In 10+ years I've never followed quarantine procedure

[mcaswell]

And now I've learned my lesson.

 

Added a purple firefish a little over a week ago to my Biocube 32.  After a few days, he started to come out regularly, and has been eating great.  Last night, I noticed a white dot on his body about the size of a grain of sugar, which I immediately assumed was ich.  I also observed that, although he was still eating, he was behaving a bit odd in that he was staying out even after the lights went out (usually he retreats to his hide hole).  Tried to net him, which of course was unsuccessful (those little guys are FAST).

 

After staring at the tank for probably an hour trying to decide the best course of action (basically whether to take immediate action,  or just leave things be and wait to see if if it really was ich), I decided to just get the firefish out (I had a small unused tank I could use, but definitely not big enough for the two clowns and lawnmower blenny too).  My thinking was that if it was ich, was brought in by the firefish, and was the "initial infection" (in other words the only ich that existed in the tank at that moment was in the cyst on the firefish), I could possibly save myself the trouble of having to hospitalize all the fish for 2-3 months if I could get the firefish out before the cyst detached and reproduced).

 

So, my initial punishment, aside from having to write "I will quarantine from now on" 100 times on the chalkboard, was to have to stay up until 3am dismantling and trying to reassemble the rockwork that I had FINALLY become happy with.  The good news is that I didn't have to take all the rocks out to catch the fish (there were a few particularly large pieces that would have been difficult to deal with).  The potentially bad news is that once I did get the fish out, I observed that the white spot was gone.  So, either it was a cyst that had detached already (and is now in my tank), or it was just a piece of sand stuck to him.  But I really don't think that is the case, as it looked whiter than the sand, and looking at him carefully now (hard to see, as he's hiding under a rock), I do see a small dark blemish in the area where the white dot was.

 

Regardless, he's now resting quietly in a separate tank, and I'll closely observe him and the residents of the main tank for symptoms.