mcarroll
10K Club member
Definitely a drag...I'm about in the same boat.
Shouldn't necessarily be a problem.
Seems like the sand sifter or chromi's would have succumbed as well to such an outbreak since there's nothing really special about them concerning pathogens. Maybe something else was going on.
This is where I'd focus improvement efforts vs banning "local" stores.
Ordering and shipping is always going to be tougher on the fish than a LFS purchase and ride home in your car.
You'll never be able to hand-select fish and be really picky ordering online.
Definitely be pickier in selecting fish to buy next time. Make sure you account for the health of fish in neighboring tanks. Make sure you can return to the store and see your target fish on at least two occasions and note any differences in appearance or behavior.
That's A LOT of fish and a lot of difficult fish. (Not counting the fish you didn't list obviously
)Going forward you could plan your livestock out much more favorably for your cause....easier fish first, and fewer fish at a time, avoid fish like chromies and anthias that are downright trouble, with the groups of fish much more spaced out to allow the tank to adjust to each new addition. I'd allow at least a month between fish additions....2-3 months wouldn't be too long.
I would definitely suggest this.....track every fish and loss. The main reason is to keep bad from going to worse in case things go that direction. I've known folks to keep dumping fish into a tank that keeps killing them with no effort spent to figure out what they were doing wrong. They didn't blame the fish store in that case....they just thought it was normal apparently.
If you're losing fish at that rate, it's not the only the fish's (or store's) fault.
It would be hard for me to keep exercising a warranty like that – the reality is that there are no replacement fish since almost every single one has to be captured and brought from the ocean.
One might be able to think of clowns or other captive-bred fish as "replaceable"....but not wild.
IMO at least.
Way too long and probably stressful. Especially if you're doing a group of fish at once, or a large fish. Ammonia poisoning would be a concern – and if that happens it's definitely enough to tweak them going into the display or QT. Ammonia is nasty stuff.
Personally I've acclimated LOTS of fish (about 5 years worth of orders on about 2000 gallons worth of retail tank space) and I've never seen one react poorly when salinity doesn't match. Most of the time we'd drip acclimate everything for 10-15 minutes (or however long it took to double the acclimation tub's water) to make sure salinity did match and temperature was at least closer, but on some occasions it was not possible and the fish would go straight from the shipping bag to the QT system, which was run at 1.025 sg. It seemed to work equally well with and without acclimation. So at least IME it's not worth the risk of over-acclimating a fish at all. If you do it, limit your activities to 10-15 minutes and then get them into their destination tank.
As far as QT, make sure you're setting yourself up for success there. Don't use the pattern you see repeated a lot where folks will set up a tiny (≤10 gallon) hospital tank with nothing but a heater and a PVC pipe cave and then call it a QT tank. That will make your fish stressed just by being in it.
Set your QT up as a respectable, if plain, fish-only system. A decent sized tank (≥15 gallons please; 40 gallons might be ideal), a piece of live rock, a PVC cave or two and enough plastic plants to provide cover so the fish don't feel such a strong need to hide. Nothing fancy needed! Of course a heater and other essentials too.
If you think you'll need to medicate a fish, then consider also having a small tank (10 or 20 gallons at most) to use for a hospital/treatment tank when needed. You can do treatments right in the QT, but it's not ideal and can make things more complicated...and who needs that?
Hopefully that all helps!! Make sure you post or PM if you have any questions during any phase of getting/adding new fish!
