Congrats Vette67! August 2022 Tank of the Month Winner!

[oceanfrontinNE]

Vote here for August’s Tank Of The Month!

SUBJECT: Quarantine Tanks

SPONSOR: AquaBiomics

Huge thank you to @AquaBiomics for sponsoring this month's contest!

Multiple votes are allowed!

Remember, only positive reactions count:

 

[Lachri]

These were my first attempt at QT. During the HTTM they got uronema from a damsel who didn't make it. I continued HTTM along with various treatments/meds but I've kept them in this QT tank longer than I planned due to the uronema and then gill flukes. I felt bad for them so I decorated it with some flower pots and fake plants. I've got some high tech painters tape on the back because they were too nervous with it open all around. It has a hob filter and a sponge filter along with the extra airstone because of the prazipro.

 

[Sustainable Marine]

I love the photo comps. This is a tricky one though, do I go for the flashy fish close ups or the systems themselves.

I will post a selection, first one is my entry.

My Quarantine tanks where front of shop, that way my customers could follow the six - eight week QT Conditioning of every fish and the animals could acclimatise to aquarium life. The tanks also had snails in them to show no copper. Each tank you see is isolated from any other tank, each had its own filtration and equipment. In the first picture you can see the sleeping quarters and the live food feeder. Lighting is reef specification.

Looking forward top everyone's pictures.

 

[Bugeater281]

And I should add, in my defense. That this random motor is not all that random. It was in fact holding up my auto top off switch. And I planned on building an algae skinner with that motor.

 

[Babado]

Here is my Coral QT! This was my first major attempt and a large coral QT

 

[Jgoal55]

This is my QT/Mixing Station set up. Top water container is RO. It gravity feeds bottom container where I mix SW. Both tanks have emergency overflows that run outdoors so no chance of RODI/ Forgetting to close fill valve leaks in my garage!!

I pump fresh SW into the three 20longs for HTTM. I start bottom to top to avoid cross contamination from one tank to other as much as possible. Right now I’m not running any fish through HTTM so I’m simply QTing some inverts in the middle tank. The 5g at the top is used for H2O2 dips.

The white thing at the bottom is a repurposed BedJet that I use to dry the tanks. They sent me an extra one by accident and let me keep it! (Side note: if you sleep warm and your wife doesn’t let you run AC below 70 cuz she gets too warm, a BedJet will save your nights).

And this is my current Coral QT which is about 12ft away from the HTTM tanks. I worry about aerosol, but can only do so much with space I have (which I’m lucky is likely more than many). At the end, nothing is 100%. But I feel with all the help and advice from this forum, I’ve done all I can to minimize the risk of disease entering my DT as much as possible.

 

[Vette67]

This is from 2017, when I first set up my hospital tank. It is a Rubbermaid 150 gallon stock tank. I ran it with my old 48” Venturi skimmer, and a 48” fluorescent strip light (that I hovered over the tank with pieces of PVC). I had all of my fish (that I had at the time) which was several tangs and a bunch of other fish, so that I could run my tank fallow. It is very inelegant, but it served its purpose well. This stock tank later got converted to my sump.

This hospital tank worked very well for treating my parasitic fish, but the fallow part on my DT did not work. My fish would run 90 days or so in the hospital tank, hoping the fallow period would kill the ich. This didn’t work, even after several attempts. I eventually gave up on the quarantine / fallow path and bought 2 - 40 watt UV sterilizers and went the disease management route. Still have not had an outbreak since,

 

[bluerider098]

This is my 10 gallon coral QT setup. It's relatively simple but has slowly evolved over the past 2 years. I originally put it together thinking that it would only be temporary however at this point it has run 12 groups of corals thru it and now that it's setup and established I don't think I'll be taking it down. It's handy to have ready if you need to treat or remove a coral from your display. The current inhabitants are exactly that, Corals that were having a rough time in my display that I removed for treatment and close observation.

Equipment list:
- Waterbox 10 gallon tank
- Aquaclear 20 HOB filter
- Aqua EL 50 watt heater
- Inkbird heater controller
- Nero 3 power head
- AI Hydra 32 Light
- Pico Aquariums Aquaclear 20 overflow box

So the equipment has evolved with the tank as I originally started out with a cheap Aqua Knight light from Amazon, and a cheap Hydor power head and cheap Jager heater. What I discovered is that cheaping out on the equipment for the QT didn't work out too well, at least for me. My thinking is that I am trying to QT for fish disease and hitchhikers, but I also want to condition the Corals for my display. This means that I need lighting and flow similar to my display. I know many people think they want to do a cheap setup, but when you consider the cost of losing Corals, the cost of the equipment seems trivial imo.

I started out with some rock and eggcrate in the tank, but I found that they were a pain because they always seemed to have algae issues. The rock provided too much hiding space for hitchhikers, and the eggcrate was a nightmare to clean. So at some point I removed the rock and replaced the eggcrate with a piece of lexan with a bunch of holes drilled in it, and pvc for legs. Super glad I did this because I have had zero issues with the lexan. For some reason it stays pretty clean.

I have a solid lexan lid that covers most of the tank and therefor I don't need an ATO. It only looses about 4-8 oz from evaporation a day.

As far as husbandry it's pretty simple really. I do weekly water changes of 2 gallons, clean the glass, and rinse out the foam in the Aquaclear hob. I dose No3, Po4, B-ionic 2 part, and top off the water daily. Being fishless I have to dose the No3 and Po4 or else they would measure 0ppm. The B-ionic varys depending on the coral load, but currently it's .5ml a day. I also examine the corals with a flashlight at night to look for hitchhikers. You'd be amazed what you find at night. I recommend that you keep checking the corals like this for the entire quarantine period as sometimes stuff doesn't show up for 6 or more weeks. Listing all of this out makes it sound like a lot, but I'm total its less than 1 hour a week.

Success rate for Corals has varied over time, but with the current maintenance regimen I would say 95%. In the beginning it was more like 50% due to a bunch of bad luck with wall hammers and bjd. Now that I know what to look for symptom wise, and with the help of the forbidden Cipro treatment I have only lost 1 hammer coral since.

Ok way more information than was asked for, so here's some more pictures. I didn't clean it for these photos, and it's been 5 days since cleaning the glass.

Current Inhabitants

Recovering Wall Hammer

Recovering Frogspawn. I thought this coral was a goner. It's proof that you should hang onto Corals for awhile even when you think they are dead. There was literally nothing left and it's grown back to what you see over the past 6 or so months.

Equipment on the back wall

Aquaclear HOB

Pico Aquariums Overflow Box

Lexan Lid

Control Board

Thanks for reading.

 

[andrewkw]

I currently have 5! Quarantine tanks going. They're all basically empty tanks with 1 or 2 fish and some pvc and air pump or small powerhead or heater, but I also have this one :

Clown has internal uroenma and various treatments did not cure him. He also has no symptoms other than uronema in poop. I'll test him again in a few months. Shelled out for a piece of life rock because the poor guy has been in a bare tank since may and the only fish to survive out of 5 clownfish and 4 other fish. The uronema originally came from the other tank as all the clownfish were from captive bred systems. I mean there might have been uronema in one but not as likely as the wild fish that were kept nearby.

First time I've kept a tank in the bathroom but I can't keep him in my quarantine room (mudroom) forever, and this way there is no chance of any cross contamination. He has his own bucket and siphon and my wife who has a nano reef will just use her water change water to do weekly water changes.

 

[Bfrag]

This was my last QT- nothing special or fancy.

 

[lagatbezan]

I qt everything wet before it goes into my display. I think the biggest challenge is making sure nothing bad makes it through to my display with the most stressing part being the first month post qt after I have added them to the Dt, constantly inspecting everything and praying nothing passed my qt. Does anyone else feel this way as well too or is it just me?

 

[Alisa_MK_Reef]

Emergency QT set 2 years ago to combat ich. Out of 4 fish I saved 2 clownfish and blue hippo tang. Both are thriving now happy healthy. My clown now bites me I think too much meds got her transformed into a piranha. Dori thinks it’s fun to eat Duncan 🫣

 

[najer]

I don't do qt but I do do isolation, corals or fish and observation, there have been a few angels and tangs through here, natural grazing.
Evo 13.5 / 52 g/l, only rescued one mandarin which I lost a few months later, if a coral is being picked on in the big tank I can pop it in here.

 

[HNSmith88]

This was our first QT after finding the Humblefish forum. Yall helped me so much vs going to Facebook groups. This canister DE filter was humbles recommendation for the issue I was having with the banana wrasse in there. It worked perfectly!

 

[Flippers4pups]

20 long, one of many I have for QT.
Tupperware with sand is for sand burrowing wrasses. It gets discarded if I treat for parasites or disease. When I decide that i'm going to buy a new fish, I throw a new Bio wheel into the sump for at least a couple weeks prior, to seed it with bacteria. I discard them if I dose copper. I take no chances with new fish by covering the QT with a DIY net lid. No light, only ambient room light during QT. Simple but very effective!

 

[Reefchief88]

My closet QT 10 gallons. My office closet is my storage for most all fish stuff.

 

[bryanr]

Well they didn't get wet this weekend, but I did get everything else done and tallied up my bill (QT tanks get expensive)

Lights and pumps are Current USA, I have a Fluval C2 and Aquaclear 30 one for each tank to decide which I like best for QT. I also purchased two HOB UV filters one is a Grech filter that has a 5w UV and the other is an Aquatop PF15-UV 5w uv. Again I couldn't decide and since I had 2 tanks lol. I have Finnex heaters and a Hygger dual air pump with two hygger air stones. I also painted the back blue then black, it makes the blue multi colored. Each tank has a glass top to keep the fish in. I may switch to eggcrate but we will see how the glass goes.

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[AndyR83]

 

[oceanfrontinNE]

Fantastic turnout for August TOTM! Let's get to voting!

 

[oceanfrontinNE]

Congrats @Vette67! I will be in touch soon to redeem your @AquaBiomics prize!

Thanks to everyone for your participation!