Hypo Salinity for an Established tank..

[pk1]

Hello all,

I have a 180 G reef tank, and I used to be that "who needs to Quarantine" guy I have 2 tangs that have had minor outbreaks of ich for about a year now, an Achilles and a hippo. The outbreaks are not bad, but I know eventually it will come back to bite me in the you know what.
I want to set up a Q tank for hypo, I have a 55 gallon tank I could have up and running pretty quickly to do this. Tank inhabitants:

Achilles
Hippo
2 false perc clowns
2 threadfin anthias
3 lyretail anthias
1 tail spot blenny
1 Bi color blenny
1 yellow coris wrasse
2 blue stripe pipefish

First off, is the 55 gl good enough to house all these fish for the correct length without causing too much stress? Do all the fish need to go into QT? Specifically the pipefish? For filtration I may be able to borrow a tidepool 2 systems seen here:
http://www.marineland.com/products/consumer/con_tidepool.asp
Would this be enough for my bio load? Am I missing anything? I've got extra power heads, an overflow box, heaters, air pumps, etc.

Thanks for looking
Patrick

 

[RandalB]

You're probably going to need to watch your nitrate levels closely, that's a pretty big bioload for a 55.

Since you are probably only looking at 6 weeks, you may be able to get away with it, but watch closely or you'll loose fish.

RandalB

 

[kfowler]

I'd be religious about weekly water changes to keep your parameters up. Add some PVC piping for places to hide. I also recommend those ammonia badge alerts. You need to put all your dish in QT. Even the pipefish. If you're going to do it, might as well do it right.

Good luck!

 

[pk1]

Thanks guys. I'll look into the ammonia badges. I was hoping that the pipefish might be immune to Ich...they will be hard to catch and I'll have to feed live baby brine while they are in QT. This ought to be fun..