Quaratining considerations - advice?

[psimitry]

So in about 2 weeks (when my angel fish comes out of quarantine), I'm planning on making a Saltwaterfish.com order. In it, I'll be picking up (among other things) a pearly jawfish and a lawnmower blenny.

However, because these two species typically have requirements that aren't typically found in a QT environment, I do have a question about them.

For the lawnmower blenny, since they are typically grazers, do I need to put a piece of nouri on a clip (tang-style)?

For the jawfish do I need to get a sandbed seeded now so that it can have a bit of filtration capability when the fish arrives? For that matter does the QT system even need a sandbed for a jawfish? Considering they're typically jumpers, should I be making an eggcrate lid for the jawfish tank (or actually, I should say SIDE considering that it's a 20g tank that has an acrylic divider in it)?

I'm also probably going to be ordering some inverts. How does one QT them? Is it even necessary? For something like snails (which I'm going to be ordering) does one want to dump a buncha nutrients in some saltwater to generate a nice algae supply for them?

Help would be appreciated.

 

[Mr31415]

I have a lawnmower blenny in QT as I type this. I have some LR and good algae growth on the glass panes. That seems to be enough for the time in QT.

Mine does not eat any vegetable matter thrown in to the tank... Only the natural growing algae.

The jawfish - sorry can't help.

I never QT inverts, except corals and things like clams etc. But I QT them only for a day or two to ensure no bad hitchhikers such as aiptasia, snails etc. found their way in. I know it is not perfect but I am not going to build a second reef just to support corals in QT.

Snails go in straight.

But like all things aquarium related - that is how I have done things and thus far it works. There are better ways I am sure. I just find it a good balance between too much effort and too little care.

 

[psimitry]

I'm just terrified of another experience like I had when I accidentally introduced some zoanthid eating nudi's into my system. I seriously thought the only way I was going to be able to get them out of my system was to take some "hail mary" frags of zoos that I knew didn't have any nudi's on it, and then drop those into a frag tank while the nudi's in my main system died.

As it was, I ended up doing something like 4 FW/Iodine dips, killing my xenia in the process. Bad times.

Anyone else have any thoughts?

 

[Slickdonkey]

I have a jawfish in QT right now, and just finished QT'ing a lawnmower blenny.

Both fish would eat pretty much anything I'd feed him: formula 1, brine shrimp, etc. I also have PC lights on my QT for corals, and leaving these on at least 6 hours/day gives a pretty thick algae growth if your lawnmower won't eat anything else.

As for the jawfish, I don't think you'll need the sand. Do build him a cave: keep a PVC pipe with one end capped off. I also threw lots of little shells in the QT but he hasn't seemed interested in them.

Also keep the jawfish alone in QT, there should be no competition with other fish or inverts.

To each his own, but personally I QT all corals as well as fish and inverts. Even if it's just for a few days, I've found redbugs and other nasty things by doing this. Also it is possible (although less so than fish) for these items to being ich or other parasites and disease into your main display. I don't risk it.

Here is a good article on QT procedures if you haven't seen it already: http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-10/sp/feature/index.php