Quarantine Tank

[waterboys]

Does anyone have any examples of nice looking quarantine tanks?

I just started on my reef tank journey and want to make sure that I’m doing it right. I have a 40 gallon breeder in my office and have two clownfish in it currently. Before I add any additional fish (or other living things), I want to build a quarantine tank to observe new fish and treat them as appropriate before putting them in the 40 gallon.

The only appropriate spot is directly on my work desk so I’d like for it to look good, almost like a second display tank. All the videos I’ve seen about building quarantine tanks shows them very “bare bones” and usually as cheap as possible which makes sense.

Anyone have any examples of really nice looking quarantine tanks or is bare bones a necessity? Thanks in advance.

 

[davidcalgary29]

It all depends on what you want out of quarantine. If this means "hospital and/or prophylactic treatment", as must be the case when you cannot legally acquire medication without a prescription, then yes, it will be a bare-bones affair. Substrate has a nasty habit of absorbing copper and other metals, so this type of tank will often be bare-bottomed. And you want to see the fish in it to check for parasites and disease, and aquascape would make that much more difficult. Few people want permanent hospital tank setups, anyway, and adding additional decorations will make everything harder to keep clean in the long run.

Isolation tanks are a different story, but what if you put an incoming fish into your desk quarantine/display and it starts showing symptoms of a disease? You're then going to have to establish a hospital tank for your quarantine tank.

 

[waterboys]

It all depends on what you want out of quarantine. If this means "hospital and/or prophylactic treatment", as must be the case when you cannot legally acquire medication without a prescription, then yes, it will be a bare-bones affair. Substrate has a nasty habit of absorbing copper and other metals, so this type of tank will often be bare-bottomed. And you want to see the fish in it to check for parasites and disease, and aquascape would make that much more difficult. Few people want permanent hospital tank setups, anyway, and adding additional decorations will make everything harder to keep clean in the long run.

Isolation tanks are a different story, but what if you put an incoming fish into your desk quarantine/display and it starts showing symptoms of a disease? You're then going to have to establish a hospital tank for your quarantine tank.

Thanks for the information. So, the general recommendation would be to keep a quarantine tank ready to actually treat fish. Do people usually only put up a quarantine tank as needed or do people leave them up and running so they are ready to go?

 

[TastesLikeChicken]

Some leave them up and running, most others set them up as needed. I think with bacteria in a bottle it’s very easy to get a QT going quickly.

I recommend you use QT to treat with meds. I think observational is a waste of time and there have been recent posts on how they have failed.

Most seasoned folks quarantine any and all things before it goes into the display tank.

 

[davidcalgary29]

Thanks for the information. So, the general recommendation would be to keep a quarantine tank ready to actually treat fish. Do people usually only put up a quarantine tank as needed or do people leave them up and running so they are ready to go?

Most people just keep one running for incoming livestock or for hospital treatment. @Jay Hemdal, among others, have permanent QT tanks, though.

 

[Jay Hemdal Verified Community Expert]

Does anyone have any examples of nice looking quarantine tanks?

I just started on my reef tank journey and want to make sure that I’m doing it right. I have a 40 gallon breeder in my office and have two clownfish in it currently. Before I add any additional fish (or other living things), I want to build a quarantine tank to observe new fish and treat them as appropriate before putting them in the 40 gallon.

The only appropriate spot is directly on my work desk so I’d like for it to look good, almost like a second display tank. All the videos I’ve seen about building quarantine tanks shows them very “bare bones” and usually as cheap as possible which makes sense.

Anyone have any examples of really nice looking quarantine tanks or is bare bones a necessity? Thanks in advance.

Here is a recent thread where the OP worked on making their QT more attractive. You could use plastic corals and inert quartz sand and make a decent looking system.

Quarantine tanks don’t have to be boring (pics of my new setup)

New quarantine / observation tank has FINALLY cycled and welcomed some new residents! I’ll be observing these guys for a month before I put them in my display tank. I’d been looking to create a QT tank for a while and since I saw hardly any that actually looked nice, I thought I’d try...

www.reef2reef.com

Jay

 

[Spare time]

Thanks for the information. So, the general recommendation would be to keep a quarantine tank ready to actually treat fish. Do people usually only put up a quarantine tank as needed or do people leave them up and running so they are ready to go?

I keep one up and running for inverts (snails at the moment)