Already everyone here has given you enough of insight into what you should do and not do.
I would like to add that I’m also fairly new to the reefing and our REEF2REEF community helped me a lot in understanding the oceanic life.
I try to qt everything that’s wet, that’s my theory, qt’ing fishes is a must but I would further add that you should qt corals also, because
1. You would easily be able to fight of corals eating pests that way and avoid them 95% from getting into your dt.
2. Corals can host eggs of fish eating parasites, the most common one ICHS, so if your lfs tank has ich in his system the theront can go and lay eggs(tomonts) on the coral surface, and hence it can enter your dt. Many people don’t qt corals but those who do would suggest you to qt corals for 76 days, but I wouldn’t second that, In fact i myself am currently qt’ing 3 Corals, and I would do that for anywhere between 15-30 days and in all honestly mostly I’ll put them in dt by 15th day. But I qt them in around 28-29 degree Celsius, as it has been seen lower the temperature the more time the tomont takes to excyst. Also if you’ll read the research notes from 1993-2003 ones there has been clearly written that it can be seen that tomites in tomont ex-cyst by detecting urea from fishes near them, so what I do is just vacuum some fish poop out of the dt and put that in coral dt just a little bit, and till now I’ve not had a single case of ich in my dt.
Also mostly people don’t qt their corals because of high cost of running a coral tank separately but trust me I was myself on a tight budget and you don’t need a lot of money to run one coral qt.
1. Get a small tank I’ve a 18 gallon
2. Get a diy lighting fixture I’ve a 50w lighting over my tank and it’s pretty simple, just got 6(5w each) blues 4(5w each) whites and your good to go.
3. One HOB filter, if you want you can add extra half fist of carbon in it, if you are qt’ing a lot of corals together and SPS and lps together.
4. 2 power heads I’ve jebao 200m. Anything bigger than this brings a storm in water in my tank at least.
5. People use calcium reactors, but i don’t think you need one, specially in a tank in which your corals will stay only for 15 days, so I got these sea shells (will cost you peanuts) from lfs and IME they leech out calcium. Since its small tank water change is a breeze and you’ll enjoy it, do weekly very little around 5 litres. That’s it the corals do get nutrients from water change also.
6. I’ve a bottle of reef trace and reef plus. Which I dose bi weekly I capful.
Everyone qt’s fish but IMO corals needs qt too, better safe than sorry. But after everything you do you can never be 100% sure, that pests wont enter your tank. Just make sure after you drip acclimate you never let lfs’s water in your system.
Best of luck, happy reefing[emoji3]
