Live Rock In Quarantine?

[360º]

ok so i set up a 25 gallon quarantine tank with a 15 gallon sump.

in the quarantine tank i have a powerhead, a few pieces of PVC pipe for hiding spots and a few fake plants

in the sump i have my heater and i transfered a few pieces of liverock from my main display's sump. the one piece of liverock has a bunch of sponges on it

is this ok for now? i have a bucket full of bioballs but i dont know what to use.

if i medicate the tank, will the good bacteria die or just the sponges and whatever little bugs are on the rock?

 

[RYANLAWRENCE]

That sounds like an extremely good setup for a quarantine, almost too good. I don't really think a quarantine needs a sump. But yes if you medicate the tank the liverock will become useless. It will kill all bacteria as well as the sponges

 

[Henry405]

First, is the tank going to be used for a sick fish or just new fish? The quarantine tank doesn't need the sump either since most people use a sump to hide equipment an to increase water volume.

For a sick fish QT, no LR because the medicine could get into the rock and leach into your DT. I don't think the medicine would kill the LR and sponge. I would just disconnect the sump, put the heater in the QT and if you need the QT right away, you can sacrifice a LR. People usually leave sponge filters in their main Sump and add that to the QT for biological filter.

For a new fish, adding LR would be OK, but people wouldn't do this because if the fish turns out to be sick, you would lose the LR since removing it would remove your biological filter.

Heres a great link about QT:

An Ounce of Prevention is Worth a Pound of Cure: A Quarantine Tank for Everything by Steven Pro - Reefkeeping.com

 

[360º]

this is going to be used only for new fish.....

the reason for the sump is to increase the water volume and hold the live rock while the display section of the QT is filled with PVC pipe so that i can easily catch the fish when the time comes.

and im not worried about losing the LR, its not ever going to go back into my display tank anyway

 

[RYANLAWRENCE]

I just set up my own quarantine about 2 weeks ago according to the article that Henry posted. I think the thing that you're missing is that this is not a permanent home for the fish. For most fish a plain old ten gallon tank would suffice. Your setup seems like you would be keeping a fish long term in there. And plus your only gonna have 1 fish in there so 35 gallons of water is a lot for one fish. But I suppose it couldn't hurt...

 

[RYANLAWRENCE]

Correction *40 gallons

 

[Kurt_Nelson]

I don't see anything wrong with your plan, but if you ever medicate with a copper-based medicine, make sure to remove the rock. Calcium-based things (rock, aragonite sand, etc) will suck up the copper and make it difficult - if not impossible - to keep consistent medication levels in the tank.

 

[tjm80]

Also if you ever put copper medications in the tank it isn't advised to QT inverts in that tank. Supposedly the copper gets in the silicone and will leach out over time as well.

 

[360º]

thanks for the advice guys.

but why do you say ill be only keeping one fish at a time? i have 3 new fish in there now..... and once those are ready for my tank ill be putting more in.

i plan on keeping the QT up for at least a year until im completely done stocking my tank

 

[RYANLAWRENCE]

Ah gotcha well with a tank that big I guess you could have more than one. I just assumed. But you know what they say when you assume...

 

[Henry405]

I think its just because of the bioload. Since it's a quarantine tank, there isn't much LR to handle too much bioload.

 

[360º]

well any amount of LR is better than non? plus it'll seed the PVC pipe decor that i have in there quicker, right?

 

[Henry405]

What I mean is that people usually only add one fish to a QT because they have a sponge filter full of bacteria on it and will handle the bioload of that fish. Since you have 3 fishes in the QT, people are worried that there might not be a strong enough biological filter. Like ryan says, its best not to assume. I don't know if bacteria will grow on the pvc.