Quarantine Tank thoughts

[Aquattro]

Based on our recent poll, roughly 44% of us QT new fish.

How do you do that? I mean as far as setup goes.

Reason I ask is this. My newly acquired Anthias (1 male, 4 female) are doing great, eating like pigs, nearly jumping out of the tank when I go near it with food. All in all, doing better than I had hoped
Another reefer locally also bought some of these fish, 1 male, 3 female. So far, it being one week today, his still have not touched a bite of food, and he's tried everything including all the things mine are eating.

My tank is a 50g breeder, about 30 pounds live rock, dual T5 on 12 hours/day. Large aquaclear and a tunze 6080 for flow.

His tank is a tall 26g bow front, no rock, some decorative pipe or vase or something, lights on 1 hour day, or during feeding attempts. Flow is unknown, but claims to have good flow, but that's too subjective so I really have no idea what the flow is

So here's my thoughts. All things being equal, it appears that the QT environment has a role in the success of the fish. Oddly, he has a Regal Angel in there doing quite well.

Do we need to "tune" the tank based on what fish are going in, or is there a standard that works vs others that work less well?

Thoughts? What is your QT setup like?

[Myka]

Originally Posted by Aquattro

Do we need to "tune" the tank based on what fish are going in

Yup.

I have a 40-gallon breeder that is set up with sand, shells, rubble, all sorts of rock junk, an AquaClear power filter (used to use a MaxiJet, but like the filter better). It's always set up - been running for years. Sometimes it gets reef-safe-ish meds like various wormers and it goes into hyposalinity too. If something yucky pops up, the tank just runs fallow for some weeks.

I also have 20-gallon BB tanks for medicating and tank transfers that just have pipe pieces in them. They dry out between uses, and are only used if a fish needs to be medicated with something I don't want in the 40.

[Aquattro]

It's tough to set that up tho, unless you have a fish room or a really awesome spouse. My QT has to go outside after this batch, as my spouse has reached the end of her awesomeness on the subject
Not thinking, I added some good rock from my DT that I now have to medicate, and that makes it garbage now. The rock will all have to go in a bucket or the garden or something.

[Myka]

Originally Posted by Aquattro

It's tough to set that up tho, unless you have a fish room or a really awesome spouse.

It's in a spare room, the 40 is on a stand and the two 20-gallon tanks are in the stand under the 40. If there's fish in the 20's I open the doors of the stand so light can get in.

[Aquattro]

Originally Posted by Myka

It's in a spare room, the 40 is on a stand and the two 20-gallon tanks are in the stand under the 40. If there's fish in the 20's I open the doors of the stand so light can get in.

Mine is in the dining area of my kitchen. Just moved my 90g QT out to the garage, wife is happy(er)

[Myka]

Originally Posted by Aquattro

Mine is in the dining area of my kitchen. Just moved my 90g QT out to the garage, wife is happy(er)

That sir, is your problem. Number one rule - keep fish stuff out of the kitchen and bathroom. That is wife territory (don't tell her that!).

[Reef Pilot]

I just have a 30g QT running all the time in a downstairs storage room. It has a canister filter with foam and some live rock rubble. Every once in a while I do a 90% water change with DT water after a DT water change. Have used it many, many times both for fish and corals. For fish, always did the hypo routine. Have never had any issues. Only drawback is the length of time it takes for fish.

Brad, if you don't have the room, why don't you try the tank transfer method. I have been toying with the idea of using some of my many IO empty buckets for this. Maybe a little small, but for just one or two small new fish, might be OK. I would use PVC pieces to make the fish feel secure, an airstone, heater and a piece of lexan for a lid (with lots of airholes). I think they only have to be in there for about 3 days at a time before a transfer, so shouldn't be too hard to keep the water good (with prime or whatever). The final transfer might be to a small glass tank, just so you can observe them better before moving them to the DT.

Just a thought... I might give this TT method a try myself sometime.

[SeaHorse_Fanatic]

For all my tanks (unfortunately, don't usually have a QT tank always setup and only set up as needed), I now use Hydroton, clay ball media imported from Germany as my biological filter media. What I can do using Hydroton is keep some in my sump and throw it into a HOB filter or media reactor or even an old stocking to hang in my QT tank as needed. Then if you have to use copper or other medication, you can leave dead rock in the QT for your new fish to hide in and add the Hydroton for biological filtration. If you medicate, toss out the old Hydroton and add more in your sump for future QT purposes.

For those who've never heard of or used Hydroton, Paul at Oceanic Corals was the one who first started using it as a very effective, efficient biological media. I love the stuff and swear by it. I always try to keep some extra on hand and its much more effective than live rock IME, including eliminating my nitrates. Feeding 4+ times daily, my nitrates used to be high (think HOT PINK on the test kits), but now they are way low.

[Reef Pilot]

I actually haven't tried the TT method yet, as I have not bought any new fish for years. But since I lost a few during our summer outage, might just get a few replacements in the not too distant future.

I would do the TT first with buckets, and then transfer them to my QT tank. The length of the stay there would depend on the type of fish. Some (like butterfly fish) need longer acclimatization to get trained on new foods, etc. Also may want to give them a prazi treatment to get rid of any internal pests.

[corpusse]

My main QT tank is a 55 gallon. I use this for most fish and for long term holds. My Achilles spent his first 100 days in here and my Naso also spent a lot of time since Ich was not present initially but later he got it thus he still needed 30 days at full copper + some observational time to confirm it was eliminated.

Currently I have 6 anthias in there. All 6 are eating well and have been for 3 weeks. I feed them mysis and brine both PE and smaller mysis. The brine is the enhanced kind which is mostly just for variety and in case they won't eat mysis initially. No point feeding them differently then what they will get in the display unless they are not eating, if that's the case I can go to live brine or pellets, but I rarely bother with pellets.

When I had the Achilles in the 55 I had a jeabo pump blasting a wave for him to ensure he was happy, however with all other fish I have a tunze 6065 (1700gph) in addition I have an AC 70 hob filter on the other side for slight additional flow and for the extra sponge filtration. The main filtration is the sponge filter. I usually change this after copper treatment seeded from my display's sump. Surprisingly this seems to work fine while I don't test nitrates but I'm sure they are there. I do however monitor ammonia with ammonia alert badge and it seems to remain at safe levels throughout. Looking at the sponge I sometimes see a few pods that somehow survive in it. Even after copper there usually still is one or 2.

I always keep a spare one in the sump so it's ready to go. I was actually going to use this in my second QT tank but since that tank is much smaller (20g) I can typically get away without filtration and use prime / large water changes.

Other equipment is a heater and some pvc pipe. I have large ones and small ones in there. I leave the light in the room on during the day as well as a tiny led light on the tank. Later I put other lights over the tank to help acclimate the fish to light but this is not really needed imo. There is eggcrate over the tank it would help stop but not completely prevent jumpers. So far so good but one of these days I need to make a mesh top.

Second tank is just a 20 gallon with an airpump a heater and pvc. I use this when I already have fish in the first tank. No other equipment. I keep meaning to pick up another tank so I can do tank transfer but somehow it always gets put off. I like to at least treat fish with prazipro too to ensure no internal parasites and flukes. My Achilles really had bad flukes and took several prazi treatments to eliminate them. Something that never would have been noticed at first since they are nearly invisible and the scratching only got worse in time.

I don't always fill the tanks up all the way. Especially if there are few fish in them there's no point wasting water / medications. I typically do 50 gallon water changes on my display and this is where most of the water comes from however I also use new salt water too. Typically I will start with 1 week observation followed by prazi pro. By this time Ich or anything worse will show and they can be treated with copper at this time. Of course this means longer then 30 days qt but avoids putting them straight in copper, although I suspect most (all) LFS use copper in there systems to mask diseases but not treat them. Once I get one more tank I will be happy with my fish QT but still trying to work out the coral and other invert QT procedures.