Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

1. Quarantine tank

2. Dose salt to 3 ppt (will depend on fish tolerance of course...)

3. Wait 4 weeks to see if any disease show up...

That's all?

I'm also using Melafix for the first 7 days on the goldies along with 1 ppt of sea salt. One of the goldies started getting a black mark on the right side of its gills.

I no longer do any quarantine at all. I just remove sick fish.

Yeah that's what I'd do if I built a pure food system, but I'm housing pet fish. I don't think I'll be making a real AP system for both plant and fish food for a long while...

Could a mod please move this post to the fish disease section, if that would be more appropriate?

You don't necessarily even need to up the salt or add any medications. Simply keeping the fish in a separate isolated system for a period of time 3-6 weeks to make sure they don't show signs of illness before putting them into a bigger system with fish you already have.

See this is the main reason to keep them quarantined, is so that you don't accidentally put a diseased fish in with healthy fish you already have invested time and money in.

About the only reason to quarantine fish before putting them in a brand new system is to make sure you don't introduce a parasite like ich which would then require some extra effort to eliminate but it can be done.

The truth is, most fish diseases are all around all the time and the fish only get sick when they are stressed or the water quality gets bad. Quarantine won't protect fish from those, keeping the conditions and water quality good for the fish will help them there.

+1

Also, if the fish are stressed and thus are susceptible to pre-existing minor infections, the salt etc can help them recover and become stable/healthy before adding them into the main tank.

Ok so for my main fish tank I'll keep the salt ppm at low concentrations; 1.0 ppm for my not-common goldfish. And 2.0 ppm in the Q. tank.

One of my goldiest developed black spots on its tail and his pelvic and anal fins - both on the left side, and a larger dark spot on the right gill. I think it might have been from the spike in temperature. I'm using a too big a heater in my small Q. tank and the temps increased overnight by 8 F rather than 3F that I wanted. The ammonia levels hover in the <0.25 to 0.5 ... I gotta do 40% water changes every day

pH doesn't look too good either. It's either 7.6, 7.7, 7.8, or 7.9 lol.