Quarantine Tank

[tenlientl]

Would a 10 gallon tank be good enough? Would it be fine to put plants to grow/keep in the quarantine tank? Also, I heard some people say something about "putting the new bought fish in the quarantine tank before putting it in your community tank". Is this good?

Anyways. I'll probably be making a quarantine tank like near December... lol. I'm just a high school student and my mom will think I'm being an idiot if I wanted to buy a new tank.

 

[twb716]

A 10g tank would be fine, so long as you get some "established" water in it first. Sometimes its best to fill a QT with the water from the aquarium that you will be moving your fish from. Since the idea of your QT is to keep diseases OUT of your other tanks, I would not recommend putting anything in the tank that might be able to keep a disease lingering. I would advise against plants, and just get a cave or two that your sick fish can relax in. Also, I would HIGHLY advise against putting new fish in your QT. Later down the road, when you have actually used your QT for a sick fish, you wouldn't want to introduce diseases to your new fish by putting them in that tank first. They will be stressed out enough already, and you wouldn't want to stress them any more. Plus, it would be one more move that they don't necessarily need. When you get a fish home, acclimating it to the tank it will live in is as simple as opening it's bag, and slowly adding water from the aquarium into it. A QT tank should be emptied after each use for sick fish. Good luck.

TB

 

[cgrabe]

twb, isn't a large part of the justification for having a QT tank to keep new fish quarantined for observation before introducing them to the display tank thereby preventing undetected disease from being introduced into your tank?

/takes a breath

 

[tenlientl]

yea. that was a long sentence, lol. anyways. i dont wanna start another thread. i started a lot and may be annoying most of u. i dont feed brine shrimp in my tank. only flakes yet the hydra are reproducing a lot. shouldnt it be a bit slow?

 

[beviking]

Yeah, 10 gal is fine (and you can find them cheap a garage sales, swap sheets, etc). You prob don't want live plants in there since you don't know what kind of disease you'll be treating with what chemical. some are detrimental to plants. Yes, you want to put those new fish you brought home from the local fish store (lfs) into the Qtank. After all, it's your display tank that is disease free and those lfs tanks see more fish than doorknobs see hands. Trying to correlate lots of germs on that one...
Anyway, some ppl keep their QT running always some don't. Personally, I don't.

 

[ArkyLady]

I don't keep my QT/Hospital tank running at all times. I just keep a spare 10 gallon laying around ($10) and I keep a cheap sponge filter ($5) going in one of my established tanks so it has bacteria in it. Whenever I need the QT/Hospital tank, I just set it up and throw the sponge filter in it and it's good to go.

To do this you also need an air pump to run the sponge filter, I think they cost around $10 also if I remember right.

 

[125gJoe]

I don't keep my QT/Hospital tank ... ....

Good advice, and practical!!