Restocking a previously diseased tank

[Silurus]

Just had velvet epidemic sweep through one of my tanks. I didn't medicate much (I did for the first few days, but it seemed to be doing more harm than good, so I stopped and just raised a water temp a little), so presumably the fishes fought off the disease successfully by themselves.

I'm just wondering if it would be wise to introduce more fish to the tank (after quarantining). Presumably, the present inhabitants would have developed some resistance to velvet, but not the new fish. Just wondering the possibility of latent spores infecting the newcomers.

[Dinyar]

My impression is that ectoparasites like velvet should not be a big problem. I'd just let a decent interval elapse -- say a month -- before re-stocking. By then, parasite levels should have fallen spontaneously to normal background levels.

The situation may be different with some bacterial and viral pathogens, where any detectable presence could be a serious problem. In those situations, it's probably best to break the tank down, clean with something like bleach or Novaqua and put it together again.

Dinyar

[zac08]

I guess the fear would mainly be that the newcomers have more pathogens on them and thereby infecting the current tank inhabitants who are slightly weakened after the fight against one disease already....