Cory's Quarantine Trio and cloudy water?

[ElectricPurple]

Hi all, this is my first post to this group. I set up a 10 gal quarantine for new fish. 3 Harlequin Rasbora, 3 Black Skirt Tetras, 3 Dwarf Petricolas and 2 Emerald Eye Rasboras. I used water I syphoned off an established 75 gal tank and a foam filter from the same tank. Put all the fish in it for 3 days and all was good. 4th day I started the Cory's Quarentine Trio (

) . Now on day three the water is getting very cloudy. Is this normal or is it pointing to something I should be concerned about?
John

 

[Aiken Drum]

Do you know your water parameters?

Cloudy water is a biological bloom and is common in newly established tank. It's bacteria consuming nutrients and growing in such numbers that they become visible. They tend to go away on their own as the cycle establishes and the nutrients get consumed by the nitrogen cycle.

Moving water from one tank to another does nothing for establishing your cycle in a new tank. Moving the sponge over should help, but it might not be enough to fully cycle your QT, especially with such a heavy bioload. Your stocking would be overstocked for a fully cycled 10 gallon aquarium. I would have done this one species at a time rather than trying to quarantine them all at once in a new aquarium.

 

[ElectricPurple]

Thanks Aiken, thanks for the quick response. I should have posted the parameters in the first post, sorry! They are: PH=7.6, Ammonia, Nitrate, Nitrite all 0. This is for the new QT that has 5 day old water and also for the 75 gal donor tank. Do you think I am good to leave the new fish for the whole 7 days of the Quarentine Trio as long as I don't have any spikes? I guess my goal is to see that the new fish are as reasonably healthy as possible without killing them, and then taking my chances adding them to the general population.

 

[Andy Sager]

Hi John. Welcome to the forum.
For starters, you put too many fish in the 10 gal at one time. Quarantining for 7 days is hardly worth the effort. Wound infections may show up in under 7 days but parasites can have life cycles as long as 90-100 + days so quarantining for less than that opens your main tank up to potential parasitic outbreaks.

As for your sponge filter, if it were cycled already, you should start to see some nitrates within the next week but if you don't, with your bioload, that says to me that your sponge filter was not cycled or cycled for that many fish. With that, the cloudy water would be typical of an uncycled tank and you should just let it run it's course. Are there fish currently in that 75 gallon tank? If so, how long has the sponge filter been in that tank?

 

[ElectricPurple]

The 75 has roughly 2 med. angels, 2 dwarf gourami's, 5 smaller plecos, 9 rummy nose and a dozen smaller corys, sturbis etc. The 3" diameter sponge now in the QT was in there at least 6 months. A large 5" sponge and canister has been in there at least 9 months. Bi weekly 25% water changes. BTW, I already have noticed the QT clearing a little, fish look good and don't seemed stressed at all.
John

 

[Andy Sager]

The 75 has roughly 2 med. angels, 2 dwarf gourami's, 5 smaller plecos, 9 rummy nose and a dozen smaller corys, sturbis etc. The 3" diameter sponge now in the QT was in there at least 6 months. A large 5" sponge and canister has been in there at least 9 months. Bi weekly 25% water changes. BTW, I already have noticed the QT clearing a little, fish look good and don't seemed stressed at all.
John

I just researched the " Quarantine trio" Cory suggests and I can tell you that they won't work under all situations. Maracyn ( main ingredient Erythromycin) has a very small window of bacterial diseases it actually works on. It is also very harsh on the nitrifying microbes in pH waters above 7.2. For antibiotics, pH is extremely important in determining which ones will work more effectively. On the whole, Antibiotics should be used in a hospital tank which does not have a nitrifying bacteria bed so that they don't disturb the filter beds causing ammonia spikes. You also do not want to arbitrarily treat with antibiotics to avoid creating resistant bugs.

Paracleanse is effective for many types of parasites but Praziquantel does not treat roundworms or nematodes and those tend to be more prevalent in fish, especially wild caught fish. It also isn't very effective on internal parasites unless it's taken orally so just putting it in the tank will only work on external parasites. There are better more specific meds for internal parasites.

As for your filter, because you have(had) 3 of them in the 75 and a smaller bioload, most likely the bigger filters have the largest colonies of nitrifying microbes. Nitrifying microbes grow best in areas with high oxygen levels. That said, the nitrifying bed grows and shrinks based on the level of ammonia production in the water. That means that filters with higher water capacity will have the largest colonies because more oxygenated water and ammonia will pass through them. What I would suggest is to take a small amount of the filter material from the canister filter and just place it on top of the sponge in the quarantine tank. ( Don't forget to replace the material you took from the canister. ) This way, the water will be forced through that material and into the sponge so it will help the bacteria bed grow faster. Under the optimal conditions ( pH, temperature, oxygenation) nitrifying bacteria colonies can double in size in under 24 hours. That means you are just looking at days vs weeks to get an established filter bed for the existing bioload.

If you need some help understanding the difference between a hospital tank and a quarantine tank, I explain them both in this thread: Quarantine tanks and Hospital tanks, are they really different?

Hope this helps.

 

[Aiken Drum]

I haven't watched the video but I agree with Andy on not treating aquariums with antibiotics when there might not be anything to treat. This shouldn't be done for the same reason you should only take prescribed antibiotics after a doctors diagnosis, you risk creating antibiotic resistance.

Treating for parasites isn't a bad thing, but the purpose of quarantine is to identify any issues and then treat accordingly if something shows up.

I should also point out that your water parameters in both your display tank and quarantine are essentially impossible. The nitrogen cycle turns waste (ammonia) into nitrate. So a cycled aquarium should see zero ammonia and nitrite, but you should see nitrate which should steadily rise between water changes. An uncycled aquarium should see some ammonia and/ or nitrite. Unless something else is going on you haven't mentioned reporting everything as zero just screams there is something wrong with the testing. What test kit are you using? Are you sure you are doing the test correctly? I would get a second opinion on your water parameters. Remove a sample before your regular water change, and take it to an aquarium store and ask for them to check your parameters.

I would do 50% daily water changes on the QT. If you didn't have symptoms of being uncycled then perhaps we could accept the water testing results for ammonia and nitrite as presume its safe, (its more likely the nitrate is wrong) but we do have signs the aquarium isn't cycled so i would be frequently changing water. Take a sample to have checked before you start these daily water changes.

Quick question for @Andy Sager. Would the antibiotic medication used kill off a biological bloom? In which case the cloudiness might not be bacterial.

 

[Andy Sager]

"Quick question for @Andy Sager. Would the antibiotic medication used kill off a biological bloom? In which case the cloudiness might not be bacterial." It would depend on whether the antibiotic was effective in that water parameter's range. In this case, it's known that at alkaline pH levels erythromycin severely effects the nitrifying bacteria bed. It's also more effective for gram positive bacteria than gram negative so if the cloudiness is caused by gram positive bacteria, EM would help kill it off. Personally, I wouldn't use an antibiotic for tank cloud. That bacteria is getting consumed by something in the tank so why deprive it/them of a food source that A) they obviously consume and B) the consumer needs to be there to prevent future clouds. For me, new tank cloud is a small price to pay for long term clearness.

 

[Aiken Drum]

My point is that if the antibiotic is present the cloudiness might not be a bacterial bloom. Not that antibiotics might be a way of treating a biological bloom.

 

[Andy Sager]

My point is that if the antibiotic is present the cloudiness might not be a bacterial bloom. Not that antibiotics might be a way of treating a biological bloom.

I understand. That's always a possibility but just because an antibiotic is present does not rule out a bacterial bloom. It would take the right antibiotic, based on water parameters, and gram strain of the assumed bacterial cloud to match in order to rule out bacteria being the cause.