Purchasing sand sleepers

[asylumdown]

I know people often recommend not QTing them, but this guys has been in store water with a bunch of other fish for weeks, so any resistance to disease sand sleeping might have conferred to him normally has been negated in his time in captivity, and I'm sure the advancing exhaustion has made him susceptible to all sorts of things.

The only medication I use during QT is prazi-pro, as thankfully the tank transfer protocol negates the need for harsh copper based medications. I also have been looking for a reason to use the 90 pounds of sand I have left over from when I set up my tank for the past year, so I've got more than enough to give him a full 4 inch sand bed for the next 3 transfers, Throwing out the used sand after each one. Hopefully that keeps the stress to a minimum and allows it to recover from being in the store.

I played with the idea of not QTing this one, but I have paid such a high price for that in the past. On the upside this one is already fully accepting frozen foods, so one vector for failure is already covered.

I would normally keep the fish in QT for a couple of weeks after the tank transfer is finished, but in this case I think I'm going to dose Prazi-pro during the actual transfer (the number of days between doses is conveniently the same number of days between transfers) and send him to the big tank at day 13.

[ScubaSteve]

Ya, totally makes sense. I thought of doing the same (prazi-pro is really the only one you need for this fish) but I decided to roll the dice, it worked out fine... but I was stressing for quite a while

Sounds like you have a fair sized QT. What do you use?

[asylumdown]

I do the tank transfers with two 15 gallon tanks, each with it's own compliment of equipment. Each one has it's own powerhead, heater, thermometer, cover, PVC hidy holes, and light. They sit next to each other on the counter in my laundry room and share the same timed outlet. They're right next to a big work sink so it's crazy easy to drain, clean, and re-fill them for the transfers, and they're small enough that you can just rinse them out with the hand sprayer from the sink. Cleaning out 4 inches of sand 4 times is going to be a major PITA this time, but it's worth it I think. I don't use nets to catch the fish either, I use a clear tupperware that I drilled a hole bunch of holes in. I read somewhere that it's easier on the tissue in their eyes, and it seems to actually be less stressful for them than being netted. I've done it enough times that I'm actually pretty good at catching them on the first try, from the moment my hand breaches the water to them being in a new but identically decorated tank is never more than 30 seconds. Everyone seems to go back to behaving perfectly normally in an hour or less.

I had the lights left over from a 20 gallon planted tank I tore down years ago, and I think I had both power-heads from tanks gone by (one's a cheapy little koralia, the other is an uber over-kill Vortech MP10 that I can't use in my current tank because the glass is too thick), so I was able to set the whole thing up for around $200 bucks. If you didn't have any old equipment to re-purpose, I think you could probably set something similar up for less than 300 if you really went bare bones on the equipment. They only really need a lamp on a timer so that they get a proper day/night cycle.

Then I have a 40 gallon tank for extended stays in QT, but most of the time it's empty. I used to keep the canister filter cycled by running it in an old salt bucket in my garage that I'd drop a shrimp in to every once in a while.

If I'm not getting any new fish, the whole QT system just gets put away in the garage. The only thing that requires ongoing attention is the canister filter, which I actually had totally broken down a while ago because I haven't gotten new fish in months. Since I'm not going to move this wrasse to the 40 gallon at the end, I didn't set it back up.

[kien]

I am also in total agreement with you Adam. There are fish who need to sleep and fish who do not. As you said, some of these fish have evolved for millions of years and have adapted to sleeping habits. If you're lucky, the sand sleeper will learn and adapt to sleeping somewhere else like in a cave or under a coral. However, there is probably a very good reason why some fish never seem to be able to adjust. If they are a much older fish (adult) they are probably set in their ways (to sleeping in the sand). All of my wrasses sleep in sand despite there being tonnes of nooks and crannies. And I don't even have that much sand. 2" at most. Often times I can see a part of the wrasse exposed in the sand while they are sleeping.