Dear fishlover:
In its simplest form, quarantining pipefish simply involves introducing them to a quarantine tank (with the same aquarium parameters as the tank they will be eventually going in) all by themselves for a period of several weeks to assure that they aren’t carrying any diseases. The idea is that any health problems the wild fish have will manifest themselves in isolation during this quarantine tank, where they can be treated with the appropriate medications without affecting the health of the rest of the fishes in your display tank. While they are in quarantine, some hobbyists will also treat wild fish prophylactically for internal parasites using praziquantel or metronidazole, and for an external parasites using formalin bath(s) and/or freshwater dip.
A bare-bottomed, 10-gallon aquarium with plenty of hitching posts will suffice for a Quarantine Tank (QT). Ideally, the hospital tank should have one or more foam filters for biofiltration along with a small external filter, which can easily be removed from the tank during treatment but which can hold activated carbon or polyfilter pads when it’s time to pull the meds out. It’s important for the hospital ward to include enough hitching posts so that the seahorse wont feel vulnerable or exposed during treatment. Aquarium safe, inert plastic plants or homemade hitching posts fashioned from polypropylene rope or twine that has been unraveled and anchored at one end are excellent for a hospital tank. No aquarium reflector is necessary. Ambient room light will suffice. (Bright lights can breakdown and inactivate certain medications and seahorses are more comfortable and feel more secure under relatively dim lighting.)
So just a bare 10-gallon tank with hitching posts is all you need for your quarantine tank, Carlos. No heater. No reflector. No lights. No substrate. You can even do without and external filter if you wish, just adding a couple of airstones to provide surface agitation and oxygenation. That’s it.
Since there are no corals in your tank presently, it usually isn’t necessary to enforce a strict quarantine on corals and most other invertebrates that will be going into your seahorse tank. For one thing, corals and invertebrates in general are not susceptible to the same pathogens and parasites that plague seahorses and other marine fishes. If they were carrying any of the parasites that could bother seahorses, it would be as hitchhikers, and that’s unlikely because those same parasites normally cannot survive long without a suitable fish host. So there is relatively little danger of introducing seahorse parasites via live coral.
Secondly, corals and inverts in general cannot tolerate the usual prophylactic measures we apply to marine fishes when we quarantine them. For example, many types of invertebrates cannot withstand hyposalinity let alone a freshwater dip. Nor do they tolerate the usual chemi-therapeutic agents we normally use to cleanse quarantined fish of parasites, such as formalin, malachite green, copper sulfate, dylox, etc.. So there would be very little we could do to treat corals or other invertebrates prophylactically or preventively even if we quarantined them indefinitely.
Best of luck with your future seahorses and their tankmates, Carlos! It is absolutely the best policy to quarantine any wild fishes, or fish obtained from your LFS, before you introduce them to your seahorse tank so it is very conscientious of you to make sure you know how to quarantine them before you consider adding any tankmates.
Respectfully,
Pete Giwojna
Ocean Rider, Inc. is an Organic Hawaiian-Based Seahorse Aqua-Farm & Aquarium that Follows Strict Good Farming Practices in Raising Seahorses and Other Aquatic Life.
