Cycling is only step one toward having fish. THere is more.

[Sk8r]

1. Cycle your tank.
2. Put in a couple of snails/micro-hermits for a week and go on adding a few flakes of fishfood daily---as in 1 flake per 10 gallons. If they live and feed well, you can add more snails and hermits. You may also get 1 fish and have it in quarantine for the next 4 weeks. If the fish dies, sterilize your qt tank and dry it, along with all equipment, and start over. [White vinegar is a good wash-down.] Why do this? Invertebrates like crabs and snails don't bring troublesome parasites. Fish do. So we're sure your tank is safe in the care of the cleanup crew (cuc) --- and we're sure that anything that fish has got is NOT going to get into your tank and infest the sandbed. Because some parasites do.
3. When you've finally reached the 4th week with a healthy fish and nothing has gone wrong with your tank (we assume you'll be learning how to keep that chemistry perfect)---you can put the healthy fish into the healthy tank and start fish #2 in quarantine. Never add a fish to another in qt, unless you totally re-set the qt clock to day one.

A great deal of all the trouble and loss we deal with in this forum would not happen if people followed this protocol.

Skip that misery. Do all 3 steps. And GOOD LUCK!

[MinnFish]

Sk8r does it again. Another great piece of advice. Now, if you could do a write up about listening and following good advice. Thank you for your contribution to the community.

[toothybugs]

Thank you for your contribution to the community.

Fully seconded.

NG

[Sk8r]

Another observation: a barebottom qt kept scrupulously clean, no light, with a pvc to hide in---is not cruel to the fish. Contrast it to the fish dropped into a bag, flown 300 miles, hauled out on a truck, dropped into a tank in a store, in insane overcrowding (supported by an elephant of a filtration system, but still overcrowded) and then rebagged, driven by car, unbagged and dropped into a functioning tank with strange environment, in blinding light, perhaps with other fish already claiming the good spots, and sometimes defending them with extreme hostility, perhaps larger fish thinking your arrival means lunch...the absolute capper on a rotten experience.

If instead this very hassled fish is dropped into a dimly lit tank with a place to hide all his own and, once he's calmed down, food he doesn't have to be challenged for---he can live four weeks in relative quiet, sleeping, eating, getting used to the idea of the thumps and noises in the house, and go into the big display tank only after four weeks of eating well and having no challenges, he's going to go in much healthier and more able to hold his own.

If he does have a parasite, it will usually manifest from 3-14 days after the final stress of transport. You surely don't want this to happen AFTER he's gotten into the tank. Ich produces a pimple, which many people think IS the parasite. Not so. It bursts and vanishes, and many people think it spontaneously cured itself. Definitely not so. Little ich parasites just headed for your sandbed to settle in and undergo the growth part of their lifecycle, preparatory to attacking all your fish. This is why I do not recommend sand or rock in a quarantine tank, and I'm not real keen on sponges. The cleanest sort of qt uses a simple floss filter, maybe with a little carbon, changed daily and tossed.

There is also the 'transfer' method, in which you have 2 tanks, and daily set up the alternate and move the fish on into clean water. As a quarantine practice it's not bad; as an ich treatment, it's my preference even over hyposalinity. Using copper on every fish you get is NOT a good idea: copper is toxic, and some species of fish may not survive the experience. Angels and mandarins are particularly sensitive.

Maintaining an alkalinity of 8.3 is also a must. A fish's protection against all sorts of ills is his slime coat, and if you let your alk drop, this can affect the slime coat. Keep that reading spot on: once you have fish, it's THE key thing to watch.

Don't get a mandarin or scooter first off: they're very difficult to manage in qt. The good news is that they almost NEVER get sand parasites: their natural defenses prevent it. But also they eat copepods, and if you don't have at least a 20 gallon refugium PER MANDARIN constantly providing these live creatures to the tank (yes, they do survive passage through the pump), keeping them alive is difficult. Yes, some will learn to eat other things, but most won't, and the alternate diets may not provide them what they need to be healthy. Also you'll fare better not using a filter sock if you have a mandarin: you'd be removing part of their food supply.

Best advice is start with your less troublesome fishes. Put the more territorial types in last: otherwise they'll happily claim your entire tank as theirs and challenge any fish that arrive later. Likewise, check your adult size: blennies and gobies, fairy wrasses and dwarf angels and such are sold as adults. Tangs, regular angels, and others are sold as minnows, and grow rapidly to near a foot. Damsels are not for small tanks: put them in a hundred gallon tank and they calm right down. Put them in a 30 and they'll fight everything around them.

[Sk8r]

And read this thread from the top down.

[shesacharmer]

Thanks Sk8r...you're the bomb!

[Tarawa]

thats a an interesting note there how the copepods survive traversing a pump. I would have assumed it would pretty much erase anything =D

[Sk8r]

I have an Iwaki 100 that's like a Cuisinart, and I've seen amphipods come through it whole.

[MinnFish]

Another hit out of the ballpark. Thanks again.