| I think that as long as your purchasing healthy livestock and selective about your purchases, you'll do much better in the end. QTing is stressfull to the fish and inverts, but in some cases maybe something that should be doe more often. I'm actually less worried about QTing fish and inverts than I am about bringing hitch hikers. there was a brief period of time where alot of stores here in St Louis had flat worm problems. I was given some Macro algae to to get my refugium up and running and recieved some of those as well. I took care of them by Flatworm exit (Salifert) and was happy for a few months. Then an OD on iodine caused my pod population to crash. I once again got some Macro from a friend and got some new different flatworms as hitch hikers. I dont think that they are coral eaters as these look totally different than the previous, but I still dont like 'em. They almost resemble the old Star Trek symbol that was on everyones shirt in the original Star Trek series...Sorta like a fat filled in letter A, w/ the apex being the mouth or oral cavity. They've moved from my refugium to the display tank, but the 6 line wrasse is keeping them under control there. I will be dipping every rock, and new aquisiton to my new 58 in water treated w/ MASSIVE doses of Flatworm Exit to prevent them from making the transition on any rockwork. I treated my 20 w/ flatworm exit shortly after I noticed them originally but they seemed to require quadruple doses in order to get them to die off. I went so heavy on the Flatworm Exit that my snails and bristleworms were grokked out for a few days...unfortunately some of the lil boogers survived, and have since repoplulated my 'fuge....
I may have to use a freshwater dip on my larger pieces of rock work that dont have Zoos growing or star polyps....I know that it'll kill my liverock, but that should repoplulate when placed back in a tank stocked w/ otherwise fresh liverock...
Nick |