Quarantine ???

Joined
Apr 14, 2014
Messages
23
Reaction score
10
I'm looking for some information on a quarantine procedure for introducing new fish to my pond. I've been using a salt bath for a few days in the past but am not sure that this is enough.
Thanks in advance paul
 

sissy

sissy
Joined
Jan 17, 2011
Messages
33,086
Reaction score
15,707
Location
Axton virginia
Showcase(s):
1
Hardiness Zone
7A
Country
United States
I don't really like salt for anything as it can sometimes irritate the fish because of adding to much ,(which is easy to do )I usually keep fish in just a clean tank with a little peroxide and pond water with a quilt batting filter and 1 extra air stone from my pond .I watch them closely for 6 to 8 weeks .But I don't bring new fish into my pond ,I am usually giving baby fish away .I even do the same to plants .Clean the roots and watch them and add a little peroxide .
 

mrsclem

mrsclem
Joined
Jul 21, 2008
Messages
5,503
Reaction score
4,983
Location
st. mary's county, md.
Hardiness Zone
7A
Country
United States
I actually just did a first quarantine tank last year for a koi I got that was in a tank where all other fish had been ill and died. Just kept an eye on him for any sigh of illness as the nursery where I got him from had been dumping treatments in. Air & filtration only.
 
Joined
Sep 29, 2010
Messages
343
Reaction score
159
Location
South carolina
Hardiness Zone
8a
Country
United States
Our technique is proactively based and uses the life cycle approach for parasites. It is an empirical approach with criteria just like in a hospital. It doesn’t address viruses because viruses cannot be cured. For kHv, only buy from kHv protocol farms. If the water is 75 degrees or greater and the fish manifests kHv, it must be destroyed because if alive it is a carrier. So heat the water to 80 and treat. Scrape and scope the slime coat to look for existing parasites. You could gill and fin clip but I don’t because it involves anesthesia. Your choice.

For the rest use a life cycle timing for empirical treatment. For example, the life cycle for ick in warm water is 8 days, so treating the water with proform c or terminate for 10 days will kill all ick tomites transiting from a cyst to the fish. That time will also wipe out the rest of the parasitic bacteria. Two rounds of praziquantel over 4 days will wipe out all nematodes and trematodes. A single treatment of dimilin wipes out all crustaceans like anchor worms. As long as the fish is behaving normally and eating after that, what do you need to do? Waiting for 3 to 6 months changes nothing.

Make sure you place a fish already in your school in the tank. Your fish could transmit something the the new guy.

Anyway, that’s what we do for what that’s worth.
 

addy1

water gardener / gold fish and shubunkins
Moderator
Joined
Jun 23, 2010
Messages
44,921
Reaction score
29,913
Location
Frederick, Maryland
Showcase(s):
1
Hardiness Zone
6b
Country
United States
I don't add new fish to my pond, get more then enough fry. The few new fish I have just bought are in a totally independent pond where they will stay.

It is important to make sure they are healthy before adding to your pond.
 
Joined
Oct 28, 2013
Messages
13,367
Reaction score
13,789
Location
Northern IL
Showcase(s):
1
Make sure you place a fish already in your school in the tank.

That's an important point that I think people often miss. They quarantine the new fish to protect the current fish, but forget that their existing fish could also infect the new fish.

@carolinaguy - is this a method you use in a retail setting?
 
Joined
Sep 29, 2010
Messages
343
Reaction score
159
Location
South carolina
Hardiness Zone
8a
Country
United States
I don't have a retail setting. but that said, it would be wise for a retailer to expose new fish to fish in their existing operation. they should also scrape and scope incoming fish but none do that i know of.
 
Joined
Sep 29, 2010
Messages
343
Reaction score
159
Location
South carolina
Hardiness Zone
8a
Country
United States
Intense maybe, but its based on science. human medicine organizes this way. if you are in intensive care, they have a set of criteria, and when you meet these criteria, no fever for a period of time, stable heart readings, good blood stats, or whatever is applicable, then they determine that you do not need this more intense level of care and they move you to a regular nursing ward. when you meet the criteria there, they send you to another level of care or to your home which in a way a level of care. same with fish.
when i get a fish i apply an empirical standard which means i dont have to see a bug to decide that there is or might be a bug. its like hair lice. the doctor doesnt need to do a bunch biopsy and put the sample under a microscope to see the lice. if the kid is scratching, and there are egg pods on the hair, then its head lice. so i decide that the fish is a candidate for bacteria. i never buy from a vendor unless they use the KHV standard to prevent infection, so i don't fight the KHV fight except to raise the water temperature to a level that manifests the virus. then i hammer the bacteria and worms. when the quarantine is done the bug wont be alive. then i scrape and scope because i can. if there are no moving organisms, the fish is free to go.
if you quarantine for 6 months and release without scraping and scoping, then you havent quarantined. you have just waited. waiting doesnt cure anything. it just waits for the fish to die.
 

Mmathis

TurtleMommy
Joined
Apr 28, 2011
Messages
14,271
Reaction score
8,324
Location
NW Louisiana -- zone 8b
Hardiness Zone
8b
Country
United States
When I first joined GPF, and was trying to “figure out” the science behind QT, I came to the conclusion that the 4-week minimum was based on a life-cycle theory. Though, my QT was more for isolation and observation.
 
Joined
Oct 28, 2013
Messages
13,367
Reaction score
13,789
Location
Northern IL
Showcase(s):
1
Well, the only argument I have with your approach (if I understand it) is that you are treating all fish as if they are carrying bacteria and parasites. If I'm in the hospital, it's because I have a problem and hopefully they only treat me for that problem, and not all other potential illnesses that others may also have manifested while in the hospital. Your head lice example included "there are egg pods on the hair" - that's an observable manifestation of an infestation. If you had said "the kid was itching therefore it's head lice with no other observable signs" I'd say you jumped the gun.

I think waiting and observing can tell you a lot about whether a fish is healthy. If you want to add a scrape to that, that's fine. But medicating every fish as if it's infected seems like overkill. But that's the opinion of someone who has never quarantined a fish - we added all our fish at one time. The only other additions have been pond-born and they pass automatically. ;)
 
Joined
Dec 16, 2017
Messages
14,484
Reaction score
11,452
Location
Ct
Showcase(s):
1
Hardiness Zone
6b
Country
United States
This is where I got in trouble in the planted tank world. A good friend of mine was crazy about qt as well and I was more into natural health. He came down with ick in his tank and insisted on using the marisin I believe it is for ick but kills so much more. And I believed in optimum water quality and feeding along with lots of plants both aquatic and bog . yes bog in an aquarium, I'm including a couple links to specific pages as examples https://www.aquariacentral.com/foru...m-unsure-but-i-think-youll-like.110988/page-7
https://www.aquariacentral.com/foru...-unsure-but-i-think-youll-like.110988/page-11
My friend with the ick wouldn't listen taking the pesticide route and to prove my point I gave his 4 of my fish and before he medicated he placed them in his tank so I could show him that the parasites were not going to effect them, but if they were to stay in the water where the parameters were OFF that they too would eventually start showing signs of ick. after a couple weeks they did start showing signs and with no quarantine tank I placed them back in my tank after only giving them a little start right in the container before being added back to the tank . within days the ick was gone. Bu at night I would shine a flash light in the tank from the top and there were the parasites swimming around but were not on the fish. I think this is where the sterile koi keepers are compared to the ponders where we lean more toward mother nature helping out over the medications . it's like I tell my wife every time she thinks the dogs have the sniffles give them a day or two and see where they land they are Animals not weak humans.
 
Joined
Sep 29, 2010
Messages
343
Reaction score
159
Location
South carolina
Hardiness Zone
8a
Country
United States
Well, the only argument I have with your approach (if I understand it) is that you are treating all fish as if they are carrying bacteria and parasites. If I'm in the hospital, it's because I have a problem and hopefully they only treat me for that problem, and not all other potential illnesses that others may also have manifested while in the hospital. Your head lice example included "there are egg pods on the hair" - that's an observable manifestation of an infestation. If you had said "the kid was itching therefore it's head lice with no other observable signs" I'd say you jumped the gun.

I think waiting and observing can tell you a lot about whether a fish is healthy. If you want to add a scrape to that, that's fine. But medicating every fish as if it's infected seems like overkill. But that's the opinion of someone who has never quarantined a fish - we added all our fish at one time. The only other additions have been pond-born and they pass automatically. ;)

Your point is well taken. I am assuming that the fish has something that can be eliminated, and this approach appears to be excessive. No argument here. Over time I have just come to the conclusion that detection and symptom manifestation have failed us maybe 10 percent of the time. A scrape is a sample of mucus and not a 100 percent observation, and we have missed detection in the past. Behavioral presentation also drags out the process, and we have busy lives, so again we miss detection. We had a club member who bought from a vendor who quarantines, and they held the fish in passive quarantine for a while. They even used some salt and another antibacterial that we don’t use. A month or so later she had the strangest problems including color change in two prize fish that ruined their look. Their pure white changed to baby diaper yellow. I’ve never seen this before and still am not sure of the cause. Anyway, I scraped and found a significant chidonella infestation along with an organism I can only describe as a Death Star. There were dozens of Death Stars that are about 100 times larger than chidonella. The Death Star is not in the literature anywhere I looked. It has cilia all around and just sits there and spins. Didn’t have my microscope camera set up to photograph.

So we quarantine using assumptions because reality misses on occasion. I agree with MMathis on the period. So we use the old body shop technique for car painting. We mask and blast because we aren’t perfect.
 

Ask a Question

Want to reply to this thread or ask your own question?

You'll need to choose a username for the site, which only take a couple of moments. After that, you can post your question and our members will help you out.

Ask a Question

Members online

No members online now.

Forum statistics

Threads
31,520
Messages
518,252
Members
13,738
Latest member
TamaraChit

Latest Threads

Top