Quarantining Coral: Do you? Should you? How do you?

[WheatToast]

no corals or fish? What's in your tank?

Live rock and Dove snails. I will add fish in a few months, other invertebrates “soon” (not coral), and Macroalgae in a few days.
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/wheattoasts-anti-reef-aqueon-40-gallon-breeder.852228/

 

[Charlie’s Frags]

I’ve been doing a 6 week quarantine with dips every 2 weeks. Got AEFW a year ago and fortunately beat them with weekly dips of ALL of my acros. No thank you again.

My QT tank is 3 gallons and is plumbed to receive waste water from my display via AWC. Excess water drains out into a floor drain via the overflow. This way it gets 100% water changes daily and matches my main systems parameters! It also has a HOB UV and a regular HOB for additional bio filtration too.

This is cool

 

[atomos]

1. Do you quarantine new coral before adding it to your reef tank?
Yes

2. What does quarantining coral look like to you? What's your regimen?

"Pray" the package arrives in good shape​

Open/Inspect package​

Temp Acclimate in QT with lights off​

Dip Process 1 and 2​

Dip 1: Bayer Advanced (turkey blasting every few mins)​

Dip 2: Revive or Melafix or CoralRx (turkey blasting every few mins)​

SW Rinse Process 1 and 2 (using SW fr QT)​

Rinse 1 Stage (gently turkey blasting every few mins)​

Rinse 2 Stage (gently turkey blasting every few mins)​

Add to QT with lights off for at least 30 minutes​

Turn on lights and observe - if all looks good, move corals to DT within "n" days - ("n" hovers around 14 to 30 days) - Will move towards new plugs before moving from QT to DT-​

If there is algae on the plugs, I will either spot clean with H ₂O ₂ and a brush or dip (zoas and acans) in H ₂O ₂ for no more than 2 mins. Or, even opt to swap them out​

​

​

 

[Koigula]

Atleast people are honest. I heard someone in a local fish shop tell me how thier entire collections of hammers jellied up from one LPS purchase.

Keeping 2 systems functioning on a high level not to kill SPS and acclimate them twice is asking a lot of aquarist and coral. Unless they are heavily aquaculture there will be a lot of trips back to the LFSs.

I buy from 2 sources that QT well. I still have limpet snails and just live with it. Part of my partial success is to set and leave alone. This means I do not participate in local coral swaps and do not use most LFS that do not fit a set of criteria. Not perfect but it works for me.

Criteria is:
Are frag tanks aquaculture based?
Are frag tanks growing?
Is it run by a hobbyist that cares?
Can fish live on site a month? (often no!!)

I visit tanks I buy from and some of same stuff just gets bigger. Not every has this so understand frusterations. I have full appreciation for aquaculture and will pay for it.

 

[Tamberav]

Also would love to see some photos of your coral QT!

Fishless IM25g. Very easy to QT coral with old established rock in there. It’s great if you want to fallow coral but has also prevented bryopsis and Aiptasia from making it to the display. Those things pop up from nothing.

The lights are the same type as the DT. I don’t bother testing or dosing. Just use water changes. No filtration, not even floss as I got bored of changing it and tank runs fine without it.

 

[maroun.c]

Any new coral i add gets a 3-4 weeks quarantine at least.
Dip on arrival
Dip weekly
If no pests are found introduce to tank at 3-4 weeks if any pests then dip weekly for 6 weeks then 3 weeks observation in coral qT 2 and dip at end to check if no pests are there again.
I had 2 different tanks in 2 different countries and whenever I brought a frag from one tank to the other I would quarantine it.

 

[725196]

I used to quarantine and acclimate corals... I don't anymore. I should probably quarantine, but I currently dont have a place for a QT tank. I do, however, dip all corals before they go in. The most important part of getting a coral (For me) is to see the source tank it came from. If there are issues I will pass.

 

[Substantial Oof]

dip, rinse, glue.

Yup. Sometimes I will take tweezers to it while its in the dip, to pick off any algae or to make sure there aren't any hitchhikers. I never spend the time to acclimate corals, and haven't lost one yet. Obviously extra caution never hurts, but if your tank parameters are solid it really doesn't matter, they'll open up when they open up. The key is to get your corals from a trusted source. My main 2 LFS have nothing in their frag tanks but pods and the occasional tiny snail. If you see aiptasia in any tank at your LFS, don't buy it no matter how good of a deal it is, all it takes is one cell.

 

[The Wyld Zone]

I buy coral regardless of what's on it within reason. Avoiding pest infection is a losing game past initial dips. However I have added the following to my sump based on diet and efficiency specifically to clean algae or pest covered frags:
10 thin stripe hermits
2 Mexican Turbo Snails
1 Dwarf Decorator crab
200 dwarf cerith
??? Dwarf Planaxis
5 Blue Legs
4 - 5 nerites
4 Astraea

Within 24 hours this crew is sufficient to remove long strand GHA off of a large Bisma Worm rock of porites entirely and with no damage to the worms or coral. Smaller frags of sps were cleaned entirely within 3-4 hours.

 

[Substantial Oof]

I’ve been doing a 6 week quarantine with dips every 2 weeks. Got AEFW a year ago and fortunately beat them with weekly dips of ALL of my acros. No thank you again.

My QT tank is 3 gallons and is plumbed to receive waste water from my display via AWC. Excess water drains out into a floor drain via the overflow. This way it gets 100% water changes daily and matches my main systems parameters! It also has a HOB UV and a regular HOB for additional bio filtration too.

How to you manage to keep your salinity in check? I would assume your ATO is dumping fresh water back into your DT when the level gets low due to the QT filling? Or are you on auto water change and the "dirty water" is being used in the QT? Does that cause higher than normal nutrients in your QT? This is interesting, sorry for all the questions but I'd love to hear more about it

 

[xiaoxiy]

How to you manage to keep your salinity in check? I would assume your ATO is dumping fresh water back into your DT when the level gets low due to the QT filling? Or are you on auto water change and the "dirty water" is being used in the QT? Does that cause higher than normal nutrients in your QT? This is interesting, sorry for all the questions but I'd love to hear more about it

I do about 3 gallons of AWC on my system daily anyways and thought the waste water could go to better use than directly down the drain. So now it goes into my QT which eventually overflows into the drain. QT in theory should have very similar parameters to display given that it’s about 100% wc daily. With that water change volume too, salinity has been stable in the QT without an ATO.

 

[nicksreefs]

Voted other as mostly I just dip new corals no reason other than I’m keen to have em in and given as they are so moody if unwell or diseased it’s not really a problem in my book, that said I wouldn’t buy a coral that looked moody so hasn’t been an issue so far!

 

[Neseem]

QT Setup here:

Build Thread - SeaClear 40 Gallon Acrylic - QT/Frag tank setup

In the process of converting a SeaClear 40 Gallon Acrylic to be reef ready. Also built the stand for it. Wasn't able to find a build thread with this specific tank so hopefully someone finds this useful. Currently have a 10 gallon AIO as the frag setup and this is my first time plumbing a tank...

www.reef2reef.com

I always QT before going to main display.

 

[CF2]

Looks like a lot of these responses are about acclimation, not quarantine. QT is essential for certain types of coral and good practice for all. Anybody who does SPS eventually gets AEFW and red bugs if you don't QT. If you buy a lot of montipora from multiple sources, you will also eventually get montipora eating nudibranchs, which IMO are actually the hardest to get rid of. If you deal with these pests, you learn that QT is ALWAYS the best option. There are other pests too, like leather eating nudibranchs and zoa and paly eating asterina stars and of course there are all kinds of worms out there too. You can introduce worms as babies and they will grow large enough to eat fish. You don't want any of this stuff in your display.

Since I'm mostly an acro guy, I will say I never add a new acquisition to my display unless its been in QT for at least 4 months. I dip when I get the piece and do additional treatments as necessary. Part of it is being able to recognize there's a problem. You need to be able to identify AEFW from eggs or bitemarks or be observant enough to see red bugs. It also helps of course to REALLY ANALYZE YOUR CATCH when you dip your corals. It's not enough to dip, you have to know if something came off the coral.

 

[lba4590]

I quarantine every coral. It’s easy and makes me feel better. I have a frag tank, don’t do any kind of acclimation, just dip and drop them in and let them sit and grow for about 2 months. Then into the DT.

In my frag tank, I’ve seen aiptasia, about 10 different types of flatworms, red bugs, bubble algae galore, vermatids, fireworms, isopods, nudis, zoa spiders, gall crabs.. you name it. Not sure I would have readily spotted those in my DT until they got totally out of control. And so far (knock on wood) none of those have been visibly spotted in my DT.

Not only that, but I spend the time and energy to quarantine my fish so I would hate for Ich or velvet to somehow makes its way into my tank on a coral frag, however unlikely it may be.

 

[chicago]

Two tank wipe outs and you bet.. QT anything wet.. problem is wife hates that there are at least two QT tanks going along with the DT. One for fish.. copper. Other for SPS frags... problem is the QT for the frags not as good as an aged DT. Currently have 200 plus snails in QT... thats another story..

 

[Gary Barrie]

I’ve been doing a 6 week quarantine with dips every 2 weeks. Got AEFW a year ago and fortunately beat them with weekly dips of ALL of my acros. No thank you again.

My QT tank is 3 gallons and is plumbed to receive waste water from my display via AWC. Excess water drains out into a floor drain via the overflow. This way it gets 100% water changes daily and matches my main systems parameters! It also has a HOB UV and a regular HOB for additional bio filtration too.

This was my plan for having a coral/invert QT. I see the the other post that you didn’t have to setup an ATO. I tried this in one setup but salinity crept up. It must work cause it’s such a small tank getting 100% water change per day

 

[lookout888]

Going though the process of eradicating ICH and Velvet for DT and Frag tank. Setting up a old 29G bio cube I have to QT coral for 3 months before moving to DT or Frag tank. Don't want to go though this process again. All fish will go though the 13 day TTM.

 

[machliwala]

Today let's take about quarantining coral! I have to be honest and say that I have never QT'ed coral and that's not to say that you shouldn't because you can easily introduce disease to your fish but also disease and pest into your coral population if you're not careful. Let's talk about it!

1. Do you quarantine new coral before adding it to your reef tank?

No. I dont have a seperate quarantine tank. I rely on buying from a few trusted vendors. No issues so far.

2. What does quarantining coral look like to you? What's your regimen?

**Also would love to see some photos of your coral QT!

coral qt image via @Squishie89

 

[guywithatank1234]

I personally don’t (because I can’t afford a quarantine tank) but think you should. I have had problems with unwanted critters coming in on corals. This has caused me problems before