kinetic
Supporting Member
I might just sprinkle food once in awhile. Or do you think I should do water changes with DT water rather than freshly mixed?
Coral Quarantine Tank Setup?
- Thread starter kinetic
- Start date
I have a 10+5.5 gallon combo coral QT/frag tank. I intended to manage parameters in it by just doing water changes from my display into the frag tank, ala what others suggested here. Practically speaking, I think it's kind of difficult to pull off, unless you fully automate it or are really diligent about it.
If I'm going through the trouble of pulling out my water siphon and a bucket, I'm going to want to do a bit of cleaning while I'm in the main tank. Maybe suction from the sand, or near the rocks, or whatever. I also am not going to keep water buckets in my living area, or at least I'll pretend I don't because my wife realllly hates when I do.
So for me it's just more practical to do water changes of freshly made salt because everything's in the garage anyway.
However, even there, eventually I found it was just not worth the hassle. It requires money to be spent, but it sure is convenient to just dose stuff into the frag tank. I'm currently just dosing All For Reef. Super easy. Just requires one dosing pump.
I also have two damsels in my system. One in the sump area, one in the main display. Goal was to have a nutrient source, and also the Springer damsel supposedly eats flatworms, and just looks pretty. In retrospect I wish I'd of just put a sixline in there. I can't see a situation where I'd regret having more bug control in the tank. That does mean the tank isn't fishless, so it can have a fish disease carrier, but that's a risk I'm willing to take for that tank.
Finally, one more side point, keep in mind if you're trying to be truly rigorous about those quarantine timers, those timers reset every single time you add something to that QT tank. If you're doing a 72 day QT, that means you can only buy coral / snails / ... 5 times a year. IMO that's just not realistic. I'm not quite at H2OPlayar levels of comfort of just having the tank solve it itself through wrasses and such, and I'm also dealing with monti nudis in my display right now, but I just can't imagine actually pulling off a 72 day QT.
kinetic
Supporting Member
Thanks for the feedback! In terms of timing, my current tank I only added non-fish three times over the last 5 years. And I only added fish three-ish times in the beginning. I think I can probably pull off only adding something to the tank less than 5 times a year easily.
In terms of fish, I'm planning on collecting them through a LFS that does a full QT (like @under_water_ninja ) and then I'll have a temporary holding tank to observe for a bit before plopping them in, so that should solve the fish issue.
Snails I don't think I'll really add them more than once or twice in the beginning. To this day I have the same trochus and cerith snails I got in the beginning (yes, lost a few, but never replenished).
Anyway, good thing to think about for sure.
Qwiv
Supporting Member
Wanted to clarify what I do.
Adding corals to QT. Remove about 1 gallon from QT for dips, acclimation, rinses, etc. Replace QT water with 1 gal from DT. Replace DT with 1 gallon fresh SW. This acclimates corals to QT water not DT water. QT and DT gat a small water change.
Adding Corals to DT, Remove water from DT for dips/acclimation and replace as needed.
I have plenty nutrients in the QT tank. Pinch of Polyp labs every once in a while does the trick just fine. Snails poop also. They get an algae wafer is there isn't algae in the tank to eat.
You can dose your QT tank if you want to make it complicated, but it is absolutely not needed unless you are forcing unnatural parameters for the salt mix you are using. You are not growing the corals, they are just there for observation and can survive less then Ideal parameters. You can always add dosing later if you need to, so space plan for it. I don't think you need it. Kalk in the ATO works as well.
Adding corals to QT. Remove about 1 gallon from QT for dips, acclimation, rinses, etc. Replace QT water with 1 gal from DT. Replace DT with 1 gallon fresh SW. This acclimates corals to QT water not DT water. QT and DT gat a small water change.
Adding Corals to DT, Remove water from DT for dips/acclimation and replace as needed.
I have plenty nutrients in the QT tank. Pinch of Polyp labs every once in a while does the trick just fine. Snails poop also. They get an algae wafer is there isn't algae in the tank to eat.
You can dose your QT tank if you want to make it complicated, but it is absolutely not needed unless you are forcing unnatural parameters for the salt mix you are using. You are not growing the corals, they are just there for observation and can survive less then Ideal parameters. You can always add dosing later if you need to, so space plan for it. I don't think you need it. Kalk in the ATO works as well.
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Brian Dal Porto
Supporting Member
kinetic, It's been almost a year since you last posted about your QT tank. I like the sound of your setup and wanted to know how it turned out. I'm thinking about copying you.
Kensington Reefer
Supporting Member
I’ve got all that...
Holler
Holler
kinetic
Supporting Member
I've had the QT "cycling" for a long time yet and haven't added any corals, mostly because I've just been focused on the house remodel and haven't had time yet to really build it out. The tank is somewhat mature now, tons of pods everywhere but really nothing other than some really beautiful macro algae growing. I just throw in some fish/coral foods every week or two. No nuisance algae/pests really, just the regular film algae and some really cool red branching/feathery macro.