How freq. to change water in QT?

[stiffler1]

I am going to need to move 5 fish to a 20 G QT tank to get rid of ich. I want to treat them and get rid of it in my main tank. 125g just starting reef.

I have 5 to 6in Hippo Tang
5 to 6in. Naso
4 in yellow
3 in. sabae clown
3in coral beauty.

20 g has gravel in and hang on filter for 60 g rating. Also a power head. Will add more some pvc pipe for hiding. Currently I have three damsels in it to keep it cycled. I will moved damsel to small 10 g or 40g for the time. 40g has live rock and sand so I don't want to use this for QT. I could split the fish and use the 20 g and the 10 G. 10 has sand ( could probably move sand) and 20 gravel, How much die off will I get w copper or hypo?

I want to get rid of ick in my main tank so I was going to keep fish out for 6 weeks. I am still debating on copper vs.hypo.

How often would I need to do water changes with that load for the size of the tank?
I was thinking every 4 to 5 days, maybe weekly. Unsure about die off from gravel, 20 Qt has only been running about 2 months or so w damsels.

 

[tmz]

Question about fishless period for the main tank/How Long?

Probably pretty safe after 6weeks.If you want' to understand the life cycle of cryptocaryon irritans better just search Crytocaryon irritans on the web. Cysts usually "hatch" within days or a week and seek a new host .If not found in a few days they perish. A small number of cysts have been found to persist without hatching for up to 72 days.So it's a matter of how sure you wan't to be.

Copper treatment should only be for 2 weeks with 4 weeks qt after all symptoms have passed,in my opinion. There are a number of arguments on qt time running from two weeks to 3 months.Long lived cysts are not are not an issue since it is assumed the qt tank will be cleaned when fish are removed.
I am trying a prophylactic hypo qt process with prazi pro now for the first time. I have treated infested fish with copper sulfate with sucess. Some state there are,however, some types of fish that are more sensistive to copper such as wrasses.

I don't think you can put all of those fish into a 20g for a month or two and have success.

On the other hand if you have infested fish in your 125 the only way to take care of it is with qt ,treatment and a fishless tank.

 

[reefCrawler]

In short, I don't think you can put blue and naso tangs in 20G for their size, I'll do them in 40G, and put all others in 20G.

you should remove all gravel in QT, I don't even think setup 20G + 10G will do the job, space is too tight to stress your tangs.

it's my 0.02 opinion...

 

[stiffler1]

Now that I have slowed down, I realized I have an empty 75 in my basement. I can tap water from all my systems and moved over some sponges and medium to get it going. Thanks for all your help.