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I am thinking of setting up a QT tank... I have read where it's good, when buying new fish to acclimate them to a clean QT tank for a week, prior to letting them loose in the regular tank. To this point, I have simply floated their bag in my tank for 30-60 mins, all the while gradually adding a little bit of tank water to their bag, then finally netting them into the new tank.

It would be handy to have a QT tank for outbreaks of stuff...

I had thought about buying a little 10g set up kit for this purpose. I am curious, what do you all use? Coule I get away with a smaller tank? Do ya use gravel? What kinda of filter? Decor? Any feedback would be great, as usual!

QT tanks are handy for making sure new fish don't introduce diseases to your old fish or for individually treating sick fish. Mine is a 10 gal but I don't leave it set up all the time. I use a cheap home made sponge filter which usually runs in a mature tank. When I need the QT I take that filter and add water from the main tank. Presto! Instant cycle, no problems. Don't use gravel, a bare bottom is easier to clean. But do use some decor like a big rock and some plastic plants. This will make the fish feel more secure and less stressed.

You can use a power filter but remove the carbon if using medications. Also, the current from such a filter may be troublesome for injured fish and if you ever use the tank for tiny fish or fry they can be sucked in. The sponge filter is really inexpensive and you can run it inconspiciously in your main tank when you don't need it.

I suppose you could get a 5 gal if you think you will always have very small fish but a 10 is just easier to keep the water quality good, it's more versitale.

Hi,
The purpose of the QT tank is to isolate and house newly
purchased fish to be sure that they are healthy, and not
bringing any unwanted diseases or parasites to the
main tank.

Size is a consideration.

The QT tank should be large enough to house for a period
of a month at least, complete shoals or schools of
fish that will eventually find their way into the
main tank. If your main tank was, say, a 30, then
perhaps a 10 or 15G tank would be large enough.
The idea is to comfortably house the fish that
you purchase and to allow you to purchase complete
shoals or schools of fish at a time.

A QT tank is essentially another aquarium. Unlike Lioness,
I believe an ideal QT tank should be a complete tank.
That is, it should have gravel, heater, filter, plants,and
places for the new fish to claim as territories, or to hide
in/among. The idea is to calm the skittish new fish, and
bring them around to your routine of feeding, water changes,
as well as keeping an eye on them to be sure they
are problem free.
You cannot do that in a bare tank.
To maintain the tank's Nitrogen Cycle once the new
fish have been transfered, many will keep a pair of
live bearers in the tank.
They will maintain the nitrogen cycle in between new
purchases. Additionally, the fry from them can be used as
live food for the new fish, or fed to the fish in the main
tank from time to time.

A Hospital tank should be a bare bones tank. No gravel,
and a piece of black construction paper under the tank to
prevent the sick fish from seeing their reflections.
The Hospital tank should have an air driven sponge filter,
heater, and something easily removed to be a shelter for
the sick fish. With a Hospital tank, you can isolate the
sick or injured fish from the main tank or from the new
arrivals in the QT tank and if the problem is peculiar to
one or two fish, treat them only. If the problem has
spread to the new fish, then treat the QT tank as a whole.
Unless you have large fish, the ideal Hospital tank would
be a 10G tank as all the medications say to treat at so
much a dose/gallon. Math in the powers of 10 can be easier
than math with a 15G or 25G tank.
Once the disease or parasite has been cured or gotten rid
of, then you can return the fish to the tank they came from
and easily wash and sterilize the Hospital Tank purchase
a new sponge for the sponge filter, and put the tank
on the shelf till it is needed again.

Frank

-->>> The Confidence of Amateurs, is the Envy of Professionals <<<--

I simply said bare 'bottomed', you certainly don't want a bare tank. In this instance we are considering one tank for two purposes: QT and hospital, as needed. If sickness struck the fish in the tank all the gravel would need to be steralized afterwards, as well as all the other goodies. More mess, just not needed. I stuff my tank with all the little faky decor: plastic log with hiding places, rocks, lots of plants both standing and floating. The fish do fine. I use a few less for a hospital tank, to better observe the fish, but the principle is the same.

A month seems a bit excessive. A week or two should be adequate to allow you to check all fish for good health and make sure they don't die of anything strange. I guess longer might give more time for a parasite's life cycle to show up. Personally I don't think you need to make it that complicated. I too have simply floated, acclimated, and then directly released new fish into the aquarium many times with no problems. The QT is just an extra safety measure. You can extend that as long as you like and decorate it any way you like.

Sorry Scott not trying to intrude on your post, but I got a related question. If one sets up a QT tank and ends up needing to do medication, and your planning to QT multiple fish over a period time. Say your first batch of fish need meds. Is it recommend to also have a hospital tank so that the QT isnt affected? Have them in the same area with the same water chemistry and if it then comes about that one needs to treat with meds. to transfer the fish to the hospital tank? Or is that the whole point of having little to no gravel is to be able to treat the tank then have an easy clean up, but if you did this wouldn't that throw you into mini-cycle or something (isint that were beneficial bacteria stay as well)? Maybe I'm missing something here?

I guess the best way I could describe this is if you have a main tank and a QT tank and you just treated fish in the QT with medication. After the treatment you transfer some or all to the main tank and then do what with the QT? Break it down and clean it because now the disease is in the gravel and decor of the tank. Or do a good water change and add carbon to the filter? After that it should be ready for a new batch of fish to QT or no?

Again sorry Scott

thanks

tigermom

Hi,
I'd say it depends upon the disease that you were treating
for and how effective the medications are.

Generally speaking, if you did not have a QT nor
a Hospital tank and you were forced to treat your
main tank, you would follow the directions that came
with the medication. IE: treat with the correct dose
of medicine for as long (as many days) as the
directions instructed, remove the carbon from the
filter. When the fish were healthy and back to
normal, nearly every medication recommends that you do
a massive water change of about 50% or more, put carbon
back in your filter and then a week or so later do
another large water change, and replace the carbon.
The water changes dilute the remaining medications
and the carbon removes the remainder of the medication,
and then life resumes as normal in the tank.

Use the same concept in the QT tank. When the fish have
been "healed" do a large water change, put carbon in the
filter wait a week, do another water change and replace
the carbon. That should do it.

If you have a fish that has been injured in the QT an you
have a hospital tank, then I'd move it over to the Hospital
tank, and treat IT, and then return it to the QT when
healed.

Many times, disease will come with the fish that you have
just purchased and placed in the QT and you would
treat them there as all the fish have been exposed to
the disease and are probably in various stages of catching
the disease. There would be no sense in that case
of moving them.

Hope that helps....

Honestly, quite the contrary to what should be done, many
will simply bring the fish home from the LFS, float the
bag for a half hour and then net the fish out of the bag
and into the main tank. It is never a good idea, and
sooner or later you are gonna get "caught" and loose not
only the fish you bought but also the loved ones already in
the main tank. In essence those folks are playing the odds.

Frank


-->>> The Confidence of Amateurs, is the Envy of Professionals <<<--

Thanks, that's a great explanation, I really wanted to understand to avoid that who issue of getting established fish sick. Just needed things a little more broken down I guess (slow moment for me) haha well thanks a bunch!!!

tigermom

BTW a two week quarantine is completely insufficient time for a good quarantine, to the point of being completely pointless.The only thing you will filter out as a disease in two weeks is ich, any viral, protozoan, bacterial, or fungal infection may not make itself known for over one month to three. Dont forget in many cases your taking home a fish that has been on a UV system to a non-UV system and that means and disease or parasite numbers will be low, and youre waiting for them to develop into a noticeable symptom and that can take many weeks, more to the point, usually does.

Keeping a filtered QT tank bare is an irrelevance, because all the hiding media ever needed for disease to proliferate is already in the filter, so that in mind, as kieth says you might as well set up the QT as you would a normal aquarium, I would probably not go for real plants ,unless you bought some and wanted to quarantine them the same time as the new fish. but some cover might as well be provided, gravel etc, it all helps to keep the water and the filter stable by increasing bacterial surface area.

Perhaps a distinction needs to be made between acclimation and acquisition quarantine and actual sickness quarantine, then you realise that there are not so much two schools of thought as one process to which a lot of people only see part of a complete picture.

Assuming that the fish are healthy there was never not a reason to accomodate them with reasonable furnishings, but if there does happen to be a problem, most problems can be treated without damaging the filter or plants so theres still no reason not to use them. In fact plants that survive medication will probably have been purged of disease also and can still safetly be used.This will accoount for about 80% of all cases of infection.

On those rare occassions when you get an utterly lethal disease or parasite that will require purging the QT tank, it will be something like the more resistant strains or amoebic dysentary, columnaris, channel cat disease, neon tetra disease, mycobacteria, myxobacteria, trematodia etc. These conditions may require treatments as deadly as furan, potassium ,high levels of formaldehyde, various acids, lethal antiparasitics, etc, so obviously the plants wont make it,the filter will be killed dead anyway and will need steralising and stripping down and for those parasitic diseases with highly resistant spores and cysts you dont want any media in the tank, so you have to begin a stripdown process essentially converting an acclimation quarantine into a treatment tank.

So basically what you should think about in the design is a way not to make the tank too basic, but to facilitate a method of stripping it down easily should the worst, but less likely eventuality happen.

Now obviously some real plants might have to be binned, and thats just hard luck, hence why I recommend not using them unless you have the cuttings to waste etc. Secondly , use no heavily porous materials. Choose gravels that are non- porous and easily steralised and re-used like quartz, or slate chips and pebbles. Plastic plants are an advantage because they can be bleached or treated with chlorine or iodine and dried.Im pretty sure the fish couldnt give a damn what colour the plastic plants end up, this is purely for quarantine.

..and now for the clever bit.Put the substrate not into the floor of the tank, but into a tray that fits the tank or tub closely either with handles, or make your own with a drill and some nylon string so that all the substrate, rocks and all can be removed in one easy motion. Cleverly removed, and not overfilled, you can see-saw it a bit as you lift it out and you may never have to take the fish from the water as they will likely dart around to the underside of the tray as you lift it out. Disconnect filter,leave an airstone running, meds in , ammolock on standby or a larger donator tank free of disease available for water swapouts, and job done.

Too cheap and basic doesnt cut it, and too porous and expensive to break down isnt practical, find the middle ground with a tank that can be stripped down easily.

...and for those with money to burn, a nice uv steriliser to plug in once treatments are over, just to finish off any potentially remaining nasties before the fish go into major community. Make sure though, unlike a lot of shops, that its rated correctly or overkill for the water volume and use it with a bare tank.

There ya go, that should help prepare you to kill off just about anything, except hopefully, the fish!

as always, great stuff, thanks git, Frank, Keith, lioness!! Tigermom, I think you should always feel free to ask questions on here whether it's your own post or something that goes along on a existing post/thread.

So, you're surely not bothering me, lol dive right in!