Travis: What's up guys welcome back to Fish of Hex. My name is Travis. In today's video, we're going to be talking about the pros and cons to quarantining fish and coral. It's not going to be in a list type of format more of a laid-back one-on-one discussion and so with that said let's go ahead and get started. The reason why I decided to create this video is because of the sheer amount of bad videos and advice being uploaded to our YouTube community. Anybody with a computer or a cell phone can create content, upload it, claim to be an expert and anybody can watch it and as long as it fits their narrative, they will follow that person and do what they say, do what they do regardless of the negative effects of what they say.
In this video, I want to help balance it out with all the videos out there saying that you don't need a quarantine plopping-dropping who gives a shit about pests. With all those videos, I'm going to try to really make one here that will help drive home the fact that you need to quarantine, it doesn't matter the source or where you get your fish or coral from, you need to do it point-blank period. Let's go ahead and get into it.
Okay, let's go and get started with the pros of quarantining fish. The whole purpose of quarantining a fish is to isolate that fish, keep it away from the main tank or any other fish you plan on adding to that system and observing the fish for at least four to six weeks. You can proactively treat for parasites by adding copper to the system as soon as you add the fish or you can wait for something to pop up and treat accordingly. Personally, I always have copper running in all my quarantine systems because I'd rather catch something early. That way you don't have to wait even longer after the treatment period just in case something was to pop up. What I mean by that is if you have copper in your system, you'll catch the parasite before it actually becomes a problem. If you wait two weeks and it pops up, then you have to treat for two weeks and then do a two-week observation. You're just extending your quarantine period without necessarily having to do that.
I always proactively treat and isolating the fish again is the whole reason why we quarantine. Quick tip for those of you who are looking to quarantine multiple fish without having multiple quarantine tanks. I recommend that you buy those fish of a similar species and put them in one tank, that way that the treatment process is going to be pretty similar between the two fish. If you're going to a couple tangs, put them together. If you're going to buy Damsels or Clownfish put them together and Mandarin, Go-bees all sorts of stuff. I would put them in different tanks because they can be more sensitive to copper than other species. Being able to isolate species and fish in the same tank is definitely going to be beneficial and increase your odds of getting through the quarantine process. Another pro to quarantining your fish to give them a chance to come in, calm down through their stressful journey, giving them a fresh start and allowing them to get healthy and buildup their immune system before plopping them in your tank where there could be potentially other tangs that are very aggressive or there just might be something in there that causes stress and could eventually kill that fish. Giving them a fresh start is definitely one of the pros to quarantining. One last pro to quarantining fish is just giving them the best chance of success and knowing that you've done so. Having a tank that is parasite-free is an awesome feeling and it's something that not a lot of people can say that they do. I will say that once you do that knowing that your fish are as healthy as they could possibly be, you're are going to watch them grow. They're going to have great coloration even though they're stress in the tank they're still going to survive.
You guys have asked me about this yellow tang several times. Why is he so skinny? He must be sick. He's not sick. Basically, to give you a rundown, he was put in that tank early on. He was very fat, he was very healthy and then he was very aggressive. He killed another tang, you guys didn't hear about that but he killed another tang and then I added more tangs after I got them through quarantine and they turned on him because he was so aggressive. During that process, he just is stressed out all the time. I've tried to remove him from the tank and I can't do it without destroying this tank. If he lets me catch him, I will remove him, put him in quarantine and then put him up for sale or maybe just throw him in the frag tank. For now, he's in there, he is stressed out. He doesn't eat too often because the other fish are always kicking his ass. That's the life of karma. When you are mean to other people and you treat other people badly or same thing in the fish world. It's going to come back to bite you and unfortunately, that's what he's dealing with but no, he's not sick, he's just not eating because the other fish are always kicking his ass. Hopefully, that answers the question about the yellow tang.
Let's go to move on to the pros of quarantining your coral. I will say that probably 98% of the people within our community do not do this. Basically, it's just like quarantining fish but worse. People don't want to put in the money to have the right lighting or make sure the tank is stable. They don't want to deal with all that but usually when they add a coral and they end up getting a pest like an Acropora eating flatworm or they get the Montipora eating nudibranch or the salt eating nudibranch. When you get something that bad that can really devastate a tank, I guarantee your wish that you spend all the money to set up a proper system to take care of the corals. It really doesn't take much. I quarantine my Acropora in a small tank you guys saw that video. I will link it. I think it's in the description of all the coral on my website and I just used tank water from my 300 because it's stable, it's consistent and it will take care of those Acropora while they're going through that whole process that might not be as stable as if they were in the 300. Regardless, isolating those corals and making sure that they're pest free is going to be your best chance of success regardless of how much coral you have in the tank or if you're just starting out or maybe you have a whole tank full of coral already.
The difference between coral quarantine and fish quarantine is how you proactively treat. You're not be putting any medications into a coral quarantine tank but what you should be doing is removing the plug or disc in which the coral came in on because a lot of eggs and pests tend to stay on the frag disc or plug. Removing that and just starting off with the actual coral itself, putting it in on a new frag plug is always the best option. That's why I send two extra frag plugs as well as coral dip with all the purchases from my website. I send that stuff, you don't have to use it but it's there and it's the aid you in being successful. I'm trying to set people up for success and hence the really the reason why I'm making this video in the first place. That's pretty much it for the pros of quarantining your fish and coral and it really just comes down to isolating them, observing them, making sure that they're healthy and ready to go into your main display, ensuring that they will be successful in the long run. That's really what we're looking at it's the long run and the end game of the hobby. Making sacrifices early on for short-term enjoyment and relief and just getting through the whole process as quickly as possible. It's not worth the risk and the sacrifice of long-term success. Well just go ahead and keep that in mind.
Okay, let's go to move on to the cons of quarantining fish and coral. There really isn't many. At least nothing on the side of the fish and the coral. There's so many more benefits to actually doing it opposed to not. Basically, the con of the whole process is you as a person. Your decision-making and your overall thought process of the hobby and what you think about when it comes to fish and coral. What your thought process is. One way to look at this is you got to step back and stop thinking about fish and coral as just fish and coral. You got to think about them as animals because that's what they are. You need to treat them with a certain amount of respect and for a person that is deciding to pull them out of the wild, bring them into your house and keep them in a glass box full of water, you are responsible for their well-being. They might not have feelings or personalities, I guess, "as we as humans do" but you need to treat them with the same respect. Of course, I understand that humans don't always necessarily treat other humans with respect, I just said that so you could start thinking of them as more than just fish and coral.
The next thing I want to touch on here is it's not always about you. What I mean by that is it's not about instant gratification of having a tank full or coral or having all your fish at one time in the tank. It's not about you, it's about making good decisions now not only to benefit yourself in the long run but to benefit the fish and the coral that you, again, are taking out of the wild for your own pleasure. You need to stop thinking about yourself, make good decisions because guess what the world doesn't evolve around you. It's about something much bigger. Trust me at the end of the day if you were in the same position as the fish was and there was somebody else fucking jumping around juggling your life, what decision would you want them to make?
With that said, I'm going to move on to the last part of the video and it's just something that I tell my clients and people who are just not sure if they want to quarantine their fish or coral. Basically, it really works for people who have kids and can understand the emotions that you have with children and it's very simple. Imagine if you are in the hospital, you just waited nine months your kid was born. The doctor takes the kid away, does a bunch of tests and tells you that, "Hey, we found a disease" or viral or whatever you want to call it "and we have to keep the kid here for the next four to six weeks hooked up to machines with medication to make sure that it's completely gone before you can take the child home. You don't have to do this but be warned if you don't make this sacrifice now by not being able to take your kid home this instant, there's a chance that in the future if their immune system is ever weakened, maybe they went to school for the first time they got sick from another kid, there's a chance that this viral or this disease can pop back up. They could get sick and potentially die. You don't have to wait this time but we recommend that you do". You could always take the child home now and just live with that in the back of your mind. It's the same thing with fish, you don't have to quarantine. They might be healthy now with no signs of illness but knowing in the future that anything that may be your power outage or something happened to cause stress in the tank that could potentially cause their immune system to be weakened. The egg parasite can come back and it could potentially kill them. Now, would you let your kid deal with that? Right? Would you let your kid go through that? Would you suck it up and say, "Yes, you can keep them here as long as you want them to be as long as that they're healthy and I can take them home Or just take them home because you're selfish and you want to have the baby home and you want to live their life and start everything and just be merry old family. It's all about decisions. Now, that is an extreme- It is putting children to fish and stuff like that, but sometimes, you need to say these things so people can wake up and understand that it's not about you, it's about the life and the health of your animals that you are keeping in your tank.
That's about it for this video. I'm done rambling. I probably pissed off half the community, and I'm really interested to see how many people stop watching once I started bitching. I have to check those videos because I love seeing when people are like, "I can't handle this man. Grown-up shit's too tough on me. Anyway, that's about it for this video. I'll see you guys next week. Peace.
