what is your quarantine tank setup?

[Friendly]

I was thinking an IM10...but then realized that's a lot of money for a tank when all I need is a 5 or 10 gallon with a HOB.

 

what do you have?

[burtbollinger]

Cheap 10g aquarium, Aquaclear 30, Inkbird temp controller hooked to an Eheim Jager 150w, PVC pipes, chunks of marinepure marinating in my sump.  

 

A cheap IM 10 isnt the worst idea, tho...what are they?  99 bucks.  

[holy carp]

$10 Aqueon 10 gallon tank

$25 Aquaclear 20 - sponge lives in my sump ready to go

$0 leftover pvc parts

$10 heater (I use a cheap one, but have a spare temp controller for safety)

 

[Friendly]

PVC pipes are so the fish has refuge to hide in, correct?

 

why marinepure over live rock...or dry rock that's made into live rock during the cycle?

 

what do you do to keep the cycle healthy in a quarantine tank, since it's use is limited?

 

[brandon429]

once cycled, an aquarium does not downscale back to unable to oxidize if it is kept wet, that's a rule of microbiology. The bacteria do not need our affordances, that we control sterility by feed we add or give is just a notion made up by aquarists. Its true that adding and withholding feed modulates bacterial populations up and down, but they never go away when its withheld, as myriad feed sources exist beyond what we give

 

that's how the bac adapted before we existed, getting what they need without our help.

 

A key factor in how this impacts a cycling regular tank vs a QT is that QT systems are often bare glass and minimal active surface area, whereas a large tank has rocks and filters and interstices that waste and organic feed pockets can reside, so the bac actually don't modulate much at all when we go fallow in those systems

 

in the QT of bare offerings, any setup much less than a filter sponge/surface area might need to be fed to keep the colonies dense if new fish are coming, but this is rare. even a bare basic filter sponge setup that digests 1 ppm ammonia verified after being supported w fish will still do the same test if kept in sw for months w no feed, its because whats left of the downscaling of bac are still entangled within excess surface area needed for the bioload at hand, a filter sponge is a large amnt of surface area relative to size.

 

if your QT tank is a few pots and some pvc pipes then ghost feed it occasionally as it sits fallow. any amnt will work there is no set amnt, any single serving of protein will recycle in that tank for a long time, a couple pinches-good to go.

 

If your QT setup has any type of filtration sponges or media in place, it only needs to run wet and it will retain its filtration abilities as long as it stays wet. you aren't keeping dead gnats and human skin cells and air dander and molds and fungi out of this tank unless its in a positive pressure lab. those are some of the natural foodstuffs bac can use upon breakdown/

[burtbollinger]

9 minutes ago, Friendly said:

PVC pipes are so the fish has refuge to hide in, correct?

 

why marinepure over live rock...or dry rock that's made into live rock during the cycle?

 

what do you do to keep the cycle healthy in a quarantine tank, since it's use is limited?

 

pipes for hiding.

 

i can keep chunks of marinepure at the ready in the sump of my RSR and pull on the rare occiation that i add a new fish.

 

its a temp QT tank...I monitor the tank and do 25% water changes every 3-4 days.  not trying to cycle anything, necessarily.

 

I break the tank down after 30-40 days.

[Friendly]

hey Brandon...the cliff note to your diatribe would be:

'as long as the tank is running, it will maintain some beneficial bacteria even if there isn't an organic load as it picks detrius from stuff floating around in the air.'

[Tamberav]

21 minutes ago, Friendly said:

PVC pipes are so the fish has refuge to hide in, correct?

 

why marinepure over live rock...or dry rock that's made into live rock during the cycle?

 

what do you do to keep the cycle healthy in a quarantine tank, since it's use is limited?

 

I have a 7g AIO and a 20g with a pump but doesn't matter what you use really, whatever is cheap. Just a container to hold water and something for flow. I used a 5g bucket before.

 

Whether I use rock or biological media to "cycle" a tank depends what I plan to treat with. Chloroquine phosphate in cycled tanks as it is a one and done med so if the tank is cycled, I can dose and not do water changes for the next 4 weeks. Cupramine in sterile tanks without any biological media. Water changes to keep ammonia low. 

 

Done it many different ways tbh... sometimes a tank transfer for ich instead of medication. Cycled, non-cycled, tank transfer (if ich), all worked fine. 

 

 

[brandon429]

 picks detrius

I would never spell detritus that way in a diatribe

[holy carp]

well, not being a biologist, my understanding is that bacteria have an incredible capacity for 'recycling' so when some bacteria die off, their constitution feeds other bacteria.  Brandon's saying a tank will never become sterilized due to lack of feeding, and the bacteria that remain will always have some capacity for performing the nitrogen cycle.

[Friendly]

hmmm...dyslexic, so i always saw D E T R I U S...I learned something new! thank you for the ejumication, Brandon.

 

btw, I used the word 'diatribe' in a humorous manner...I hope you picked up on that. 

[brandon429]

 

 

 

its impressive to see you quarantining Friendly, that's rare most just add n go.

 

its fun to detail bacterial happenstance because in the end it sets the boundaries we use to care for our tanks. by knowing they're bulletproof, we're free to be free of algae infestation due to the ways we can handle them and not lose filtration abilities, that's the big tie in for me anyway. I see a direct tie between how people view cycling and how they wind up managing aquarium invasions, though the two seem distant or unconnected.

[Friendly]

11 minutes ago, burtbollinger said:

I break the tank down after 30-40 days.

 

hmmm...never thought of actually breaking down a quarantine tank, but that makes perfect sense, since they're temporary already.

 

when you know you have plans to get fish/corals, how long before the buy do you fire up the QT?

[Friendly]

5 minutes ago, brandon429 said:

 

 

 

its impressive to see you quarantining Friendly, that's rare most just add n go.

 

its fun to detail bacterial happenstance because in the end it sets the boundaries we use to care for our tanks. by knowing they're bulletproof, we're free to be free of algae infestation due to the ways we can handle them and not lose filtration abilities, that's the big tie in for me anyway. I see a direct tie between how people view cycling and how they wind up managing aquarium invasions, though the two seem distant or unconnected.

hey Brandon, I  have done FW tanks and they don't have nearly as many creepy crrawlies or other destructive bits as SW does.

 

it's also the moral, ethical and responsible thing to do. we're caretakers and we should never do anything that harms our wards.