Our quarantine, start to finish
Why we run it this way
Every step below targets a specific threat — the parasites, flukes, and infections that ride in on new fish and wipe out established tanks. None of it is improvised. It's the same sequence of baths, medications, and observation that careful reefkeepers have refined over years, run identically on every fish, and written out here in full so you can see exactly what your order went through before it shipped.
The baths, before anything else
Fish arrive stressed, often with parasites already on them and ammonia burn from the bag. After a slow acclimation, each fish gets a prophylactic bath before it ever touches a quarantine system. A hydrogen peroxide or formalin bath knocks parasites loose; a methylene blue bath treats ammonia burn, cuts, and abrasions. Fish prone to Uronema, chromis and anthias especially, always get the formalin bath. The two baths are never combined.
Thirty days in copper
Each fish goes straight into 2.0 ppm Copper Power, raised to a therapeutic 2.2–2.3 ppm over the first day or two. That range is the sweet spot: high enough to work, low enough not to poison the fish. Copper treats ich and velvet, the two parasites responsible for most sudden tank wipeouts. We hold therapeutic copper for a full thirty days and verify the level every morning with a Hanna copper checker. If a reading comes back out of range, that system's thirty-day clock starts over. Copper isn't something you can eyeball, which is exactly why it's the backbone of the protocol: there's a test kit for it.
Metronidazole alongside it
Copper doesn't touch everything. Once a fish is at full therapeutic copper, metronidazole runs concurrently to cover Brooklynella and Uronema, dosed on the schedule the protocol lays out. Uronema-prone species can get formalin here instead as the stronger option.
Observation, and only then deworming
After the copper cycle, the fish moves to a clean observation system, well clear of any tank still in treatment, for two to four weeks. This is the window where anything copper masked has room to show itself, and where we deworm with praziquantel, dosed twice per the treatment calendar to catch flukes and their eggs. We don't blindly treat for internal worms without symptoms; the observation period is what tells us whether more is needed.
Ten feet between systems
Ich and velvet can travel on aerosolized droplets, so a cleared fish sitting next to a treatment tank isn't actually safe. The protocol calls for a ten-foot radius between systems to account for it, and our room is laid out that way. Each system has its own nets, siphons, and buckets, and work always moves from clean systems toward tanks still in treatment, never the other direction.
Eating comes before listing
Surviving quarantine isn't the whole bar. A fish also has to be eating prepared food before it goes up for sale, and the finicky species, your copperbands and mandarins, are held until they're reliably taking frozen or pellet. Each listing notes what that specific fish is eating so you know what you're getting.
When a fish doesn't clear
It repeats the stage it failed. Symptoms in observation send it back to treatment; a copper reading out of range resets the thirty days. Some fish spend well over eight weeks here, and some are never listed at all. The clear date on a listing means every stage was passed in order, not that a calendar ran out.
How your order ships
Because the protocol ends with a fish that's already been observed disease-free and eating, you can add it to a matched display without another full quarantine, though a short observation at home never hurts. Orders ship Monday through Wednesday only, FedEx Priority Overnight, so nothing sits in a depot over a weekend. Fish are bagged with oxygen, packed in insulated boxes with a heat or cold pack matched to the forecast, and every box includes an acclimation card. If anything looks wrong on arrival, the guarantee covers it.