Hospital Tank

[JALouis]

HI,

I'm thinking of setting up a hospital tank as I have some vampire shrimp with bosemani rainbows, tiger barbs, black ghost and rainbow shark and don't want to treat all this fish if one gets sick (thankfully none are). Plus the vampire shrimp can't tolerate copper medications. I have a few questions regarding setting up a hospital tank.

1. I assume I need to have this tank cycled first am I correct? So it wouldn't be a problem to put a few fish in as inhabitants even though it's a hospital tank right?
2. What size tank do I need? What the common size people use for this type of tank? 20 gallon?
3. Probably a stupid question but if I remove the sick fish from the main tank how do I treat the water in the main tank to keep the other fish from getting sick?

Thanks for all your advice in advance.

Jennifer

 

[Curiosity101]

Just an idea, but how about you have an empty tank spare, and a small secondary filter in the main tank so you always have the hospital filter cycled...
It seems an easier cheaper alternative.
Alternatively, if you have room in your existing filter, you could just take the media out of the filter that would be going into a hospital tank and slot it into your main filter...

Don't know what size would be a good size for your hospital tank. I guess just something that would accomodate the fully grown size of your biggest fish for the length of time the average treatment will take.

And as for medicating the main tank...the whole point of the hospital tank is to avoid this. I'd suggest you'd just have to hospitalise the ill fish, and then keep a close eye on the main tank. If it looks like the illness is spreading then you may aswell treat the entire main tank anyways.

Hope that helps