Nicole,
How often do you introduce stuff to the main tank, and even more so to the QT tank? The reason I ask is it seems that you would have to purchase in 6 week cycles in small amounts?
At this point, I introduce very little. For one, I don't have much space in the small tank I am keeping right now! But after about 14 years in this hobby, I have pretty much cured Coral Acquisition Syndrome with only minor relapses at frag swaps and wholesaler visits.
But yes, if you only have one QT, you introduce in batches, Of course, if that perfect specimen comes along, you can put it in your QT anyway and just restart the 6 week clock. The more you have in your QT, though, the more likely one item will infect the others
Formerly while in full-fledged acquisition mode, I usually kept 2 QT tanks. Sometimes 3, but that was usually if I was trying to save someone's sick fish or some other special project.
Also wouldn't it require us folks with SPS to create lots of flow in the QT tank and have a halide on it to keep from stressing or killing the coral.
If the tank is shallow, you won't need a MH.
Personally, I think ALL corals need good flow. Flow, not velocity. It doesn't take much to get good flow in a $10 Petco 10g QT -- you don't even need to buy great equipment since it won't be on all the time, unless you are constantly adding things to your tank. Often, you can get a good used setup on the cheap when someone is upsizing their display tank.
Then the problem that presents itself with that is the changes in lighting twice over 6 weeks (which is time for it to adjust to that new lighting) which seemingly would further irratate the coral. Not trying to argue just wanting to better understand what you are doing and how you are doing it.
This is a consideration when designing a QT tank. Choose lights with a similar spectrum and intensity to the display tank. Design good laminar flow in the same way you would your display tank. But a QT tank is often going to be much simpler: smaller, usually with no sump or skimmer or calcium reactor. If you do have a sump, building an overhead water flow manifold out of PVC is easy, cheap and fun.
IME, as long as the lighting is not dramatically dimmer or brighter, this isn't much of an issue in terms of stress. Some of the brightly colored SPS corals that are prone to losing color easily is the exception, of course, and then it's mostly aesthetic. But no one wants their new purple frag to turn brown.
Many hobbiests have an aversion to spending $100 on a decent QT setup to protect what is often a multi-thousand dollar investment. Yet I see many of these same hobbiests spending hundreds of dollars on single frags or high dollar fish. Then comes a lot of hand-wringing and complaining about fighting flatworms or some other nuisance that was completely unavoidable or could have been battled in a small tank without risking the other livestock.
I've been there. I used to throw stuff willy-nilly into tanks, maybe with an Iodine or FWE dip to make myself feel protected. And then I found myself tearing the tank apart or killing off life in the tank to catch the sick fish, kill the pest, etc. I got tired of it, and I won't do it again!
