hogfanreefer
Active member
Well said. Praying for you and your mom!
Guide to setup a Quarantine Tank (QT).
- Thread starter Dr. Reef
- Start date
Well said. Praying for you and your mom!
Honestly QT is best practiced bare with nothing but equipment. Its best not to involve rock or sand due to many reasons. First and far most being difficulty in keeping certain medications at right levels as they get absorbed into the rock or sand thus making treatment a nightmare. Also rock and sand can bring in other pests and problems of their own such as algae and cyano or diatoms etc.
Instead of fighting diseases you will be chasing other issues.
A bare QT with few pvc pipes will be the best proven way to go.
hogfanreefer
Active member
A couple of copper questions. I know there are fish you can't use copper on and some that you must go more slowly with. Can you break down the no copper, with caution and the ok for copper lists of fish for us.
Second question. After completing treatment, copper removal and post treatment observation is there any special treatment needed for your tank before the next batch of fish is introduced? Is the ceramic media ok to reuse or does it need to be discarded and the tank basically recycled with new media from the DT sump?
Second question. After completing treatment, copper removal and post treatment observation is there any special treatment needed for your tank before the next batch of fish is introduced? Is the ceramic media ok to reuse or does it need to be discarded and the tank basically recycled with new media from the DT sump?
QT is quarantine, i generally dont treat unless there is a definite parasite.
I do run prazipro on all fish no mater what (2weeks) then i observe for next 6 weeks. if fish being qt is a tang then i always run hypo or copper, i have been leaning towards non chemical approach with hypo lately.
inverts dont usually need qt. some people do keep them in qt tanks for few weeks then move them to main.
specially in your case if its wild caught inverts i would qt them and observe for pests and diseases. Make sure that you dont qt inverts in same tank that has run copper.
To be very honest Cupramine is a very safe form of copper. Generally wrasse eels and dwarf angels are sensitive to copper but i have read many many threads of reefers that have successfully done copper treatments on angels and wrasse with little to no problems at all.
Sharks, sting rays, dragonites like mandarin, any fish with no scales shouldnt be treated with copper.
After treatment with copper, remove it via carbon or cuprisorb and or water changes. i usually observe fish after treatment for atleast 3-4 weeks to make sure. After treatment is done and observed fish is moved, i make sure there is no trace of copper is left in qt with use of test kits and polyfilter.
I do a 100% water change and rinse the HOB and its contents in discarded water and fill it back up with new water.
Ceramic media does not absorb copper and none of the other stuff like heater or HOB or silicone/glass absorb copper either. This is why its best to run qt bare and simple.
As long as the media is kept submerged 99% of the time during water change and rinsing most likely bacteria will survive and giving you instant cycle.
Remember to feed the tank when its empty so there is ammonia for bacteria to feed on.
Great, thanks! I'll just pick up some prazipro and get copper or just do hypo for tangs/ich. How long of a hypo and what level salinity do you use? I noticed that prazipro doesn't contain any copper, so should I treat the inverts with that too?
prazipro has no copper so its reef safe and invert safe but i find no reason to treat inverts with it as its best designed to cure flukes and some internal parasites which are not present in inverts.
For Hypo you have to maintain 1.009 and i have a step by step guide to perform that as well.
Here is a link.
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2300497
Got it, thanks for the help!
michfish5
New member
QT FINALLY Cycling!
QT FINALLY Cycling!
My original thread is gone but I just wanted to let you know Bnumair that my QT is FINALLY cycling after 24 days of 1 ppm NH3 but nothing else.:dance: I noticed others seem to be having the same problem so I thought I would share.
As per your advice, I wound up getting a larger HOB because the thought of having bags of ceramics floating around to help the AC20 in the little 10gal QT was not appealing. I upgraded to a AC50 that is packed to the brim with about 500g of ceramic rings. And just for the heck of it, I also picked up a bottle of Bio Spira because at this point I figured it couldn't hurt. I had no "instant cycle" expectations, as the bottle claims, but if it helps move things along that would be good enough. I swapped out the filters last night (keeping the existing bag of rings from the AC20 underwater and adding to it before putting in the new filter) and dumped the Bio Spira in, even though I doubted it would work.
Well this morning I awoke (on my birthday) to find the NH3 had dropped to 0.05, NO2 was 2ppm and NO3 was 20. This is the first nitrite/nitrate reading I had in almost a month. I got the nitrogen cycle for my birthday! Couldn't be happier. So not sure if increasing my biofilter capacity did it or the Bio Spira but I am just happy it is finally proceeding and that I now have a sufficient amount of bio media in my HOB. Thanks for all you patience and help!
QT FINALLY Cycling!
My original thread is gone but I just wanted to let you know Bnumair that my QT is FINALLY cycling after 24 days of 1 ppm NH3 but nothing else.:dance: I noticed others seem to be having the same problem so I thought I would share.
As per your advice, I wound up getting a larger HOB because the thought of having bags of ceramics floating around to help the AC20 in the little 10gal QT was not appealing. I upgraded to a AC50 that is packed to the brim with about 500g of ceramic rings. And just for the heck of it, I also picked up a bottle of Bio Spira because at this point I figured it couldn't hurt. I had no "instant cycle" expectations, as the bottle claims, but if it helps move things along that would be good enough. I swapped out the filters last night (keeping the existing bag of rings from the AC20 underwater and adding to it before putting in the new filter) and dumped the Bio Spira in, even though I doubted it would work.
Well this morning I awoke (on my birthday) to find the NH3 had dropped to 0.05, NO2 was 2ppm and NO3 was 20. This is the first nitrite/nitrate reading I had in almost a month. I got the nitrogen cycle for my birthday! Couldn't be happier. So not sure if increasing my biofilter capacity did it or the Bio Spira but I am just happy it is finally proceeding and that I now have a sufficient amount of bio media in my HOB. Thanks for all you patience and help!
Good to hear that nitrogen cycle finally is on the right track.
I am very confident in saying larger surface area is the answer here. bio spira is a good product but i generally dont have faith in bacteria in bottle. reason being you had ammonia in tank and unless you are in a super clean bio lab or something like a scify lab there is enough bacteria in water and air to start a cycle. so my gut feeling is more surface area gave more bacteria to grow to bring ammonia down.
in any case you are on the right path now.
Good luck and keep me posted.
Agreed.
I just started setting up a perm QT tank yesterday. Its a little larger than I wanted at 29gal, but I got it cheap on craigs list and it was in great shape and also came with a stand. I think that I'm going to take the advise given earlier and place a PJ Card in it.
Thanks for the great posts
Jetersyanks
New member
I have had a qt tank set up for about 2 weeks I have a 10 gallon with a heater and one 10lb piece of live rock all the parameters are the same as my display tank I just purchased a spotteg watchman gobby and treating with copper should I do 2 weeks copper 2 prozi pro ..?? nd will the gobby be ok with out sand ..??
Hi
i am glad to hear you are taking the right approach. Few things i need to confirm before i can go any further.
You said 10lbs rock in qt? was this rock present in tank when you treated with copper? or are you going to treat the tank with copper?
if you have not started treatment i would strongly advise to take the rock out and leave the tank bare. at most a bowl of pure silica sand 2" deep if you really need it.
i always recommend 2 weeks of prazipro first followed by other treatments as it gives a fish 2 weeks to settle in and prazipro dont have a negative effect of any fish that i am aware of.
good luck and safe reefing..
please feel free to ask more questions if you have any.
Thank you guys for your kind words....
Over many years i found PJ Cardinals to be the most stable fish in qt. they dont fight, dont get in the way and are peaceful, can handle pretty much everything i put them through. A very good candidate for a QT tank.
Note: you wont find them eating alot but this is just the way this fish is.
Interesting. I did not know that about the PJ Card but will remember it in the short future.
As a side note, I wanted to cycle the tank somewhat quickly and found some old biozyme from my first salt tank about 6 years ago. The LFS guy (rude idiot) told me that it wouldn't work because it was too old (probably trying to make a buck. I could write a blog on some of the stuff this guy has said...). I dumped some in anyway on my lunch break, checked the ammonia levels that night and they were already at 4 ppm. To those that say biozyme expires - NOPE!
Thx for all the advice again!
Jetersyanks
New member
Well thank you very much for the advice i did treat it with copper already with the live rock in it..... i hope thats not a problem the gobbie seems to be doing fine i recently added a naso tang to the QT tank i had to i got a great deal on him ... now im using copper safe brand it says to treat the water once a month is that true ..?? also after the 2 weeks of copper how much of a water change should i do before adding prozi pro ..?? Thank you in advance
