OK -- I am converted. 6 months ago if anyone had mentioned quarantine for 3 weeks I would have laughed.

It took two things
1. an ich outbreak in my 65g
2. reading the articles here -- particularly where tom says that most do not,
just a few commercial and a very few hobbyists.

OK, add me to the hobbyists. I just brought home a 20g tank, lights etc etc,
and it will be a "planted" quarantine tank -- with its own fish too just to keep it
healthy, but NOTHING!!! goes into my show tank until its spent 3 weeks in
my 20g.

Keep pushing, maybe more of us will give in!!

A word of warning about quarantine tanks...

I actually have multiple quarantine tanks. Here's how it works.

First you get the quarantine tank. Then you set it up and think "the best way to use this tank is to keep it set up all the time". The next decision is that if the tank is going to be setup up all the time, you should keep some fish in it to keep it biologically viable. Next comes the thought that "this would be a great place to keep some low light plant cuttings from my planted tank!".

At the next fish purchase, your quarantine tank is no longer a quarantine tank... so you buy another one.

Then you set it up and think "the best way to use this tank is to keep it set up all the time"...

Hm -- now maybe a 10g, just in case the 20g is looking pretty good -- yes the thought had crossed my mind, I am looking around my room for some space .....

Healthy plant tank=> never had ich ever.
I've bought fish with ich, no treatnment, just placed them in a planted tank, feed them well, ich went away.

Happy plants= happy fish.

Regards,
Tom Barr

I have been keeping aquariums (planted) on and off for 40+ years :gw , much of that time with little knowledge (its more fun when you research and read as I have been doing now for about 6 months), and have never been hit with something like this. My bala's, and my clown loaches were hit realy hard, lost 3. My bala's then developed serious fin & tail rot. Then I lost 3 clown pl*co's which were what seemed to kick things off when I added them.

My plants look great -- bit of beard algae but nothing serious, ph is 6.8, kh is 7 to 8. Everything looked great.

Temperature to 84 and some salt killed of the ick, some antibiotics recovered
2 of my 3 balas with about 1/2 their fins left -- the fins are coming back nicely after about 1 week.

Again, never been hit like this before ever -- and tank looked and tested better than anything I have ever had. "Testing" -- I had just started working out EI dosages (new to me) when this all started, so my EI dosing starts tomorrow now that things have settled down.

Anyway -- thanks for the comment and thanks for the web site, I spend lots of time on it every day now reading back posts.

Sometimes fish come in in bad shape also.
Always be very chosy at the LFS etc when getting fish,patience is a virtue.

Regards,
Tom Barr

We are bound to have a certain amount of mortality in the fish we keep, irrespective of how well we treat them. I wouldn’t be surprised if your fish succumbed to something far more pernicious than ick or fin rot; likely they were just opportunistic infections albeit the most obvious. Heck, sometimes being healthy is the problem. I hear the mortality rate for humans infected with the infamous bird flu is worse for folks in their prime; the immune response is the killer.

Anyway, sorry to hear about your fish. I started keeping plants for the sake of my fish. They are my pets and I wanted them to have an optimal home.