CUC quarentine

[soily]

I dont know wether you remember my posts but last year i got ich in my tank from ignorance and poor advice. I posted and followed lee's instructions and all is now fine almost 12 months ich free and a constantly running quarentine tank. So thanks again.

My question ? Well i have had a few losses of my cuc snails and one or two crabs. I dont think there is anything wrong other than natural causes but i now need to replenish the cuc so do i need to quarentine snails, crabs ect i'm sure i read a thread on this but i cannot find it again. I know from my earlier problems the ich is a parasite that live on the fish and only fish but what if the free floating stage is in the water that the cuc are transported in ? And come to think of it in water that a new coral is in ?

May be a dumb question and has probably been answered but im not risking anything in my display tank

 

[imaccat]

Soily,

I don't put any water from the LFS into my tank and I think you will find most other people don't either. When you acclimatise your fish, corals or CUC you should always add the DT/QT water to the bag/bucket that the new purchase is in. Once acclimatised just transfer the animal, without any water to the DT/QT.

Good luck

 

[soily]

Iain thanks for the reply, yes thats what i do. I drip water from the dt/qt tank into the bag then tip the animal into a bowl, net, then put into the tank. I know it would only be a small amount of residual water but for a snail ect but say a large colt coral would have a significant amount. Maybe it can be disregarded but just thought i'd ask.

 

[imaccat]

Ok, sorry I mis-understood, it sounded like you were putting all the water in, (which is what I used to do years ago, until I learnt better!!)

I guess the added protection is to do a 'final rinse' in pure DT/QT water just before adding to the tank, but I'm not sure if this may stress them out more.

 

[leebca]

The free-swimming and 'off-the-fish' stages of Marine Ich's lifecycle can be found in a droplet of water so small, it can easily be missed by the unaided human eye.

If the clean up crew has come from water with fish in it, or connected to tanks with fish, then the greatest way to guarantee no contamination of Marine Ich is a 6-week quarantine before adding to your display/marine system.

When you reduce the amount of water they are in, you reduce the likelihood of contamination, but the snails and crabs and many other of the clean up crew will 'seal themselves' off (retracting into a shell for instance) and capture so the possibly contaminated water in their shell, which the rinsing and transfer doesn't get at.

Without a quarantine process for all marine additions to a display/system, anything short of quarantine is as much of a risk as you want to take. Like getting Marine Ich in the first place -- it's not a matter of whether or not it will happen, but just when it will happen next -- without a quarantine procedure.

In professional/large public and private aquariums, everything is quarantined.

 

[ALreefer]

I have been curious of this as well. What is a good source of food for various snails? Nuisance algae is hard to grow when you want it to.

 

[soily]

Thanks lee i kind of thought that would be the case. You beat me to the next question al lol, what do you feed the little fellers for the quarentine period

 

[leebca]

Put macro algae into the quarantine tank -- the kind you buy from your LFS for fish.

You can also harvest algae from your aquarium. Freeze it for 48 hours. Thaw it and put it in your QT.

This is the only value of the so-called 'algae' wafers and pellets. Put those in that sink.

I use a refugium to supply greens to my quarantined marine lifeforms. Just remember to freeze the veggies first to kill off the larger parasites and organisms.

Omnivore and carnivore clean up crew is easy to feed -- pieces of marine life obtained from your grocery store will do nicely. In this post on starting up the aquarium, is listed how to feed clean up crew at the start of a new aquarium:
http://www.reefsanctuary.com/forums...arting-your-first-fo-fowlr-marine-system.html

 

[Orcrone]

During the six week quarantine process is there anything to look out for? Or are you just allowing time for any parasites to die?

 

[leebca]

Nothing to look for. Time will kill off this obligate parasite. No fish + time = death.

 

[soily]

As always lee thanks.

 

[Orcrone]

How about quarantine of corals? Six weeks also?

 

[leebca]

All marine life should be quarantined. As for invertebrates that are immobile, you'll need to get advice from those in the Reef Forums. You quarantine for the 'worst' (one that requires the longest time to manifest itself) pathogen, infection, or parasite and then look also for the rest.