fresh off the boat you're running the chances of getting some animals in bad shape, in my opinion. the more you buy, the more of a chance you have of running into sickly animals. make sure you're buying from a good person. if you have the patience, i would recommend waiting for them to get acclimated/hydrated/whatever, because you can have a real tough time trying to bring back an animal that has gone too far downhill. be sure to get recommendations on who you buy from, or even references from the seller.
as far as quarantining them, the whole idea behind that is isolating them for observation since theres a good chance youll have parasites, or possibly other disease, coming in with the freshly caught animals. if you dont separate each individual, you run the risk of contaminating all that come into contact with the sickly.
