Add fish?

[molly]

Hi-
About three weeks ago the water in my tank was contaminated resulting in the death of two fish. The rest of the tank (hermit crabs, emerald crab, snails, mushroom) survived. I put everything in a quaratine tank for a week. I cleaned the old tank out (30G), changed all of the water and put everything back in. Everything has been doing very well for three weeks except for my feather duster which blew its crown and is recovering. All of my levels are, and have been, great. Ammonia is 0, nitites are 0 and nitrates are 10-ish.
Is there any reason I should wait and let the tank "rest" for a few more weeks? The only thing that bothers me is I did -not- rinse the substrate because I didn't want to strip it of bacteria. Obviously, I am finding it difficult to wait on the fish (plan on getting two clowns) but -not- killing more fish is the high priority.
?

 

[burtonjr]

If you're wanting to make sure all is well before spending a bunch of $$$ on fish, get a couple of black mollies and see how they do. They'll be fine in salt water and aren't quite they pocket buster some other swf.

 

[captained]

Most of the fish-killing bacteria and parasites (e.g., Ick) have a 28 day or less life cycle w/o a fish host. I've heard that marine velvet can survive up to 60 days, but you would probably know if you had it.
Your best bet (my opinion) is to quarantine new fish and "treat" with hyposalinity- it takes about 32 days, before you introduce them to your tank to be as sure as possible you don't introduce anything evil into the tank.
I used to quarantine for a week or so, and add the fish if they looked OK. I learned the hard way that you can introduce trace amounts of nasties that helathy fish won't succumb to, but if you cause stress, you'll end up with a fatal outbreak in the tank.