fyrfytr
Active Member
@mike2112 - appreciate your opinion on the matter. The thought that got me thinking on this was all about more volume of water. I was not thinking and added live rock and sand to my system, had an amonia spike and lost my fish to it. Had I had more water volume the spike would not have been as high, and maybe I would have not lost my fish to it...beginer mistake, lesson learned and will grow from it. I also did not QT my fish when I got them, also something that is a beginner mistake, but in reading since there are people who swear by it and others that refuse to do it..so I am thinking that I may not have been totally in the wrong by doing it the way I did it. I have two brand new 10 gal tanks in my garage that I got thanks to PetCo mis-marking their stuff and I had ear-marked one of them for my saltwater tank. If things go how I want, somewhere around Christmas I would like to get into corals and I know that a frag tank will be in my future...so if I am going to set up a QT and see a frag tank in my future then why not just make them the same tank. The ball/gate valves will easily allow me to isolate the tank and keep the things in the tank from getting into the DT...and if you run a QD on it as well you can completely remove it from the system. Sure it is an easy thing to pull out the tank and take some water off the DT, however only having a 36 gal DT if I take 8-10 gal from it I am getting a little low on water. So having the QT plumbed into the loop not only adds total tank volume, but it allows for having cycled water in the tank and not having to take a larger amount from the DT...not robbing Peter to pay Paul as they say. As for chlorine and chlorine cleanup, that isn't a real issue. Chlorine off-gases, even in water. If you leave water out for 24-hours or so the chlorine will off-gas out of the water and will no longer be a factor. With that in mind, once you put some water into the tank the pure chlorine (or almost pure) from the bleach will be dicipated of the water and will not be an issue. From my research it isn't chlorine in tap water that is a fish issue, it the chloramine that is what is not good for the fish. A simple tap water dechlorinator takes care of that and what is left of the residual chlorine.
