New To Reefing

[Maddclimb]

I've been visiting a few of the local fish stores in Melbourne and found that a lot of the stores I'm visiting, the fish don't seem too healthy (i.e., lethargic and have spots on them). Other than having a quarantine tank, how do you guys prevent diseases into the main tank? Is freshwater dipping successful at all? or any kind of chemical dip before quarantining?
I just want to remove anything that's on the fish before putting into a tank.
Or maybe any suggestions of fish stores where they quarantine fish perhaps?

 

[ReeferRob]

I quarantine EVERYTHING because I import direct and I could lose $10-20,000 in a few days, it's happened before. If you're seeing spotty fish, you need to shop elsewhere. Set up another system, watch the fish, FEED the fish as most of the time you're dealing with malnutrition of one sort or another. Fish are fasted for 2-3 days before they're shipped so you need to get some meat on their bones as we say up here in the USA. Keeping the parameters stable is another big factor with stressed fish. Keep the salinity around 1.020-1.022 to start, then slowly bring it up to what your display is. Same with temp, keep it as stable as you can. I'm not a huge fan of freshwater dips other than extreme cases. I use Praziquantel on every new fish that comes to the shop no matter where it came from. Internal parasites are a HUGE drain on an animals resistance to disease.

 

[SantaMonicaHelp]

Super late reply...

Once you have your fish population set up, don't change or add anything. The current fish will become very healthy an will be able to fight off most diseases naturally.