Fish Quarantine Procedure

Author: Frank M. Greco
Title: How to Quarantine Your Fresh and Salt Water Fish, and Invertebrates

Reposted for information purpose. (external link)

In fact, all you'll need is listed here:
-10 gallon tank (or larger if need be)
- cover, preferably with light
- 2 or 3 pieces of 6" long 2" PVC for hiding places
- air pump
- heater and thermometer
- biologically active sponge filter
- net
- crushed oyster shell or calcareous gravel
- ammonia test kit (fresh and salt water)
- AmQuel or similar product
- nitrite test kit (freshwater)
- antibacterial medicated food
- anti-parasitic medicated food
- citrated copper (for marine fish)
- copper test kit (for marine fish)
- malachite green (for freshwater fish)

STARTING OUT
How do you start? Quite simple. You will be setting up your tank the same way you'd set up any tank, with the exception of painting the OUTSIDE bottom of the tank black or in some way blocking the bottom of the tank (note that NO substrate is used in the quarantine tank, hence the need to black out the bottom). This will give the fish the illusion of a solid bottom, and place them more at ease (with fish, as with humans, psychological well-being goes a long way to aiding with physiological well-being).

Next, place the tank on a nice sturdy, level surface (a stand made for this purpose, preferably), and fill it with 10 gallons of water from your already established aquarium. Add the heater, PVC pipe pieces, a small amount (~a handful) of crushed oyster shell or calcareous gravel in a mesh bag (buffering) and the biologically active sponge filter, and...VOILA!...a quarantine tank is born!

"Hey!", you might say, "Where do I get a biologically active sponge filter?" There are several options here. Perhaps your local dealer can sell you an active sponge filter. (A note to dealers here: since it is a good idea to have auxiliary aeration in your systems, in any event, why not utilize sponge filters? This way, when your customer needs an active sponge filter, you have plenty on hand to sell). Failing this, perhaps a fellow hobbyist can help you out. However, the easiest thing to do, in my opinion, is to always have a sponge filter on hand. This is easily accomplished by placing a working sponge filter (or two) in your sump or directly in your tank (hidden behind some decorations so that it is not visible when viewing the tank). After 4 to 6 weeks you will have an active sponge filter! After the quarantine period is over, all you need do is remove the sponge filter from the quarantine tank, rinse it under hot water, and place it back into your tank/sump for bacterial re-colonization. Really, what could be simpler?

O.K., now the tank is up and running. All environmental parameters check out (so far). What next? You'll want to add the fish, of course. Follow whatever acclimation procedures you normally follow (which, in my case, consists of netting the fish from the bag to the tank while yelling "ACCLIMATE!"). NEVER dump bag water into your quarantine or main tank. Always net the fish from the bag. Allow the fish 24 hours to settle in before starting treatment.

MARINE FISH QUARANTINE
If you have a marine system, the process is a bit more complex.

First, the acclimation of the new fish is the same, but you want to give the new arrival at least 24 hours to recuperate from bring moved before you begin medicating. If the animal does not begin to eat within 24 hours, hold off treatment until it does begin to take food.

Next, you will want to add enough citrated copper to bring the level up to 0.15 PPM (you can really go as high as 0.20 PPM, but no higher, please). I know many of you use heavily chelated (or bonded) coppers, but I advise against their use. First off, in order for copper to be truly effective, it must be in its ionic state. Heavily chelated coppers, by definition, are not in that state, and so are less than useful. The fact that, in my experience, crabs and shrimp can live in systems treated with heavily chelated copper attests to its ineffectiveness in most cases. (Try that in a system treated with an ionic copper. The inverts do not live very long). Secondly, the level produced by some chelated coppers may be far higher than is actually needed to control the disease organism (which should also tell you something. At as high a dose as some of these chelated coppers produce, the fish should be dead). This higher-than-needed dose is actually detrimental to the fish in the long run in several other ways: gill degeneration, liver shutdown, anemia, compromised immune system..the list goes on. There is absolutely NO need to subject the fish to levels far above what is needed to treat the condition.

How do you know how much citrated copper is in your system? You'll need to get a good test kit in order to measure the level. Personally I advise the powdered reagent kits over tablet or dipstick based kits, as they are far more accurate. (I have checked many a test it against atomic absorption readings, and many are consistently are off, especially when testing marine water).

In the beginning, you may find it difficult to maintain a 0.15 PPM level due to the calcareous material in the system. This is to be expected as the carbonate reacts with the copper, forming copper carbonate. At first, you will need to check the level twice a day, and add copper as needed to maintain the 0.15 PPM level. Once you get two consecutive readings of 0.15 PPM, you can consider that day one, and you can begin monitoring the level once a day, adding copper as needed.

You will want to continue this regime for 14 days. During this treatment period, you will also want to feed the fish an antibacterial medicated food. Doing so does help the fish fight off systemic bacterial problems since the copper treatment does tend to compromise the immune system to a degree. After 14 days, do a 50% water change (to bring the copper level down), and wait 24 hours after that before adding the fish to your established tank.

As with freshwater fishes, if obvious signs of any other diseases show up, treat with the correct proprietary medication for the appropriate period of time. For copper sensitive species, you can use malachite green at 0.10 PPM (which ends up being 8 drops of a 0.75% solution per 10 gallons). Treat every other day for three treatments, wait two days, and repeat. As always, monitor water quality and take appropriate action if it degrades. Please note that this treatment is NOT as effective as copper, and will not result in the same kill rate of parasites. There are other non-copper based medications that can be used (such as chloroquine phosphate, pyrimethamine,quinacrine and other proprietary medications. In my experiences with them, most are FAR less effective than is copper, and should be used only as a last resort. Also note that I have not mentioned the use of formalin as a viable treatment. There are MANY chemotherapeutic mixtures that contain formalin. However, IMO and IME, formalin should NEVER be used as part of a mixture. If one is to use it (and there is no reason why one should), it should be dosed separately, and at its correct therapeutic dose. The fact that, if dosed incorrectly, you can kill your fish quickly and that it can be injurious if gotten into ones eyes is reason enough to stay away from formalin.

NOW WHAT? AFTER QUARANTINE
O.K., your fish are through quarantine, and there are no new fish on the horizon. Now what? Simply break down the tank. Rinse everything (except the sponge filter) out with warm (NOT HOT OR BOILING) water into which a little bit of bleach has been added. (Please wear eye protection and gloves when using bleach in this manner. Also realize that bleach will eat some fabrics, and cause color loss in fabrics not intended for bleaching). The sponge filter should be rinsed in HOT water, with no exposure to bleach (some sponge material used in sponge filters reacts poorly to bleaching). Allow everything to dry, and put it away until it is needed again.

So you see, setting up and using a quarantine tank is not difficult or complicated. Remember, it is better to control a disease in a smaller tank, treating beforehand, than it is to treat in a large system. A little preventative medicine is your best bet.

SPS Quarantine Procedure

Repost for information purposes. (external link)

Sara’s Suggestions for a Full SPS Quarantine Procedure:

This process will be for treatment of AEFWs, red bugs, Sea Spiders, Monti Nudis and the many other pests that prey on our SPS corals. Also, one time dips will not kill off the eggs that are laid by many of the pests. The dips only kill living bugs, not ones in the egg stage.

There are many dip treatment methods available and they include the following:
- Iodine Dip (Overall pest dip)
- Tropic Marin Pro Coral Cure (TMPCC) - Overall pest dip
- Levamisole (pig wormer) - AEFW dip treatment
- Interceptor (dog wormer) - Red Bug dip treatment
- Fluke Tabs - AEFW dip treatment

Please note that if there are acro crabs on the corals you want to treat, you will need to remove them prior to the treatments as they will die from the dip medications.

With an incoming batch of new corals, I will first treat with a Tropic Marin Pro Coral Cure (TMPCC) dip. I overdose based on the directions on the bottle and mix a batch of saltwater in a white container and mix until a coffee brown. I let the corals sit in that for 20 minutes and blast them with a turkey baster to remove any pests that hang on during the dip. Other Iodine dips can be used instead as TMPCC can get expensive, but I have had great results with TMPCC and will continue to use it.

The next immediate treatment will be for Red Bugs. Even though the TMPCC claims to be a treatment for Red Bugs, I will still treat separate for them with Interceptor. I will do a dip in a larger container based on the quantity of SPS that came in. In the past I have used about 8 gallons of water for the treatment and going forward at least a few gallons of water will be used along with a powerhead for circulation and a heater as well. In the past I have treated for 6 hours with Interceptor for 3 treatments and have rid myself of Red Bugs. I had used about a BB size section of the large dog pill, crushed it and added it to the water. I will most likely only do 2 treatments going forward as the 3rd one was most likely overkill.

I will use the TMPCC and Interceptor for the first 2 weeks of dips. All dips will occur every 7 days and the corals will be kept in a separate QT tank for 4 weeks total before they are put in the display tank.

Starting with the 3rd dip through the 5th dip, I am going to move on to Fluke tabs for continued caution treatments for AEFWs. The recommended treatment is using 2 gallons of water and 2 crushed Fluke tabs, along with a pump to keep the water circulating for 60 minutes and a heater unless you can keep your temps stable for that 1 hour treatment. Here’s a link to the fluke tabs I will use: http://www.drsfostersmith.com/produc...pc=1&N=0&Nty=1

For AEFWs I had treated in the past with Levamisole. Many have had some SPS not survive the treatments as Levamisole can be pretty harsh. I have had about 20% die off when using Levamisole over 4 weeks with 5 dips. Going forward I would use fluke tabs rather than Levamisole.

After the 5th treatment is done, the corals will be acclimated and added to the display tank.

Water used for the treatments will come from the QT tank. While the corals are in their treatment in a separate container, the QT tank, filter and heater will be washed in hot water with Vinegar and will be refilled with water from the display tank. The small amounts of frequent water change water for the QT will also come from the display tank.

Here are some photos of my QT tanks. The first shots show my 10 gallon tank that was used prior. I had to manually top off evaporation water at least twice a day and do frequent partial water changes throughout the week.


I have now moved to a 15 gallon tank and had a float valve drilled into the tank to that I can now do gravity feed top-off. I will still need to do water do frequent water changes to keep the parameters in check.


For lighting, I happen to have a spare 250W MH and Power Compact set-up that I use.

I cut the lighting timeframe in half as it’s hard to keep the heat down on a small tank with that much lighting (6 hours of PCs and 4 hours of MH) I had also placed my QT tank directly on the basement floor for my latest treatments and that had kept the temperature stable with a heater only. You can find some nice used lighting if you decide to QT as I do. You do not need to have MH lights as the Acro’s will survive without it, you just need to be sure to acclimate them to the MH lights when you add them back into the display tank is all.

Here is a batch of Acro's in a 6 hour Levamisol treatment:


Here's a photo of my most favored pests!


Here's a damaged Acro!

I hope you were able to pick up some idea's and feel free to comment!

- Credits to Sara

Red Bug - Sentinel Treatment

Picked up some new coral colonies, but they were infested with red bugs. Contacted my vet for some interceptor, but he said he doesn't stock any but he can give me sentinel instead.

Sentinel is similar to Interceptor, but additional ingredient of lufenuron, a chitin inhibitor (insect development inhibitor). Theoretically, Sentinel should be just as effective as Interceptor in killing the red bugs, provided that the same concentration of milbemycine is supplied. Whether the lufenuron will have any side effects, good or bad, shall be seen. I wonder if the lufenuron might prevent red bug eggs from hatching, and hence, removing the requirement for further treatment.
Dustin Dorton at ORA says he was able to kill the red bugs with Sentinel (source). No additional symptoms were recorded.

The Interceptor normally used by people is the White Interceptor Flavor Tabs for 51-100 lb dogs. One tab contains 23.0 mg of milbemycin oxime. The Sentinel I received is of smaller dosage, for 25-50 lb dogs. One tab contains 11.5 mg of milbemycin oxime and 230 mg of lufenuron.
I believe each tablet weights 1.0 gram (1000 mg). Recommended dose with Interceptor is 25 mg per 10 gallons of water. Some people say 2-4X that dose is better, upwards of even 10X. Since this Sentinel contains half the amount of milbemycin, I will dose twice the amount I should have dosed Interceptor.

My quarantine tank is a half filled 20 gallon long, about 10 gallons of water volume. 0.025 g of Interceptor, meaning 0.050 g of Sentinel.
2X dose - 0.100 g of Sentinal
4X dose - 0.200 g of Sentinal
10X dose - 0.500 g of Sentinal (half the tablet)

Day 1 - 3/18
~1X dose (~0.06 g) given at 3:40pm.
6 hour mark at 9:40 pm.

1 hour mark (4:40 pm) - Tissue necrosis on base of Oregon tort frag. Superglue applied on base to attempt to stem progression of necrosis. Oregon tort frag was one of two most heavily (red bug) infested pieces. (5:10 pm) - Signs of tissue necrosis at top of frag now.
2 hour mark (5:40 pm) - Did a ~30% water change and added a small bag of carbon to attempt to stop necrosis (and prevent any others as well). I will do a big water change tomorrow and try again with another dose. No other SPS show necrosis (yet?).
3 hour mark (6:40 pm) - No further necrosis noted. Majority of red bugs no longer visible; only one bug noted on the oregon tort piece (uncertain if noted bug is dead or alive). Further treatment will be required to ensure complete eradication.

I don't believe the necrosis was caused by the lufenuron per se. The tort and one other piece was flooded with red bugs (at least 20-30 on a 1-2" piece vs the other that had maybe a handful on a ~5" colony), and I have read that red bugs mess with SPS's slime coat. Perhaps it was weakened by the red bugs, stressed by the environmental change, and the addition of medicine just brought it over the edge. Also, the oregon and one other piece didn't have flow for 24 hours, which was additional cause for stress.

6 hours later - 9:40pm: All corals look fine, except for the oregon tort still looking stressed. No further necrosis noted. No red bugs noted.

14 1X doses of Sentinel are left. Will not increase dosage for further treatment. May do further subsequent treatments for select pieces, but will leave some pieces out (no additional treatments) for observation of red bug.