Firstly I would like to say that I think I need a award for having a tank sit for 2 years without touching it. Reason was due to thinking that the tank was going to go through my floor being a 100 gallon at my previous home, But finally over the last couple months I have slowly been progressing with the tank from buying equipment, building the aquascape (used caribsea life rock), filling the tank with NSW and finally cycling the tank with the help of some live rock placed in the sump and thought it was time to add the first fish. Now, I’m not new to the whole fish keeping hobby as a whole and have 7 freshwater tanks of various sized scattered through the home but I had never quarantined any fish and I don’t know if it was luck or just because freshwater is more forgiving but I haven’t had any major issues. In those 2 years of waiting I think I had watched BRS 52 weeks of reefing 3 times over and done countless hours of research to the point of my other half thinking I was obsessed so I don’t know why alarm bells weren’t going off in my head to tell me to slow down and think but I added my first fish on Tuesday just gone without quarantine. I picked up 3 green chromis. Fish looked healthy and were feeding aggressively on frozen mysis. All of a sudden Thursday when I checked the tank, 1 chromis had a few sand sized specs on its body and another had half the amount. I was shattered to say the least. Even my partner was shaking her head at me and she couldn’t care less what happens with my tanks as long as they look clean and have something “pretty” to look at in them. I knew straight away that I was dealing with ICH and straight away I was back on the internet looking at countless threads of back and forth debates on what is the best approach to dealing with the ICH. By Saturday morning, the ich was all gone. I know the whole fallow process in waiting 76-90 days in the DT before adding QUARANTINED fish but then there are those horror stories of people doing a full fallow period and coming out of it still with ich days later. Whether that could be put down to their mistake of possibly adding coral or invert that are carriers or using equipment between tanks but I don’t want a fallow period to be for nothing. As a noobie reefer, would the majority of you experienced reefers still recommend and stand by a full fallow period?
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