Just to let everyone here know if not aware, my shop (Bay Bridge Aquarium in Oakland), i
also a BAR sponsor, and we also do super personalized special order 30 day QT on any fish orderable. Since we moved shops some months ago, we have built up a brand new setup from the ground up with a new system. We take orders from nationwide and ship often with FedEx or Southwest. Here's the setup:
We have a modular system in a separate back area of the shop (if you've come here and haven't asked about what we do, it's behind the wall and takes up nearly 25% of the shop, you can't see it and it's not open to walk around) with anywhere from 50 to 75 tanks so far, it's still growing and being built, each from 10g to 40g, and each is individually drilled and plumbed in isolation. No sharing. Water is on tap by valve to each tank. It comes from a separate mixing tub plumbed from the main RoDI and Salt tanks, and heated and blended as desired. Medication of choice can be added directly. I generally keep 5mg/gal of Chloroquine Phosphate as a baseline I use on all fish without toxicity issues (but this is not an effective dose alone). Each tank is plumbed to drain to the sewer. There's no sump and no recycling of water. When a fish dies or is done, we drain it all and clean and bleach it to hell. Depending on the fish, it's often one fish per tank in these.
Fish can get hydrogen peroxide baths in-situ by partially draining to reduce volume and then rapidly drained again to discard oxidized waste, and ultra aerated rapidly to blast off remaining H2O2, and new water filled back up in place. The same is occasionally done with Cipro or other medications as needed. Depending on the fish, medications vary. My preferred medication is Chloroquine Phosphate. CP concentration can be measured using a UV spectrophotometer. I have completly stopped using copper. There is too much copper resistant velvet out there and it's a huge pain to eradicate. The fish will heal up and eat and behave just fine, without any visible signs of anything and build up a ton of antibodies to it, then it may not rear its head back for many months only to infect the rest of the tank later on when immunity falls or a clean fish without built up immunity acts as a reservoir and protozoan load skyrockets and overwhelms the entire tank. It is easy to identify on the fish with a fin sample via microscope, and I do this here, and also happy to check out any customer's dead fish.
The fish get huge water changes daily by simply opening a valve and then new water is available on tap. They are not cycled; ammonia is kept neutralized and the volume changes keep it in check. Moving to a new sterilized tank to TTM is also easy and sometimes done on sensitive fish or after a peroxide bath. UV HOB filters are sometimes used as well. It will break down CP but it doesn't matter as the water is changed often enough. Metronidazole is dosed every other day and praziquantel 6 days apart. Super slime coat is added often. I regularly make a huge blend of medicated food using kappa carrageenan as a binder (this is cheaper than Seachem Focus and also seaweed based). This allows me to make tasty food bound with either CP or Metro that's still palatable to picky fish like Chaetodons. The process works exceedingly well and produces healthy fish, with no complaints so far that I know of. I will not OK a fish that doesn't look perfect, even if it's been past 30 days, unless it's at your own risk. I will also not guarantee it from from disease - nobody can say that conclusively, despite every effort taken, but I guarantee a fish in top health and you can come check on the fish in person as often as you want and wait longer. If it die during WT, we try again and start over again. That happens more than you might be aware of. The cost to build all this could buy a house, and 1000s of hours and months of all-nighters. Each fish gets tons of labor time and individual care, medication, saltwater, electrical (heater) expense, and so on. We don't make a substantial amount of money nor charge all that much extra given the time and materials cost to do it correctly.
It is a huge time and financial expense to do this properly. I am happy to demonstrate the system we do to anyone that wants to see it, or suggest improvements. And in the vast majority of cases, we will always charge the same or under any online QT competitor, you don't have to pay shipping or risk DOA, and like everything else we sell in the store, you get 5% cash back as a gift card for another purchase, along with supporting this effort and your LFS of course!
Some special fish currently here QTing (most sold) just to give you an idea, or coming shortly: a dozen Watanabei Angels, Black Tangs, Personifer Angel, Regal Angel, Yellow Belly Hippo, Koi Scopas Tangs, Blonde Nasos, Gem Tangs, Powder Blue Tangs, Achilles Tangs, Swallowtail Angel Male, Moorish Idols , Pyramid Butterflies, Copperbands, Mandarin Gobies, Orange Line Chromis, Watchman Gobies, Red Stripe Tilefish, Blue Assessor , Rhomboid Wrasses, Lineatus Wrasses, Radiant Wrasses, Earmuff Wrasse, China Wrasse, Yellow Coris Wrasse, Solorensis, Halichores trispilus, Divided Leopard Wrasse, Bimaculatus Anthias, Evansi Anthias, Lyretail Anthias, Borbonius Anthias, Exquisite Wrasses, Laboute Wrasse, Mappa Puffer, Dogface, Magnificence Foxface, many more.
Fish done with QT unsold and welcome to offers:
Hawaiian Flame Wrasse Male
Hawaiian Eightline Wrasse
Yellow Tangs from Small to XL
Bicolor Foxface
