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Plz can anyone explain for me whats a quarantine tank and what is it used for? What does it need it from equipment and what is it use for? Thanks for helping.

Hi Paul

I use my quarantine tank for new fish. It is a bit smaller than my main tank and not heavily planted. When I buy new fish, I place them in that tank for 2 weeks. If they are still healthy after that time, I transfer them to my planted community tank. This is so that if they have disease, I prevent them transferring their sickness to my other fish in the community tank. Any new sickness should have shown up in that 2 week quarantine period.

Another use would be if you can see one of your fish in the main tank is sick and needs medication. Transfer him to your quarantine tank. This way you might have a chance to stop the disease spreading to your other fish & you need only medicate the fish that are unwell.

Others can tell you more & better than me, but that's how I use my quarantine tank.

Hope this helps.

Cheers
TW

TankWatcher pretty much said it. Most people with Quarrantine tanks will use a 10 gallon because they are very inexpensive, though if you have larger fish, you would obviously be better off with a larger quarrantine tank. The equipment doesn't need to be anything fancy, and just a heater and filter will do. It also doesn't need to be decorated at all, though sick fish or new fish will of course appreciate a few hiding places, so a few caves or chunks of driftwood would be nice. You don't even need gravel in a quarrantine tank, and in fact many people will swear by using a bare-bottom tank for quarrantine because it makes cleaning much easier, especially after medicating, as some parasites and nasties can hide in the gravel. I personally use a very thin layer of substrate because when I tried a bare-bottom tank The fish were afraid of their reflections in the glass below them and would stress themselves out. Painting the bottom of the tank (on the outside, of course) can help with this problem. I also had brown algae all over the place, which was somehow solved by adding a 1/4 inch of gravel.

Some people only keep the tank and equipment on hand when they need it, setting it up and tearing it down only when they get new fish or have diseases or parasites to deal with. This is fine, except you can run into problems inherrent with a brand new tank that hasn't had a chance to cycle. Other people leave their quarrantine tanks set up full time to maintain a bacterial colony. I keep a few ottos and a mystery snail in my qurrantine tank full time, so it's always ready if I buy fish on a whim (a bad habbit of mine, as I've pretty much run out of room for new fish), or have fishes that are sick.

Hoping that there must be a word for everything I mean...

just to sum up, my QT are very basic,

just a filter, and heater, air stone. i have glass seperating the the sections of the tank, so that more fish can be added into the QT without losing alot of them.

most people dont use them, but when you start working with older tanks, and expensive fishes, it is worth the money to set-up a QT.

and basically, if the fish comming in die in the QT they were healthy and that could have destroyed a community tank, thats why often alot of new "er" fishkeepers have massive amounts of fish die off.