May 06, 2016

Unshakable belief and the practice of quarantine...

It's funny how we, as fish people, want very badly to "trust" others.

Huh?

I bring up the topic of quarantine once again because I just talked to a friend who lost almost all of the fish in his beautiful tank because he wanted so badly to believe that his fish were from a great source who would never sell him a sick fish, and..

Well, you get the picture. And the thing is, the supplier IS a great guy. The issue is not the supplier being a "bad guy" because the fish were sick...it's that the fish were sick and not quarantined before being introduced into my friend's tank.

Simple as that.

Quarantine is a very polarizing thing. And it reveals a lot about our "fishy personalities", IMHO. Well, for example, I was skimming a forum I participate in not too long ago, and the topic of the conversation was "How long do you quarantine new fish?" A good topic, which usually creates a fair amount of invigorating discussion from multiple viewpoints. There is a definite faction of hobbyists that steadfastly refuse to quarantine anything they buy for any reason.

And, there is that segment which absolutely quarantines everything, regardless of who or where they purchase the fish from.

Those are sort of the fringes, interestingly. Because (well, at least on this thread, but it seems fairly common in threads and discussions I've seen on this topic) that the vast majority of hobbyists are in this middle ground, where their default setting is, "Well, if the fish are from a source I trust, I typically won't quarantine them."

Shocking? Well, to me, kinda. Because the hobbyists in group 1 are typically the "high roller" type, who "go big or go home" when it comes to fish buys, tank setups, whatever. They just sort of "go for it" and whatever the consequences of their actions are, they generally don't complain. They simply accept them as part of the game. Strange, because they don't have to "accept" these consequences, but whatever.

The hobbyists who quarantine everything without exception, curiously enough, are typically the ones who you see breeding all of the crazy fish, having 30 tank fish rooms, and generally being the "go to" hobbyists in their area. It just always seems to be that way.

Sure, you have the "crossover anomalies"- the super successful breeder-type who seldom quarantines, flies in the face of convention, and still manages to breed and rear tons of fishes successfully.

However, guys like that are usually the exceptions.

The vast majority of hobbyists seem to just want to believe that "everything will be ok" if they choose the right fish, buy from the right place, pay enough money...It's like many hobbyists simply wish that there was this "thing" that would make it all okay.

It's a human behavioral sort of thing, I think. We want to believe in the overriding good of people.

Or maybe we're just lazy.

Could be.

Bottom line- just because someone's fish get yours sick doesn't mean that your supplier is not "good people." It just means that the fish were sick, and that you didn't take proper preventative measures.