Am I ready to order fish?

[Reefinmike]

Hey all,

I’ve been putting off ordering fish for many months but now i feel i’m as ready as I can be. I will be ordering a couple small tangs and about 15-20 small fish such as gobies, damsels, clowns, etc. nothing extremely fragile, just bread n butter fish. I will be adding some fish to established 90 gallon and 110 gallon reef systems as well as my recently set up 40 breeder reef. I set up the 40 reef 3 weeks ago with some fritz bacteria and 6 month qt’d damsel.

My quarantine setup consists of a 40 breeder, a drilled 30 breeder, two 20 gallons(one drilled) and a spare 10g. The 40 qt has been running ~6 months fallow with some liverock that went through hypo 6 months ago. The past three weeks i have been phantom feeding the 40qt tank and seeding it with filter material from my 40 reef. I added a small hob filter and media a week ago and added a couple sponge filters today to both my 40 quarantine and my 40 reef. I intend to “split” the setup tonight by moving half the water, rock, filters/media to one of the 20 gallon tanks below. I’ve done hypo treatment before and it ended up being a waste of two months. I intend to try out the tank transfer method. I have some meds on hand and i want to be prepared as possible but some suggest huge lists of meds i’ll likely never open. I have prazipro, malachite green and ~40g worth of copper. Should i need to dose copper and abandon ttm, i can do an initial dose and immediately order a test kit and more meds. I have a simple api ammonia test to monitor water quality and “safe” aka concentrated prime to combat any ammonia issues.

For food i have frozen PE and small hikari mysis, nori sheets, 1+2mm pe pellets, seaweed extreme, spectrum and selcon. Temp will be controlled and monitored with a spare apex jr, pm1 and probes. I have a plethora of old koralia pumps for circulation and plenty of backup air pumps, heaters, etc.


Any suggestions to improve upon? I’m thinking of ordering fish to arrive on Wednesday. I feel i can mitigate risk/stress by running two setups side by side(actually one over the other) with tank transfer method. Day 1-3 fish will be in the 40 breeder and left 20g. Day 3-6 will be the 30 breeder and right 20g then alternating back n forth. Also- any harm in using tap water? Mine is pretty clean without chloramines and ~160 tds.

 

[Reefer5640]

Nice set up man! I just got done doing something very similar with a bunch of fish. Even though you are doing TTM keep a close eye on ammonia in between transfers (that is assuming you’ll have a handful of fish in each setup as opposed to 1 or 2). I might suggest getting some epson salt (very good for injuries or constipation) and methylene blue (very good for treating ammonia burns and Jump starting fish after a long journey during shipping). The only other crucial thing you seem to be missing is some form of antibiotics. I like sea chems metroplex, focus, & Kannaplex and ATI’s Furan-2. The chances of a bacterial bloom in QT are high and you’ll want to be covered. With those I listed you’ll be covered for internal and external and gram positive and gram negative bacteria’s.

 

[Reefer5640]

Also, you mentioned the potential of having to ditch TTM. I would get get some form of ich relief to buy the fish time so you won’t ever have to ditch TTM. I suggest ruby reef kick ich and rally (just use the kick ich bottle unless you’re dealing with a bacteria bloom as well). Or Kordon ich attack is pretty good for giving temporary relief as well. I know you don’t want to buy a bunch of bottles you think you’ll never open but spending another $50 just might save you $100’s in fish. And trust me. There is no worse feeling than realizing your fish has come down with something that you don’t have a $5-$10 bottle of whatever it was that they needed. Also I was curious about the rock you mentioned. Is that strictly for the 40 breeder as a holding tank post TTM? Or will you be using some live rock in all the tanks to help with filtration during TTM?

 

[Reefinmike]

Thanks for all the advice @Reefer5640. I considered getting some meth blue and one broad spectrum antibiotic but as you’ve illustrated, just where do i draw the line? My lfs has a pretty good selection and anything else could be ordered and in hand in two days. It’s a bunch of risk/reward to weigh out. I’ll be running two quarantines with access to many many more. I order from a wholesaler in California so the livestock wont be much of an investment, maybe $150 of fish in each qt. If you only had $20 to spend on additional meds before fish arrive what would you buy?

As for the liverock, i’ll probably split it up between the first two transfers for the tank with more delicate or skittish fish. I’ll separate the rock once it’s seen a 3 day ttm cycle and been exposed to potential parisite cysts. After ttm is done i’ll let it run fallow to keep a qt of sorts running at all times.

Lastly to address ammonia, i was considering using a spare dosing pump to dose a proper amount of safe(prime) every hour along with daily ammonia tests

 

[Reefer5640]

I see, interesting, so you are going to use new live rock for each transfer? I’ve never really considered that. Well you’ve got a pretty sweet QT setup and a good chunk of the essentials so I’m sure you’ll do great! Sounds like you’re ready for fish. Best of luck!

 

[Reefinmike]

I’m just going to split the rock between the first and second of the 4 tank transfers for the more delicate or skittish fish. No proven science behind it, i figure it’ll only help. After it’s been in with fish for three days i’ll set it aside and let it run in a tank fallow for months.

 

[Wowkuh]

Idk how it would work with TTM, but one thing I noticed was there's possibly potential for aerosol transmission? for instance, day one in main QT and fish have ich. Couldn't it transfer to your day 3 tank? Not really out runnimg ich if its jumping to the new sterile tanks. Not sure. Maybe these guys can help

@Humblefish
@HotRocks
@4FordFamily
@Big G

I'm not trying to be a know it all. just trying to help you not make my mistake with having my DT 1 month into fallow literally side by side with my other tank with fish and ich in it