First New Fish

D

dwittster

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OK. I aquired my very first fish 3 weeks ago. She has been in quarantine ever since I brought her home. She is showing no signs of any kind of trouble. She is very fiesty and eating quite well. Is it time to add her to my display now?? Should I wait an additional week even though she is showing no signs or symptoms of any illness??

Thanks,

Witt
 
If the new fish is dealing well with quarentine, standard is six weeks. I beleive the life cycle of the most common parasites we see is about 4 weeks. The extra time is a bonus.
 
Yeah, that is where I get confused. I have read 21 days, 4 weeks and six weeks. I want to be sure, but cannot seem to find any definitive answer. I don't want to let anything into my brand new display. Especially since I have waited since April to even think about adding a fish. One or two more weeks I can live with to be sure, but I hate to leave her in quarantine for no reason too.

Any other opinions?? Anyone have a definitive answer??
 
most common problem " ich" has a life cycle of about 28 days. Some leave them in the a little longer to be certain but in reality you have not treated for it and it does not show signs. So in essence the life cycle will continue on if it has the parasite. Therefore i would think its fine to put the fish in the display tank, especially if you are not going to treat it for anything.
 
@jdthomas24 wrote:
most common problem " ich" has a life cycle of about 28 days. Some leave them in the a little longer to be certain but in reality you have not treated for it and it does not show signs. So in essence the life cycle will continue on if it has the parasite. Therefore i would think its fine to put the fish in the display tank said:
+1 ...If you didn't treat for ich then the fish could still have the parasite and you could then infect your pristine new tank. QT is to get fish eating and allows you to monitor/treat for issues(flukes, internal parasites etc) so putting them in now would be no different than waiting.

Cheers,
Click to expand...
 
From what I had read, I thought you should not treat the fish for Ich or anything else unless at some point during quarantine you actually saw some sign that the fish had the disease. Are you saying I should treat the fish even if it does not appear to have any disease? I had thought the purpose of the quarantine was to watch for any signs or symptoms and treat as needed for any problems that were found.

Now I am even more confused.

Witt
 
We both agree on the purpose of QT however we gotta think about the big picture also. We know fish react to stress in several way's...one way is by "breaking out" with ick. If a fish is in QT for several weeks..by...themselves, they may not be subjected to enough stress to trigger an outbreak. Put that same fish in an empty display....new environment etc, fish may or may not breakout with ich. Add another fish or two and you could wind up with an outbreak on what you thought were totally disease free fish.

Cheers,
 
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