Hospital tank

[louie4979]

I'm starting a 10 gallon hospital tank to treat sick fish with copper. I don't want to dose in my display tank. I have a HOB filter, heater and a little light and also a power head. I took a couple of pieces of live rock from my display tank and a cup of live sand. My question is do I need live rock ? Won't the copper kill all the bacteria? Also doesn't copper medication work really fast on fish so they won't be in the hospital tank for too long? I'm just wondering if I can do without a biological filter for such a short amount of time.

 

[dskidmore]

If you're willing to do daily 50% water changes, and use an ammonia detoxifier like Prime, you can get away with no biological filter. This will be stressful for the fish, but if doing an antibiotic treatment it's the only way. The copper will kill any invertabrates in the live sand/live rock. Watch out for ammonia spikes after you start the medication.

 

[carey]

Also, if you treat with LR in there whatever you treat with can leech into the rock so you couldn't put it back in your main tank safely in my opinion. At least i wouldnt.

 

[louie4979]

Then what would be the parameters golfer a hospital tank. Is the rock and sand sacrificial? I mean after I treat the condition do the antibiotics make the rock and san useless? Which is fine. But I would like to do it the right way

 

[dskidmore]

If treating an illness with meds, I prefer bare bottom, no decor, for best observation and cleaning. If just doing a routine QT when bringing new critters into the system, I'll set up a full nano tank to keep stress levels as low as possible.

 

[Henry405]

QT should be empty (No substrate or LR). A few pvc can be used so fishes can hide which reduces stress. Also, the bottom, back, and sides should be covered. The less reflection there is, the less stress the fish will be. If the HOB filter has been running in your DT, it has bacteria on it and can be the biological filter. The light can be off most of the time since dark tanks calm fishes.

I got all of this info from this great article:
An Ounce of Prevention is Worth a Pound of Cure: A Quarantine Tank for Everything by Steven Pro - Reefkeeping.com

 

[melosu58]

It`s no use being in a hurry as your main tank needs to be fishless for 8 weeks to stop the life cycle of the parasite in it. You are talking ich right?

 

[louie4979]

Yeah it's weird. I have other fish in there with no sign of ich. Just a new clown came down with it.

 

[melosu58]

The new clown came down because he was stressed from just being added to the tank. The others were right at home. I`m sure they were affected one way or another. But you`ll have to get all the fish out for 8 weeks to kill the parasite.

 

[dskidmore]

Next time use the QT when adding a new fish, even if he looks healthy.