Quarantine Tank

[manny]

I've decided to turn a ten gallon tank into a quarantine tank for my two fish that have ich and for future purchases of fish. It's got a corner filter that just uses an airstone and charcoal, and two small plants for them to hide in. I took the charcoal out so it wouldn't have an effect on the medicine. For the water I used about 6 1/2 gallons from my 30 gallon tank. Since there's not very good filtration going on and not very much water, do I need to worry about adding water or doing water changes or what exactly do I do?

[Henry]

on my q-tank, I set-up and teardown only when I need it. I use water from the tank, piece of pvc pipe and a sponge filter. I use ro/di water for topoff if needed. Thats all I use. I don't do any water chngs on it since its not set up that long.


Henry

[manny]

I was planning on keeping these two guys in the quarantine tank for about a month so that any parasites I still have in my big tank will die off.
Can I do this by just having that crappy little corner airstone filter or do I need a powerfilter?
Also, today my water was cloudy and the ammonia was at .25. Put some amquel in the tank to get rid of it.
What's goin on here? I'm thinkin filtration. Anybody have any better ideas? Will it get better on it's own?

[robertpower3]

Amquel will only help temporarily if at all. if your fish have ich and there is ammonia change the water to get rid of the ammonia. They are already stressed out enough. you will need some kind of fbacteria cultured filter since you probably have a bare bottom tank. Other wise do lots of water changes. And test for ammonia and nitrite. Also water changes help get rid of ich and velvet by removing the parasite after it ruptures and begins reproducing.

[matt]

If you treat your q-tank with copper, which is an effective medicine/poison for the parasites, you will also severely disrupt the bio-filter by killing most of the bacteria in the filter, plus you're killing any micro-life in the water, which means more dead stuff and hence decomposition. This is the dilemma with q-tanks, expecially small ones.

You'd probably be better off trying this approach, although it's a PITA. First, set up your q-tank with new water, and for filtration, you can use a little hang on filter with bio-balls or chem stars and an airstone in the chamber. You can cycle this with either ammonia sulfate (I think, but could be wrong) or something like a rotting shrimp, i guess. Adding ammonia works great. The idea is to build up a large colony of bacteria in the bio-balls residing in the filter chamber. Then, when you add sick fish and copper, some of the bacteria in the filter survives, plus there's less stuff in the water killed by the copper. This should help to keep ammonia levels down.

At the old AQSS, they quarantined fish with copper in a big system in the back room. Basically Ken told me that the bio-filter in that sysem had acclimated to the presence of copper somewhat, so they were able to keep copper up and ammonia down.

[manny]

Man, this Q tank really is turning out to be a PITA. Anybody wanna quarantine a couple fish and save some lives :skeezy:

[robertpower3]

I have had to treat crytocaryon and amyloodinium on quite a few fish. I think copper at the proper dose is the best cure if you can do it. but sometimes you just don't have the time or resources. If it is just marine ich or crytocaryon i have just left the fish in the main tank and fed spirullina enriched brine and formula pellets and 95% of the time it will just go away as long as you have a healthy tank and good water parameters. I also do daily water changes.