How long quarrantine plecos; prophalyctic drug treatment?

[Linus_Cello]

As many of us have sadly heard from ElTofi, there seems to be an illness that wipes out loricadiaes very quickly, and with no cure. My recollection is that ElTofi said that his plecos were fine until week 5, when they started to succumb to this malady.

So how long should we quarrantine our prized plecos? My understanding was a minimum of 2 weeks. But if it took ElTofi's fish 5+ weeks for the sickness to manifest itself, should we be quarrantining at least 6 weeks, if not longer?

Also, it sounds like he only treated with Bac Pur. Should we treat with a broad based drug, such as API General Cure-all, to possibly prevent this and other illnesses?

(For those who remember, I had 2 new L-114s come down with, what was our best guess, velvet. After treating with API GC, 5 weeks later after receiving these fish and about 3 weeks from treatment, none have died so far, and they all seem to be eating)

[MatsP]

Let me start by saying that I am not one to promote treating fish unless they show illness.

As to "how long", it's terribly hard to say. If the illness is something that can lay dormant and break out with stress, then it's just as likely that the fish gets it when you move them from the QT to "new home"...

But for sure, it doesn't hurt to put them in a QT system for at least 5-6 weeks. It's not like these are short-lived fish where 6 weeks is a large proportion of their life.

--
Mats

[Shane]

I agree with Mats 100%. Never medicate as a prophylactic. I know many aquarist books recommend 2 week quarantine periods, but I normally go for 8-12 weeks.
-Shane

[apistomaster]

For another perspective, I begin treating newly imported plecos and wild Discus with praziquantel, flubendazole and metronidazole as soon as they arrive and continue it for 30 days.
My losses dropped greatly since I began this regime.
I used to lose almost every pleco from some groups of 10 or 12 before I started using this regime and now I rarely lose any.
It is safe to assume that most wild fish are infested with parasites and that they have been put through a great deal of stress since capture and working their way through the distribution system during which they are rarely fed much because it is best to ship fish with empty guts.

[MatsP]

Anti-parasitic medication would be my only exception to the rule of "do not medicate unless the fish show symptoms".

--
Mats

[Shane]

Anti-parasitic medication would be my only exception to the rule of "do not medicate unless the fish show symptoms".

It is mine as well, but then again I am collecting my own fishes straight from the wild, and even so, I limit this almost always to a saltwater dip treatment and worst case to a short formaline dip... never a medication of an aquarium used to house fishes.

It is safe to assume that most wild fish are infested with parasites

I actually would not agree with this. If you are collecting a site and fishes are coming up with lots of parasites it is clearly an unhealthy environment (for the collector as well!). One cichlid I caught the other weekend has two small parasites in her dorsal fin, but I will not treat with medications, I'll just remove them manually and put her back with the fishes she was collected with.

This is also an unsafe assumption for an aquarist that buys fish store animals. The poor things were probably already overdosed by the exporter, again by a transhipper, once more by the importer, again by the distributor, and possibly even again at the retailer. The hobbyists is probably giving the animal anywhere between its 3rd and 5th "prophylactic" treatment .
I would not tell Larry to stop doing something that seems to be working for him, but most aquarists will do more harm than good treating for nonexistent diseases.

-Shane

[MatsP]

Shane,

I agree it's a big difference between collecting fish yourself and getting them through a long chain of suppliers. And of course, if you drive for a couple of hours, catch some fish, take them home and put them in a tank, they are (probably) a lot less stressed than fish that has been flying halfway around the world and been kept in overcrowded, under-oxygenated and wrong temperature for some time as well...

To a large extent, when I buy fish here in the UK, most of the time I just put them in the tank I intend to keep them for a while. No medication, and no QT.

This can of course go wrong - see what happened to Martin S' fish when he picked up some new fish from me. And I lost some of the fish in the same purchase.

But if the fish has been in the shop for a long time, and the fish are generally healthy, then QT may not be needed.

And I don't personally treat for parasites unless I have a strong reason to believe they are there...

--
Mats

[Carp37]

I agree it's a big difference between collecting fish yourself and getting them through a long chain of suppliers. And of course, if you drive for a couple of hours, catch some fish, take them home and put them in a tank, they are (probably) a lot less stressed than fish that has been flying halfway around the world and been kept in overcrowded, under-oxygenated and wrong temperature for some time as well...

I think Mats is right here, and I think there are two issues- commercially wild-caught fish will be kept in holding tanks, possibly in suboptimal conditions, with many other conspecifics (and probably other species- I know some species are sorted pretty well to aid recapture and boxing up, but i don't know if they all are), so the chances of them coming into contact with an infected fish is quite high. In addition, as Mats states, the actual shipping process, followed by being introduced to possibly quite different water to their natural habitat on arrival at the LFS, is obviously incredibly stressful.

Despite this, I've never treated for parasites of fish on arrival- if I think fish look dodgy in a shop, I won't buy them, and if they're brand new in a shop, I'll wait a couple of weeks before buying as well. I do quarantine some fish for up to a month (basically if they're small enough to go in a 30X12X15" tank), but I've also introduced fish I'm confident about straight into my main tanks. This does mean there's always a chance of having a disaster, I'll admit.

[apistomaster]

I get over 99% of my wild fish from importers who do begin treating for parasites but I have no baseline so I establish my own.
I do not treat fish for diseases like Ich, VelveI or Fin Rot unless they are symptomatic. The meds are apparently so innocuous that the gains far out weigh the risks.

There are some fish which I would always begin treating for possible parasites no matter the source and all those would be wild Corydoras, Plecos, Pterophyllum species and Discus.