Quarantining your marine fish and why it may be useless.

Admin wasn't supposed to put this in.

To quarantine fish before they go into the marine aquarium is an absolute waste of time in relation to parasitic control unless you run a treatment in that tanks water.

There are heaps of wonderfully worded names for most treatments and yet there is still to the best of what can be researched and than actually tried out with success only two types of treatments, here in Aus anyway that will kill virtually all parasites out right and give you the best chance at keeping most marine parasites out of the main aquarium.

Excluding of course the mistakes of not sterilising your skin and nets etc that have touched other waters and may contaminate the once parasite free display aquarium, a treated quarantine tank as a first stop on the way to your aquarium at times is all that stands between your fish and a hideous death.

When you mix other ocean area species, you cross contaminate and allow some serious attacks upon fish with little to no immune system memory of these new and to them as yet unknown variations of parasites.

A small tank with no protein skimmer, dark coloured non porus plastic sections of pipes or ceramic pots as hiding spots, a section of cascaded water to control PH and a small bio filter and you have an area where your fish can be put in either copper or chloroquine and begin the process of destroying foreign parasites that your tank inhabitants have no immune memory to fight off as yet.

If you keep your quarantine tank with low levels of copper or the other at all times there will be no parasites at all in that aquarium and when placing that new fish in that tank at the low levels that are kept in play constantly to allow a safe non toxic transition to that environment, you than bring the levels up over a two day period to what’s needed to kill all invert life forms as parasites are a part of that group.

There are several things that can be done to help save your fish in the main display aquarium from the onslaught of parasites and they are; firstly always add some food infused with immune boosting fresh garlic; secondly when the spots begin to show refrain from feeding to allow the water quality to rise and assist the fish in being able to cope and reduce its stress levels.

The water from the quarantine tank, once the fish have had the copper or other substance levels slowly reduced and slime coating replaced with the help of man made substances and placed into the display tank, you should than change the water completely and raise the treatment levels to a very low level in the water until the next time you need it to remove any chance of any parasites being added to the aquarium with the next purchased fish.

There is one fact about parasites that can be quite difficult to avoid and that is parasite are part of the normal marine habitat and they can lay dormant for quite a long time in a non treated environment and when the first signs of stress which gives off an electromagnetic signal (so to speak) for the parasites to awaken and attack.