Do I have to quarantine my first fish?

If you are setting up your first tank, you can theoretically add new fish directly into the aquarium without setting up a separate quarantine tank since there are no existing animals to protect. One situation where you might want to use a separate hospital fish tank is if your aquarium is very large and the fish are small enough to go in a scaled-down quarantine setup. It will cost less money to dose medication in a smaller volume of water rather than an entire display tank.

Another instance would be if your main aquarium is full of live plants or snails. In cases where the quarantine med trio does not seem to be effective, we often turn to aquarium salt as a second line of defense. Since plants and snails generally do not like high concentrations of salt, it would be best to move your fish to another container for treatment.

For complete instructions on setting up a quarantine tank, read our full article here.