What?! You want me to quarantine my fish AND my corals and inverts?
While unable to host ectoparasites the way fish do, corals/inverts are still able to “carry” fish diseases in one of two ways:
Free swimmers: inadvertently attached if the coral/invert was taken from infected water.
Tomonts: encysted to the animal, which can occur if the coral/invert was previously housed in an infected tank.
Operating a coral and invert QT can be lifesaving, reef saving and money saving in the long run. Going through the trouble to quarantine your fish and be sure there are no diseases in your tank is great but can still result in disaster without also running the rest of your livestock through QT as well. You should always dip any new corals anyway, but pests will still slip by that and a QT will help keep these out of your tank even when they slip by.
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Have you ever quarantined all your fish, were so careful to treat carefully and follow all the rules only to end up with ich or velvet in your display anyway? The reason this happens is most usually because there was a tomont on the hard surface of the coral, frag plug, or even the shell of a crab or shrimp! A tomont is the cyst stage of ick and velvet where the parasite multiplies before breaking free of the cyst to search out a new host to feed on. Pretty much any system that has fish in it can produce a coral carrying parasites. Unless the coral or invert comes from a fishless tank, that has been that way for 76 days or more, you’ll have to assume it can bring ick or velvet into your tank.
We quarantine our inverts the same way as we do with our corals, We have a QT setup filled with sand, rocks, corals and microalgae.
The snails, crabs, sea hares and other inverts are kept in that tank for 76 days before it is ready to be shipped out.
