Ready to add first fish, setting up QT

[Leyth]

So my new 17 gallon is up and running and everything seems pretty happy. I'd like to get fish QT'ing while the new tank continues to build stability. I have the day off tomorrow so I'd love to get things setup and going.

My plan is to add newly mixed water, heater, powerhead, and aquaclear 20 + carbon and biomax pellets to the 5.5 gallon. How long after I set it up can I add the fish that I want to QT to the tank? Anything missing from my QT setup?

Live stock in the tank:
Tiger Pistol Shrimp
1 RBTA
1 SPS and 1 Zoa frag

CUC:
4 Turbo snails
10 dwarf cerith snails
1 florida cerith snail

Also, I think my CUC is a bit light for 17 gallons, what do you think?

 

[Bl4ckDr4g0n]

I have a sponge filter sitting in my sump seeded so that I can instantly cycle my qt when I decide to bring home a fish. I just have to have 10 gallons of fresh sw ready so I can drain 10 gallons from the DT to fill the QT. Fresh sw is a pretty caustic environment for a fish that is going to be stressed already, and you cannot have NH3 spiking on you. If you need to medicate you wont want any carbon running as it will interfere with the treatment. Air pump and sponge filter are simple, wont interfere with medication, and you can throw carbon in a hob filter post medication to help clean up.

 

[gone fishin]

I very seldom cycle my QT. I rely on WC's and prime to control ammonia. I also use an ammonia alert badge in the tank as well.

A word of caution about prime, Do not use prime in conjunction with copper medication it can create a toxic cocktail in the tank. Also, if you use prime then you will more than likely still pick up ammonia on your test. This is due to how prime works, there is a pretty good write up on seachem's website about this. Just by coincidence :lolspin: Seachem does happen to sell an ammonia test kit that will read correctly in the presence of prime.

I happened to get a fish unexpectedly this past weekend. I set up my TTM with some water I had already made up. I put the fish into the TTM tank and the QT process is underway.