sandwi54
New member
reefjunkie, first of all, a QT is not really the best place to mix fish and see if they get along. It is a place, however, to let a fish recover from shipping trauma and get used to captive environments. It is never a good idea to cram lots of fish into a small quarantine tank. you almost always run into lots of issues: aggression, water quality, etc. Aggression is likely higher in the 40g tank than in your nice 200 gallon reef (by the way, good choice on the angels and i'm sure they will do well in your DT). water quality is harder to control unless your QT was previously cycled with the same amount of load as you are having now. It won't take 7 days for ammonia and/or nitrite to go up; instead it will be hours if the QT is not previously cycled. You must monitor ammonia/nitrite at least once a day, and twice would be better. You will have to do large water change if the levels go up. I hope you have the proper liquid test kits since you mentioned about getting an ammonia badge.
When I first started out in the hobby, I was doing the same thing as what you are doing. I would buy lots of fish to QT together with the intention that I could treat them together. However, this was proven to be very dangerous as each fish could come in with a different disease, and you can only treat one or two diseases at a time since most medications cannot be mixed. Some fish died along the way and I learned the lesson of not rushing and just purchasing one or two fish at a time, and never had problems ever since.
Do you plan on prophylactically treating all of the fish with copper to prevent ich? If not I would suggest that you quarantine them for a minimum of 6 weeks. I would also suggest separating fish that display aggression towards each other with a tank divider, if there is actual aggression at all.
When I first started out in the hobby, I was doing the same thing as what you are doing. I would buy lots of fish to QT together with the intention that I could treat them together. However, this was proven to be very dangerous as each fish could come in with a different disease, and you can only treat one or two diseases at a time since most medications cannot be mixed. Some fish died along the way and I learned the lesson of not rushing and just purchasing one or two fish at a time, and never had problems ever since.
Do you plan on prophylactically treating all of the fish with copper to prevent ich? If not I would suggest that you quarantine them for a minimum of 6 weeks. I would also suggest separating fish that display aggression towards each other with a tank divider, if there is actual aggression at all.
