What is a 'hospital' or 'quarantine' tank for fish?

What is a 'hospital' or 'quarantine' tank for fish?

Marc Grover (Professional Aquarist) gives expert video advice on: How do I know if my fish is sick?; Who will help my sick fish?; What are the most common diseases that affect fish? and more...

A 'hospital' or 'quarantine' tank is a smaller staging area for your fish tank. It's a place where you put a new fish for observation before introducing it to the population of fish in the main tank. The reason for doing this is to check whether the fish has symptoms of any disease, as we don't want to leave a fish with a communicable disease into a tank that contain a shoal of fish, which might affect them too. In this case, you can isolate the fish by quarantining it, by providing a dose of anti-biotics or pro-bio tics and keep it under close observation.