How To Stock a QT Tank?

[MikeBrke]

I am wondering how to stock a QT tank?

Also, what do you look for when you put fish/coral in there? Make sure they don't have ich, they are healthy, etc?

Thanks,

Mike

[Vitaly]

Well typically I would not think about "stocking" a quarantine tank. Rather I plan to set-up and and have it ready (pH, salinity, etc) for when a new fish arrives.

The idea for a quarantine is to isolate a new fish, for example one that arrives from a mail order site, and:

* make sure it is eating
* make sure that it is generally healthy and recovers from shipping stress
* allow for prophylactic treatment before introducing into your display tank (hyposalinity, copper, etc).

When I get fish from the LFS I introduce it directly into my display tank since their tanks are already running at 1.018 and there is some copper in their water. Moreover, they always make sure the fish is eating before selling it.

Further, when I get a fish from a friend and local hobbyist, I also introduce directly to my display tank.

However, a fish coming from a mail order site...may be carrying some sort of parasite or just maybe very weak from shipping stress. Housing in the small quarantine tanks means the fish can be treated, can rest without the commotion of tankmates...and will not have to compete to get food. After about 2 weeks in quarantine the fish goes into the display tank.

So going back to the original statement...I would not really consider this to be "stocking" the quarantine tank.

Does that answer your question?

[jimmyj7090]

In a different direction -

I would say QT everything that goes into your display.

I would suggest considering ALL incoming fish as possible ICK or other parisite carriers. With ICK in particular, it's quite common for a system to seem perfectly healthy but there to be some very low level of ICK infection. This is why you hear about people believing that "ICK is always present". When the fish are stressed, the parisite often reappears. Moving a fish from one system to another is certainly stressful.

Also, the LFS keeping lower SG and some copper in the water will make things unpleasant for the parisites, but not necessarily enough to be %100 sure IMO/IME

I agree, you don't want to stock the QT, just keep it simple. Personally I keep a QT running all the time. When nothing is being QT'd I have 2 small fish (I call them orderlies...) that I'll keep in the QT to keep it cycled, when a new fish or coral comes home, the 2 "orderlies" get moved into my ref.

Any new corals get QT'd at least 6 weeks to allow any ICK to die off, and otherwise I just observe for pests or parisites.

New fish get acclimated, dropped to hypo, treated at 1.008 for 6 wks, transitioned back to normal SG, then observed for at least a couple of weeks.