Quarantine Tank Question (1 Viewer)

[BrianPlankis]

Hey guys,

I'm continuing my design and I have an old wet/dry sump with bio balls that I'm thinking about using as my quarantine tank. It has about a 10 gallon capacity and I was thinking about using a powerhead to circulate the water back over the bioballs to act as a filter. Unless I'm dealing with a disease or outbreak of parasites I was thinking I would have a few pounds of LR in the tank to keep it cycled. I would probably keep a small sandbed in there, definitely not a deep sand bed as I wouldn't want to have to remove all that for a treatment.

Any new corals or fish would then be added into the quarantine tank for at least a couple of weeks before being transferred to the main tank.

With this low bioload do you think my ideas for filtering are enough or do I need to get additional filters?

B.

 

[Guest]

Basically in a QT, you want to have minimal things in there.

The simplest thing to do is to buy a dirt magnet (gray sponge attached to airline tubing that are usually used in brine tank and such) and let it reside in your sump of your tank so that it will develop the same bacteria from your tank onto your sponge. Fill the QT with tank water from the main display, or at least partially, and put in the sponge. You can use a mechanical filter to remove larger debris, but the idea is to limit the place where the disease can reside, let alone the medications can be absorbed into. The only time you will need items in a QT is for instances where you have critters that dig or burrow themselves. To minimize the stress, you can put some PVC tubing for the fish to hide. You actually don't even need a light since there is nothing in the tank that needs the light to survive, unless you are quaranting some corals and such. You will not need LR or a sand bed. In fact, it is recommended that it be a bare bottom tank.

http://www.wetwebmedia.com/quaranti.htm

 

[BrianPlankis]

Thanks for the tips isis. I will have a light(probably PC) over the quarantine tank as I am planning on quarantining corals as well. I'm guessing my QT will be very busy after my main tank has cycled, lots of frags

So are you recommending removing the bioballs in favor of the dirt magnet?

 

[Guest]

Well it all depends... Your QT should be something you can easily disassemble when not in use and able to disinfect after each use of treatment. The dirt magnet will work great if properly seeded, and then will be able to be returned to the sump until it next use. After you tear down the QT, just put the dirt magnet back into the sump, clean the QT and store. When you are ready to QT again, just repeat the steps you used for the inital set up. If you use bioballs, you would want to make sure that they are always in used in a tank so they have their biological on them. If there is some major infection you are treating for, you can always throw the dirt magnet away and buy a new one. It is all a matter of preference on that part, but a bare bottom no frills QT is the simplest way to treat.

The reason you want to try to disassemble a QT is because a tank full of water with nothing in it is way TOO tempting to fill it with something.

 

[BrianPlankis]

You are right about an empty tank being too tempting. I was thinking about using the QT as a propogation tank as well, not long term, just long enough for them to firmly attach to rocks/plugs. Of course that was if I going with the bio balls idea, I'm debating that now.

I was hoping to keep the QT always running and will use your idea of topping off with water change water. That way I'm always ready for an emergency.

One other thought I was mulling over was that at some point I would like to try raising clownfish fry and thought the QT might double for that instead of propogating. I still have a lot of thinking and reading for that, but anyone have any thoughts on that?