please help me not screw this up?

[Riona]

I'm getting fish on(hopefully!) Monday! Please please please please PLEASE help me out here. My back story: I had a more-or-less successful nano tank a few years ago in CO, moved and it crashed(roomie didn't get back with the keys in time to move everything, I freaked, didn't put enough salt in. . . Yeah. . .) Restarted. Moved again. The tank looked fine for a few weeks and then the fish(2 clowns and a sailfin blenny) all died, tank got cloudy, corals pulled through. Started downgrading for a while, then decided that I didn't like it anymore and sold everything off.

What, it's been about a month or two now since I started my biocube? It's a 29 gallon. Started with 15# of LR, cycled, added a few LPS, some ricordea and a zoa frag. All has been fine. I just(crap.) got another 10# in the tank yesterday from the keys, and am hoping I won't be going through another cycle(am checking the water again for sure before I bring anything home, but over 24 hours later there isn't enough ammonia to get a reading on a test kit. Definitely won't complain about that!)

I know I should probably wait longer(famous last words, right?) but I've been thinking that I want a "different" pair of clowns for the tank other than standard ocellaris, and the LFS I go to just got in a stunning misbar perc, and some standard percs that I'll be choosing a second from, assuming I still don't have an ammonia(or nitrite or nitrate for that matter) spike going on by Monday(I'm assuming any die off will have started to happen by then.)

I am terrified that I still don't know WHY my last fish died, and that something will happen to these guys, though. After my last fish died, of course I got an ammonia spike, but I don't know what had happened to the water before that since I hadn't checked my parameters just before anything went amiss. . . Any tips to make sure I don't off these guys as well? Or any tips besides keeping up on water changes(planning on 5 gallons a week in a 29 gallon biocube with no other fish) to make sure these guys stay healthy and happy and ALIVE for me?

[AFord]

The new fish should be going into a qt tank for at least 6 weeks to watch for signs of disease. That six weeks would also allow your tank to re-cycle, if in fact it does.

There is a sticky at the top of this forum on setting up a qt tank and I highly recommend you go this route. It's not expensive and will save you lots of future headaches.

[dthorn]

I saw you mentioned something in another post that you didn't mention here. Didn't you say your last tank was 5g? If so that is probably what lead to a crash. Unfortunately tanks don't have skill levels like corals and fish. The smaller the nano the more skill and equipment required to keep everything perfect. And perfect is the key word here since there is absolutely no room for error in tiny tanks. A tank that small would probably have to be recycled after a move. It's likely the stuff you stirred up was more than bio filter could handle. Then one death of any tiny creature triggered the final chain reaction. Hard to say for sure but I would say that's probably the whole story. Improper salt mix also could have caused die off in the biological filtration leading to crash. Sneeze to close to a tank that small it might crash. I expect you to have a much easier tkme with the biocube and hard learned lessons. Happy reefing!!

[jamesbaur13]

I don't know what happened with your nano... there's not enough info there to draw a conclusion, only speculation.

If your tank has cycled and you've been testing 0 ammonia/nitrite for a week then you should be good to go.

You should be good to go provided that what they died from is a water chemistry issue and not something else.

As another mentioned, the new fish should be put into QT. This isn't just for what your new fish might have, but it's also for what your old fish might of had. It's not likely, but there is a chance that some parasite could of lived through the move and set up.

You should be ok, but realize there's a chance you may not be.

Keep close eye.

[Riona]

As for the other thread: I started with a 10 gallon that had two clowns, then upgraded to a 20, added a blenny, moved and that is when the problems started. After the fish died I downgraded to a 5, then a 2.5 then sold it all. Hopefully nothing from that system followed me, since I have since sold everything that even touched that tank and moved cross country XD

I have a 10 gallon that is running and(was just actually upgraded from a 5 gallon. . . ) cycled, has been for a while with not much more than some rock and mushrooms in it. Assuming I needed to medicate I could always take that out. Would that work as a qt tank as long as I keep an eye on my parameters?

[blanden.adam]

I think you've got the wrong idea about QT. You shouldn't take it out if you need to medicate -- by that time it's already too late, the disease has contaminated your entire DT. Instead, you absolutely quarantine every fish (best practice is everything wet, but lets stick to fish for now) for 30 days before it goes into your DT, so if a disease shows up you can medicate and cure it BEFORE your fish go into the main tank. A 10 gallon would function as a very good quarantine tank for a DT of your size, but there's a bit more to it than just size.

Please read the sticky on quarantining here: http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2195588

And here is another article if you are interested: http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-10/sp/feature/index.php

[cakemanPA]

On top of the QT issue, you are going in the wrong direction size wise. A 5 gallon is amazingly difficult to keep stable and 2.5 is even more so IMO. You have no margin for error with a tank that small.

[Riona]

. . . That was when I lived in CO. Not right now. I've got a 10 gallon more or less barebones setup and a 29 gallon biocube at the moment. I quite literally don't have anything that I used for reefkeeping in CO anymore.

I'm wondering if I could use the 10 gallon(it hasn't ever had fish in it, and I've not ever planned to keep fish in it. Just some cheap LR and low light corals, which could be removed if I needed to medicate.) as a quarantine tank since it has been set up for a couple of months(and recently put into the 10 from a 5 gallon that it had been in. No change in the amount of rock or anything, just a bigger tank)