Did I just contaminate my main tank?

Vsrt17 · Feb 1, 2021

I picked up my first fish that I am putting through quarantine over the weekend. It also my first time acclimating a fish so I was a bit stressed making sure everything was right, well it appears I may have completely messed up because in my rush to match the salinity of the quarantine to the bag water I used the refractometer water dropper between the bag, the quarantine and my cycled tank back and forth comparing salinity.

The cycled tank has been running for 3 months and it has bio media and some dry rock all which I seeded with bottle bacteria with the goal to have some clean live rock and bio media bricks that will help cycle my main build once setup and to pull bio media for my quarantine tanks.

Did I just throw a few months down the drain?
Still observing the wrasse I picked up. I got him from a large fish store, which is why I'm more concerned about disease.

Thank you

lapin · Feb 1, 2021

Your LFS prob put fresh salt water in the bag with the fish so you could get it home.
In the few hours it was in the water i doubt that any thing came off the fish that might have have contaminated the water. It is possible.....but my odds say 1 in 999 times it could happen

Reef Tripp · Feb 1, 2021

I would not worry if the fish has any disease it will be subject to it and not in a free state

Thaxxx · Feb 1, 2021

lapin said:
Your LFS prob put fresh salt water in the bag with the fish so you could get it home.
In the few hours it was in the water i doubt that any thing came off the fish that might have have contaminated the water. It is possible.....but my odds say 1 in 999 times it could happen

I've never seen a LFS use new salt water to bag fish. They normally just use their store systems water. Maybe I've been to bad LFS's in my life.

It depends in what order you tested your salinity. If you tested the bag water last, then your good to go. If you tested the bag water first then reused it in your DT and QT, you could of introduced disease from the LFS water system to your tanks. Cross contamination. Probably unlikely, but possible.

Vsrt17 · Feb 1, 2021

Thaxxx said:
I've never seen a LFS use new salt water to bag fish. They normally just use their store systems water. Maybe I've been to bad LFS's in my life.

It depends in what order you tested your salinity. If you tested the bag water last, then your good to go. If you tested the bag water first then reused it in your DT and QT, you could of introduced disease from the LFS water system to your tanks. Cross contamination. Probably unlikely, but possible.

That's what I was afraid of, I'm pretty sure I went between the tank and bag water a couple different times. And watching them bag it, was definitely their system water.

Gtinnel · Feb 1, 2021

I don't think the few drops of water that you may have introduced to your display is anything to worry about. Even if you did introduce parasite to your display you still do not have any fish in their for them to act as a host. If you don't qt everything (fish, inverts, corals) then small amounts of water from lfs will end up in your tank anyway.

If it makes you feel better my daughter once dumped an entire bag of water from petco, I was floating bags of snails, into my tank and it didn't hurt anything. She no longer helps with the tank.

lapin · Feb 1, 2021

My LFS pulls water from their mixing tank to bag fish and coral. Never from a display tank

Gtinnel · Feb 1, 2021

lapin said:
My LFS pulls water from their mixing tank to bag fish and coral. Never from a display tank

Anywhere I've gotten fish from have always taken the water directly out of the tank that contained the fish. I've been to everything from big box pet stores to nice reef specific shops.

mike550 · Feb 1, 2021

I wouldn't worry about a few drops of water with the refractometer, etc. I'm guessing the volume of water transferred between the two is about the same as the amount that clings to the net when I move a fish from the bag to the QT