The Importance of Quarantine for Coral Frags, Fishes and Invertebrates

On many of the pages of this site we mention quarantining the online coral frags you purchase from us but we provide little context for this, except to mention that we strongly recommend it. So, we thought we’d provide a list of very practical reasons why every coralhead should have a separate quarantine system and why it is worth the time, expense and space considerations to have one. Many will tell you that a separate system is not really necessary for quarantining newly acquired corals, invertebrates and fish but from our professional perspective, they’re simply playing Russian Roulette with their system and everything living in it. Here are just a few reasons why you should always quarantine new arrivals for at least thirty days before adding them to other systems.

• Biosecurity – Biosecurity is a term used by aquatic animal health professionals and applies to many aspects of animal husbandry, such as:
  • Sanitizing and rinsing nets and other tools between uses and/or designating tools for each system to prevent them from transporting parasites from one system to another
  • Wiping system water off your arms and washing and rinsing them when working on multiple systems
  • Having top-of-mind awareness about the potential for unknowingly moving fish and coral parasites from one infected tank to another during routine maintenance or adding new acquisitions.
• Careful Observation – One of the many joys of adding a new coral frag, fish, or invertebrate to your system is watching and learning their new behaviors and how they interact with their new environment. For the first week at least, careful coralheads are keeping a very watchful eye to see if anything unexpected also got imported along with the new arrivals. Quarantining new specimens in a designated quarantine system allows you to observe new specimens much more closely, especially if you have a coral viewing pane or magnifier, which can help spot tiny hitchhikers.
• Imperiling your whole display and everything in it – Online forums are full of posts where reefkeepers are pleading for advice on how to remove, eradicate and prevent common coral pests from eating, outcompeting, or otherwise wrecking the coral reef display that they’ve worked so hard and invested so much time and money to create. It only takes one gravid parasite to release thousands of eggs and entire coral colonies, fish collections, etc. can disappear in a very short period of time. Like we said in the intro, not following strict quarantine protocols is like playing Russian Roulette with your whole display and everything in it. It’s only a matter of time…
• Ease of capture, isolation and treatment – If you spot parasites on a new fish or coral frag, it is much, much easier to remove them from a quarantine system for isolation and treatment than it is from a coral display with dozens of nooks and crannies. Anyone who has ever tried to remove a specific fish from his or her reef display knows this all too well.
• Simply smart and practical – For all the reasons listed above and many more, quarantining animals of any kind for at least 30 days is simply smart and practical and can save hours (and hundreds or thousands of dollars) in heartache, tedium and stress. Think about it this way: The new online coral frag you bought from us or fish from your LFS undergoes some stress while being captured, bagged and transported to your home or business no matter how healthy it is and carefully it is handled. This stress weakens the immune response and provides a perfect opportunity for a parasite to ramp up production. Would you rather that the outbreak occurred in your quarantine system with oversized UV sterilization and protein skimming or your reef display that you have carefully cultivated for years?

We Want to Help Protect You from Disease and Parasite Outbreaks

We want our customers to be successful with reefkeeping and go above and beyond to help ensure that our online coral frags do not introduce coral pests and diseases to their systems. Even though we check each frag we sell multiple times and have robust filtration on our holding systems to help prevent this, there simply is no way to be 100% sure that each frag is not hiding a coral pest. This is why we strongly recommend that all our customers set up, maintain and use a dedicated quarantine system and adhere to strict protocols. We know it’s hard to be patient after you’ve just acquired a new specimen but it’s much harder to deal with a pathogen outbreak and watch entire coral colonies melt before your eyes. As the old saying goes, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” We hope this inspires you to set up your own quarantine system. It’s absolutely worth it. Thanks for reading.