Help me understand Quarantine tank

[kimha]

I absolutely agree that all new fish should be quarantined before releasing them into the main tank. But how do you setup a quarantine tank?

My first thought is that the quarantine tank must be fully cycled so the new fish can safely lives in it without getting kill by amonia from its poop. Is this mean the quarantine tank is actually a running tank with cheap fish in it? Then when you quarantine a new fish, you remove the cheap fish out and put the new fish in.
Is this how quarantine tank is set up?

 

[hansnfrans]

Excellent choice! Setting up a QT tank is one of the best ways to take a proactive approach to maintaining the health of your main system. Aside from the answers you get on this forum, you should definately look this up on wetwebmedia.com . Bob and the others there are very into this sort of thing. A good way to run a QT/Hospital tank is bare-bottom, UV sterilizer, and a decent skimmer. I would let it cycle first before using it. I suppose you could use some damsels for this task. If this is to only be used for QTing new fish and there will be no medications in the tank, then you could add some live rock. A UV sterilizer certainly isn't necessary, but a bare bottomed tank is where these units can help the most. I would use some sort of mechanical filtration as well. Regarding the question about what to do with the "cheap fish," I can't give you good answer on that. Perhaps someone else here would have a better idea.

 

[VSpeck]

most people dont worry about keeping fish in there many people i see just keep an extra sponge or something in the main tank to throw in the qt when the put the fish in there so i dont think the cheap fish are nessasary but make sure u keep up on frequent waterchanges while they are in the qt to keep the ammonia down

 

[hansnfrans]

oh yeah! I forgot about that. VSpeck is correct, I've read the exact same thing. Usually the sponge is kept in the sump where a good amount of water passes through it. The sponge is a very common method rather than the cheap fish.