Chamilitary

I understand if you have alot of fishes and its an established aquarium but doesn't it stress sensitive fish even more by moving them around over and over again?

Are the water in the quarantine tanks supposed to be from the main tank's water.

I don't really get it.

The old man

In case they come down with some disease it is easier to treat them in a tank with only a sponge filter if you using charcoal in main tank. Personally, I just use the drip method to acclimate them to the new tank. Only had some Rams that ended up with ich when added, but treated the whole tank and got rid of it without losing any fish.

davemonkey

Let's say you've got an aquarium with fish already in it. And you go out and buy some more fish from Fancy Freddie's Fish Fare. You get home and through them in your quarantine tank for a week so that you can keep an eye on them for signs of disease. If they do develop the disease, you can treat them in the quarantine tank without your other fish being exposed to the disease or to the chemicals used to treat it. It's also cheaper to treat a small 10 gal quarantine than it is to treat a larger aquarium (if you have a lrager one).

fish dork

Exactly as Davemonkey said... and remember you can also lower the water level to make dosing of medicines in your quarantine even easier on your wallet.

BryceM

If you only have a single 10 or 20g aquarium with only a few inexpensive fish, it's probably not worth it to do a quarantine.

If you have a 500g tank full of thousands of dollars worth of rare fish, you'd be out of your mind to not quarantine new arrivals.

praxis5624

I could not have said it any better Davemonkey. This topic should raise another topic: Those who disagree in quarantining must have money at hand to waste. I love the fish that I keep: LF White Clouds and Endler's Livebearers and on occassion when I feel it's necessary to add fresh genes to my stock, the acquired stock is quarantined and introduced after a period of time. Most fish in pet stores are mostly stressed and thier diet needs are not really address with a regular staple diet. During quarantining, I feed baby brine and other treats to increase their metabolism which in turn will ultimately strengthen the immunity as well. I disagree with introducing disease to my established aquarium ( possibly ) and risk losing fish that I drove around town to several locations to buy, time and money.

praxis5624

Another point in hand, the live plants you could lose due to introduction of medication which all know is deadly to most plants.

Chamilitary

Makes sense, but quarantining the fish also stresses it out, and moving them again after quarantining stresses them out again right?

So while they are moved from the Quarantine tank to t he main tank, they could potentially catch another disease because of the extra stress.

JanS

Moving them across your house to the same water they've been kept in for the last month is totally different from bringing them home from the store.
When you bring them home from the store, they've just been shipped from who knows how many different handlers in a short period of time, they've been exposed to many different water parameters, including bag water, and have been tossed around in shipping several times, so they are going to be stressed and more vulnerable to picking up different things that they could normally fight off.
I always quarantine for about a month, so they've had plenty of time to settle in and by the time you move them to the main tank it's a piece of cake. I just toss them in a convalescent container to move them from one tank to the other, so they hardly notice.

Chamilitary

But a barebottom quarantine tank and my planted tank with driftwood and stuff could potentially have differnt parameters?

should I use the main tank water in the quarantine tank?