Getting a Hospital Tank Setup STAT

[NathanF]

Back on July 12th I asked up about treating my firefish for ich. With my tank sizing question out of the way I continued doing research for a treatment plan. I needed to get the hospital tank set up as quickly as possible because each wave of ich seemed to get worse. The big obvious problem was that the tank was not cycled and I had 2 firefish, a yellow watchman goby, and a clown that needed to be moved.

 

After a whole lot of reading I decided to go with Seachem Paraguard. Seachem's tech support suggested that I treat the aquarium for 21 days. With the medication question out of the way I began searching for filtration options and decided to go with an AquaClear 20 and my old Oceanic Protein Skimmer.

 

For the first 21 days I filled the AquaClear 20 with the filter sponge and polyfill for bacteria colonization. The tank was then dosed with Seachem Stability for the directed 8 days. For days 22+ I filled the AquaClear 20 with Chemipure Elite and Seachem Purigen to stave off ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate spikes. Removing the polyfill so quickly was a mistake.

 

For the first 3 weeks I tested the water twice daily and in that period I never saw any ammonia or nitrites. I did 10% water changes every other day to manage the low level of nitrates. The protein skimmer was pulling out skimmate but was not performing as well as I had hoped.

 

At the start of week 4 the parameters started going out of wack. Nitrites spiked while nitrates rose. Ammonia remained at 0. I immediately began daily larger water changes ranging from 20% to 50% treated with Seachem Prime. Still I could not manage to get parameters down to prior levels.

 

Mid way through week 4 I started mixing my own saltwater because I found it too cumbersome to manage both RO and saltwater purchases. It was difficult having enough of each type on hand while purchasing them from the store.

 

At the end of week 4 it was obvious that I had to change how I was doing things. The biological filtration was being overwhelmed. Upon evaluation of all parameters including flow I decided to bump up total mechanical filtration capacity. I pulled both the AquaClear 20 and the protein skimmer. My wife's planted aquarium had a Tetra Whisper in-tank filter rated at 90 GPH so I swapped that for the AC 20 putting the Whisper in place of the protein skimmer. I found an AquaClear 50 that was on sale and added that to the hospital tank.

 

In the AC 50 I placed Chemipure Elite and the bag of ceramic bits that came with the filter. I packed the Tetra Whisper filter with both charcoal and Purigen. Again, I dosed the aquarium with Stability. By day 2 all water parameters (ammonia, nitrite, nitrate) flat-lined at 0. In this period I also switched food from Hikari sinking pellets to New Life Spectrum pellets.

 

Weeks 6 and 7 saw no major water changes other than the replacement of water lost due to quick vacuuming of the bare tank bottom.

 

So, on the start of week 6 I began daily very small water changes of 8 ounces or less in the Biocube 14 display tank. This was done to bring salinity up to near that of the hosptial/quarantine tank as well as to raise the PH. Two days before the end of week 7 I did a 1/2 gallon water change which matched the salinity and closed the PH gap.

 

Last night I moved everyone back to the display tank. I just took a peek into the tank and it looks like everyone is doing a-okay. The goby is already back on the job as the pistol shrimp's lookout man. Best of all, I didn't lose anyone.

 

Lessons learned?

 

• Paraguard does a great job treating ich. By day 2.5 all visible signs of ich on the firefish were gone.
  
• Never underestimate the importance of biological filtration.
  
• Stability is outstanding for jumpstarting a cycle. I'd never use it to jumpstart a display tank just so that I can add fish but I never saw ammonia throughout the 7 weeks. And it played a major role in managing nitrites.
  
• Prime is amazingly useful for when things get wobbly. Even when the nitrites and nitrates shot up my fish never lost color and never stopped eating.
  
• As far as filtration goes, go with more (within reason) to expose as much water as possible to the filter media.
  
• Both Chemipure and Purigen are invaluable for a quarantine tank.
  
• Mixing your own water isn't difficult. I found it easier to mix my own because I knew what the salinity would be. It was always different from the local fish store.
  
• In a quarantine tank without a cleanup crew the New Life Spectrum food was great. The Hikari pellets would quickly break down and thus be ignored by the fish. The New Life Spectrum food did not break down as quickly. It was observed that all fish would eat the NLS pellets hours after being introduced.
  
• Be patient and monitor everything. Always and constantly.
  

 

Hopefully this can be of help to people who have similar questions to those that I had.

[1fishmonger]

Nice. Hospital/QTs are very helpful