I decided to add some more Maldives lyretail anthias to my system. I’m seeing a lot of successful reefs and natural photography that show anthias and blue green chromis schooling together. I ordered 5 small female anthias and 7 blue green chromis. So here is the rub…
I’m worried that the females will spend the entire QT process bickering in a relatively small space. If one starts to turn male, there will be a real problem when I release them to a tank with a 7-year old established male and female.
I’m also worried the chromis will pick each other off one by one without the presense of more mature tank mates.
So if you absolutely had to skip quarantine, how would you handle the fish? Preventative baths? Freshwater dips?
Most chromis won’t school in our tanks. There will eventually just be one. There are a few exceptions of course.
As for QT… Sorry, but there’s no shortcuts to proper quarantine. One option would be to QT your current anthias with the new ones. It is risky for the existing fish but you’d have a male in there to prevent them from changing. What is the time it takes for the transition to happen? Is it shorter than a QT cycle?
the sex change can happen in a matter of days. my females challenged each other within 2 days of the male dying. the dominate female began changing color a day later. I took progression pics and cataloged it on the fb forum. it was under 2 weeks.
I’ve got 5 new anthias and 7 new chromis acclimating! Good old live aquaria shipped at 1.019. These guys are actually small enough that I’m not worried they are going to sex change in the near future so I setup a 34 gallon quarantine for them using aged tank water and plenty of biological filtration from my main system.
oh, and a pic of chromis not schooling lol
Fish school when they’re stressed or scared. The issue is when they are settled into the tank.
Which QT method are you following?
[quote=“TheEngineer, post:8, topic:8941”]
Fish school when they’re stressed or scared. The issue is when they are settled into the tank.
Which QT method are you following?[/quote]
The scared part, for sure. They were still hanging around together this morning.
Which methods were you referring to? I was just going to keep an eye on them for the next 2-3 weeks and do 25% weekly changes from my display.
I’m actually doing a QT presentation at the next meeting…I wish I had my slides ready. I’d offer to send them to you. 
I started putting a series of blog posts together about it on my website too, but I’ve only posted the first one about equipment.
Observation is probably the most important aspect, so you are right on the money there! You can watch for signs of velvet (fish look dusty), ich (fish have spots, similar to velvet), internal parasites (white stringy poop), hole-in-the-head (fish look bruised/sunken head), etc… Since ich can hide in the fish’s gills the conservative approach is to always assume it is there.
The simplest method with the least stress on the fish is the tank transfer method. With TTM you move the fish from one tank to another tank a few times over the course of a couple weeks. Finally a month of observation and you are done. It guarantees they are ich free at the end. TTM is only effective against ich though, so if velvet or internal parasites are present, you must medicate.
If you have velvet, there are a few treatment regimens that work. It starts with a freshwater bath, followed a Rally bath (or something similar to Rally). Finally they stay in QT at therapeutic copper or Chloroquine phosphate levels for 14 days. Not all fish tolerate copper, so you’d need to weigh which copper product to use. CP is safe for all fish, but requires a prescription from a vet.
Internal parasites can be treated with metroplex and focus in the food.
I just had a batch of chromis with every single one of these ailments. It was one treatment after the next. Glad the pests didn’t make it into my tank. :-)###
There are a few great threads over on Reef2Reef from the guy who came up with these methods, Humblefish. It is in the Fish Disease Diagnosis and Treatment forum.
I wanted to get an opinion on this. One of the anthias has a small, internal growth on his dorsal fin. I tried to get a good picture of it. It is internal and seems to match the coloration of the surrounding tissue. Thoughts?
It is inside the fin? Are you sure?
positive that it is inside. it looks like a spine was injured and has a little growth around it.
That’s a new one for me. Haven’t heard of that before. Just keep an eye on it for signs of infection.
How are the fish looking, Jason?
Fish have all moved into the display. The little bump on the anthias disappeared. The chromis are inseparable. They formed a school that hangs out right in the front-center of my display. The adult male anthias took control of the new females on day one and likes to keep the ladies from straying too far apart. There is so much color and movement now, I’m thrilled. Had to put an auto-feeder on the tank to keep everyone happy while I’m at work. The other benefit is that all my other fish who used to hide all the time seem
having a hell of a time trying to post a pic for some reason
Very nice picture. Tank is looking great!!! :
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