Mortality rate with fish purchases

[111]

I'm curious to know what everyone's mortality rate is when purchasing new fish. I have tried several methods of QT from small tanks to now a 70 gal tank which is overkill for the fish I'm quarantining. I've made purchases from multiple stores, wholesalers, and online. No matter what I do, I seem to loose about 1/3 of all fish I purchase. Once they make it to my tank they seem to all have great success. What am I missing? I can't imagine those spending hundreds on one fish are having the same issues.

 

[dmh41532]

Ive been keeping saltwater fish for 7 years. Ive only lost a handful, actually, one wild caught banggai cardinal, one wild pajama cardinal, and i kole tang. All died within 24 hours after purchase. The cardinal died from acclimation stress im guessing. The kole tang from velvet. What qt methods have you tried?

 

[4FordFamily]

Proper treatmentand quarantine and buying from good vendors should reduce mortality to under 10%. But things happen. Difficult species obviously increase the odds of failure.

 

[111]

I first just did water changes to rid the ammonia. Then went to adding seeded marinepure and some extra live rock. Ammonia is not an issue. Been doing weekly water changes still. I now know one vender I purchased from has a bad reputation, but the others seem ok.

 

[111]

I've also been giving them a couple weeks prior to treating with any copper or anything else. My thought was to let them acclimate then medicate.

 

[Mini Coop]

I do ammonia and nitrite tests daily. About week 2 I tend to get a big spike, and do 30%-50% water changes daily mixed with Stability. Once I had to use -NP Pro from aquaforest to change the type of bacteria. So far that has worked even with a 3 month QT for ich and had copper treatment. I just cleaned my QT and sterilized it as my Flame Hawk just completed successful QT and was in main tank tonight. I filled it back up and have it running and ready for tomorrow's challenge - I have a scooter, mandarin and yellow coris coming in to QT. Bring on the PODS!!!