Natural saltwater Quarantine

[fishybizzness]

So I'm thinking about setting up a quarantine tank. I have a spare 20 gallon and think it would be perfect for this. My question is, since I currently use nsw in my display tank and do my weekly water changes with nsw, would I be able to use nsw to do water changes in the quarantine,or would I be just reintroducing parasites into the quarantine everytime I do a water change?

 

[Crabs McJones]

So I'm thinking about setting up a quarantine tank. I have a spare 20 gallon and think it would be perfect for this. My question is, since I currently use nsw in my display tank and do my weekly water changes with nsw, would I be able to use nsw to do water changes in the quarantine,or would I be just reintroducing parasites into the quarantine everytime I do a water change?

That's a really good question. But my though process is if you're using NSW in your display tank that could potentially house parasites, whats the point of a quarantine? To quarantine fish to make them disease and parasite free just to put them in a display tank that uses NSW that could be contaminated kind of seems like it defeats the purpose of the quarantine in the first place? Maybe i'm looking to far into this.

 

[fishybizzness]

I was thinking the same thing and was wondering if it was even worth setting up a quarantine in the first place.

 

[miPapareef]

Sometimes when you get new fish and corals they come to you with diseases and parasites. You’ll be glad you have a QT tank to detect and treat before you get them in your DT.

Sure you may have some exposure to disease and parasites from NSW, but you’ll still have less risks with everything else you get.

 

[RyonFly]

I use NSW in both of my tanks, and haven't quarantined, I know that's a hot issue but the only times I have run into problems is when something equipment wise went wrong. For instance, the hurricane before last the power went out, and I was not properly prepared, long story short, the fish got stressed and I lost 2 clowns and a file fish to ich, a firefish flashed a lot but survived and is still with me today. But I was devastated. Once power restored I kept everything going but waited a month or two before I added 2 more clowns and a coris wrasse, current info on ich would suggest these new fish would or should have gotten ich, going over a year now, no signs, still using NSW from the inlet. My 90gal has a yellow tang, gramma, 2 clowns, they started showing signs of ich earlier this year, I found that my tank heater glass was broken and didn't realize it till I was getting little shocks if I touched the lights with my hand in the water, I immediately went and bought a new heater, started feeding a little more than usual (LRS) just to try and build their health and immunity back up, even went and harvested some oysters from the inlet and fed them that. Those fish are still with me today and happy as ever, ich cleared up and Ive added a tailspot, file fish (from the ocean), and the coris wrasse from my small tank with no problems so far. PaulB has a lot of insight on fish immunity and I took a chance with it and glad I did, this is all my humble opinion though. I was in your position, should I set up a quarantine? Do I need one? In the end, never did, and probably wont. Not saying its not a bad idea but I think it stresses them out more helps.

 

[fishybizzness]

This is where I collect my water so it's pretty clean. I only get water on weekdays when there is no boat traffic.

 

[fishybizzness]

I'm going to try harvesting some local oysters and see if my fish like them. I try to collect some mysid shrimp at least a couple times a month and they feast on them!

 

[fishybizzness]

I also have been collecting brown grass shrimp from the sargassum washing ashore. The fish go crazy when I dump them into the tank.

 

[fishybizzness]

Just got back from collecting a few buckets of water! Can't beat the view!

 

[RyonFly]

That place looks awesome, I have thrown a few of the sargassum shrimps in my tank as well, its was hilarious to see him swim up to fish bigger than him and he shakes his long arms wildly at them before retreating. I didn't know what happened to him for the longest time until yesterday I saw him and hes doubled in size. One of my favorite fish in my tank is a file fish I got in the seaweed, most personality and color changes like a cuttlefish.