QT for Corals

[hamdogg08]

I'm familiar with the practice of putting new fish in a quarantine tank, but what about corals? Don't they carry bugs that you don't want in your tank as well? How do you take care of that problem?

[David Grigor]

There aren't any major pests that I'm aware of for softies and LPS. Outside of the red/orange flatworms that are harmless but become an eyesore in plague proportions.

Wild caught zoanthids have some nasty nudis that eat them.
Montis have some nudi or some funky looking little white thing that eats them.
Acros have red bugs and acro eating flatworms.

So those for sure should be dipped and quarantined. Idealy you want the quarantine to have the same conditions as possible with the show tank. Especially important for acros is to have good lighting for the quarantine as they may need to stay in there for months until deemed clean.

[hypertech]

It also seems to me that if you don't quarantine them fishless for 6 weeks that if the system they came from had an ich parasite and it was on the frag, your system now has the ich parasite in it despite your fish QT.

Is that right?

[mrbill]

I had problems with sea spiders that came in on some soft coral. Wiped out my two big condy anemonies.

[David Grigor]

It also seems to me that if you don't quarantine them fishless for 6 weeks that if the system they came from had an ich parasite and it was on the frag, your system now has the ich parasite in it despite your fish QT.

Is that right?


There is an amount of time that ich without a host will perish. I don't recall exactly what that is. But the chances of ich coming in on frag is not very likely and even if so, providing your fish are healthy, eating a good diet, good water parameters and otherwised not stressed it won't pose a problem anyhow.