Giving a fish away...

T

treemaker

AC Members
Jan 22, 2006
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This may sound like a really crazy question, so bear with me.

I have read many horror stories on these forums about people losing their stock because they bought a new fish or plant and a disease was present.
I have a common Plecostomus that a friend of mine with a larger tank wants and I am wondering if the same rules of quarantine need to be followed if the fish comes from my healthy aquarium and goes into his. I have always assumed that a quarantine is most useful when you purchase from the LFS because they always have stock turnover and disease may not show up before the fish is sold.

So...if my aquarium has been running for months trouble free, am I pretty safe making the switch?

Thanks.
 
yup you are pretty safe. Always remember to acclimatise the fish into the new tank though.
 
This would be pretty much the same as if you were moving a fish amongst two of your own tanks.
 
This is a really interesting question... to me, it seems that there would still be risks. For instance, if your fish had built up a resistance to something... introducing it to the new tank and fish which had NOT built up the resistance could be extremely detrimental.

I don't have specific fish examples... i'm drawing my experience more from the human world. But bacteria and viruses can be more or less detrimental to individuals, depending on their prior exposure, level of health, age and a miriad of other factors.

Just my 2cents... but it seems that these issues would still apply.
 
Good point CoverMe but all (well most) tanks will have background levels of a lot of the bacteria and other diseases. If the fish is happy, healthy and not too stressed it should be fine with its own immune system. The only thing is that transport can stress out your fish and so can trigger a disease because the immune system is not working at full strength and the background level of the disease can attack the weak fish.

For best results try to keep your fish happy and unstressed during transport and acclimatise it slowly and thoroughly to its new tank.
 
Thanks everyone. The fish is active and healthy, so I am pretty confident that everything will run smoothly. It even gets the added benefit of a larger aquarium to hide in.
 
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