My Idea For A Quarantine Tank

[Assaye]

If using fish in the Q tank, you'll need to find another home for them when you actually need to use it as a Q tank! Much better to keep it cycled with a bit of ammonia every few days.

My Q tank is set up with a spare filter and heater when I need it, with some mature media from another tank. Everything should be able to be sterilized between uses and the media thrown away if possible.

 

[waterdrop]

If using fish in the Q tank, you'll need to find another home for them when you actually need to use it as a Q tank! Much better to keep it cycled with a bit of ammonia every few days.

My Q tank is set up with a spare filter and heater when I need it, with some mature media from another tank. Everything should be able to be sterilized between uses and the media thrown away if possible.

Yes, I agree Assaye that this is the classic description of Qtank practice pretty much (or the sponge movement when needed that Oo is describing. I have maintained my Qtank for many, many months in the past by just dosing it with ammonia in the morning when I'm feeding the fish in the main tank. However I sure feel like I know where GVG is coming from and I'm still staying warm to the idea of a small subshoal that gets to be the ammonia providers in the Qtank. The downsides I can think of are that you've got to do some net work and fish moving before you can have use of the Qtank. Another downside would be having the subshoal be too small (but that would basically stem from your Qtank being a bit too small to begin with perhaps.) The pros would be that you wouldn't have to dose the tank daily, you'd feed instead and moving fish might be a bit easier than moving sponges (well, maybe about the same given that you'd of course acclimate them.)

I agree that like Zophie, I raised my eyebrows a bit at the idea of using rummy noses for this, as they are indeed a bit more sensitive. But in truth I think your water keeping habits are probably more than good enough to make this a non-factor. Time would tell and I really like the idea overall. The thing I think is particularly cool about the idea is that in medium-sized tanks like we've got (meaning the main tanks) I think there's enough volume that if you have really good maintenance habits (I've got to stop blogging myself and go do my maintenance ) then your shoal of rummys or harlequins or whatever can just easily handle the addition of 4 or 6 or whatever when they come in from the Qtank, and likewise, the 6 (or even 4) moving back over to the Qtank should be fine (this has been my direct experience, that they do quite well with this.) I tend to let my Qtank newcomers go for months anyway, rather than weeks, just because I'm usually taking my time looking for the next inhabitants and our Qtank serves as a small display tank of sorts that my son feels a little more control over (having waterdrop as a fish-Dad is unfortunately not the best situation for independent learning I suspect.)

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Gvilleguy]

(having waterdrop as a fish-Dad is unfortunately not the best situation for independent learning I suspect.)

~~waterdrop~~

Funny! My kids just about killed me during the 70 day cycle.

I had not researched Rummy Nosed yet, and certainly would not use a sensitive fish for this type of setup. My Q tank is showing some signs of getting the first batch of ammonia processed (down to 1-2 ppm today from 5 ppm a week ago). So maybe I'm a week or two away from getting this going.

 

[waterdrop]

Yeah but I'm serious. I think your knowledge and habits now would probably provide water in your Qtank that would be just fine for rummys to play this role (unless they are really a lot more delicate than I'm thinking, and I really don't thing they're -that- delicate as they are not that rare in the trade.) What size is your Q again?

 

[Gvilleguy]

My Q is only 5 gallons, while the primary is 26.

 

[Assaye]

I'm very serious when I say that the Q tank should be very clean. If you have to keep moving the Q-shoal from the Q tank to another tank, you run the risk of them passing on diseases from the previous Q tank occupant or picking up diseases from other tanks. Plus, it means you're not in a position to throw away the media after it is used in the Q tank and the media can potentially harbor diseases.

What I do is always have some spare media in a main tank filter, and move that media over to the Q tank when I need it (if I use a filter at all, which I rarely do as many treatments kill filter bacteria anyway). I then replace that piece of media with new media in the main tank filter to ensure I always have fresh media avaliable. I then throw away the Q media after it is used.

I know what it's like to have something creeping around my tanks, killing off my fish. Something that was probably passed between tanks by mixing media or using the same net in multiple tanks. I learnt the hard way to be uber careful and while I'm not perfect by any means (cloned a new filter with mature media recently, for example), I do think it is important to be sure the Q tank is as sterile at possible, and that would mean not keeping fish in it between uses.

 

[waterdrop]

Well, the Qtank either suffers a disease event or it doesn't. I totally agree with you that the Qtank should be "torn down" and rebuilt "clean" if an event occurs. The "holding fish" would probably not go back in to a Qtank that had suffered an event. Once that occurred I would just not restart the Qtank until another set of new fish were going in or sick fish from the main tank had to be moved in and in either of those cases I'd use a chunk of main tank filter sponge.

The scenerio I'm describing is when you're lucky enough to keep moving small new stockings from the LFS to the Qtank and then on to the Main tank without any mishap. For me there's often at least a month or two between movements and movement would not proceed if any disease were detected. I would expect diseased fish to display symptoms within a month or so usually, would you give it longer? And I'd not hesitate to move a sub-shoal back in from the main tank if no disease had been detected.

~~waterdrop~~

 

[Assaye]

Ok, yes I see your point. I think it leads to instability for the shoal but that's a minor concern as long as they can be comfortably housed in another tank, possibly on a fairly long term basis when needed.

Just got to be sooo careful if the tank ever has a disease in it!

 

[waterdrop]

Yeah, its a limited sort of scenerio. I picture it in conjunction with two things. The situation where you are a very patient slow stocker who's bringing a tank toward full stocking and taking a long time looking for good stock from different sources and you luck out and don't have any diseases brought in by any of the batches along the way. At the end of that you might retire the Qtank and plan to just use sponge when later needed, or you might entertain the "holding fish" idea.

And the "holding fish" idea is itself pretty limited in that you really need to be dealing with a large enough main tank that the shoal you are "raiding" doesn't go down by half or something big like that, at least ideally. Overall, its really a pretty limited idea and not so great for people with smaller tanks or people who have enough room for a few larger tanks and have less desire for there to be another tank to look at or play with. I think you can see that in my and GVG's cases, part of it comes from giving smaller kids a place to have a bigger say in some things that the parents might not do in the main display tank.

~~waterdrop~~