is adjusted to be below average salinity, does well on parasites and diseases.

 

[Shipley18]

so it kills off everythign bad and leaves only good stuff?

 

[aresgod]

sort of, its a very delicate process and if not done correctly it can kill your fish too

 

[Shipley18]

hmmm sounds risky.."too rich for my blood"

 

[dbacksrat]

i'll try hyposalinity--ah, the beauty of osmosis

 

[wayne]

Actually I think hypo is pretty easy. Not very much shows sensitivity to it, and fish can take downward changes in salinity pretty well. You can drop from 1.025 to 1.010 in 2 days and you can probably go faster than that. Upward changes take much longer - to go back up will probably be most of the last week of QT.
Plus most filter bacteria are very resilient to changes in salinity (to the point that you may or may not really need a salt specific biospira)

Compared to copper this is pretty easy

 

[dbacksrat]

I guess my last question is this: what to do about inverts? I believe my shrimp carried in a disease that took my otherwise healthy YWG...Would quarantining for a couple of weeks be effective to combat possible disease, or is it a lost cause?