Transferring Only The Good Stuff

[ScottF83]

Hello guys and gals

Planning to be a lot more active on here once I'm up and running again but I'm currently in a limbo period.

I had a 6x2x2ft tank which suffered from a number of issues but the most serious of these was a short, sharp and very strong bout of ich which killed every single fish despite being able to transfer quite a few of them to a hospital tank.

Very upset about it still but I've decided to get back on the saddle with a smaller sized Red Sea Reefer XL 300 which is arriving next Tuesday.

I should have been more careful from the start but I'm absolutely paranoid now about never introducing anything bad to this new tank.

My old tank is still running because it has some corals and inverts in it. It also has a huge population of copepods/rotifers as well as tiny little molusc type creatures and those orange sand dwelling animals that extend their multiple arms out across the sand.

But it also has aiptasia, flatworm, ich, bubble algae, green hair algae and asterina starfish.

My question/request is for how I can firstly physically save and transfer the coral, copepods, rotifers, tiny molluscs and sand cleaning things out of the old tank. Then second, how to ensure that no ich, algae, cysts, eggs, flatworm, etc, is transferred on or with them into the new tank?

I am currently setting up an observation 125L tank in my garage. It's filled up and I've started to cycle it with an external canister filter, bottle of Fluvel bacteria and a bottle of ammonia to seed it.

I also have a 75L tank partially cycled but was going to be used for copper treatments of new arrivals.

Many thanks in advance. It'd be a real shame to just ditch all the good life in my old tank when I drain it down.

Many thanks
Scott

 

[heniochus]

In my experience, what killed the fish isn’t inch, but the stress of something else such as velvet or brooklynella. Those usually take about 70 days to full get out of the system so even if you transfer, you potentially should wait 70 days. There no guarantees that you won’t get something from just buying corals or inverts at a LFS. By the time you’re done QTing the fish in copper which is about 3 weeks, fish should be good to go in. As for transferring the corals, I suggest dipping the corals in coral RX and flatworm exit before putting in. I’m not exactly sure how to get rid of the bubble algae except for having emerald crabs to keep the population down.

 

[ScottF83]

In my experience, what killed the fish isn’t ich, but the stress of something else such as velvet or brooklynella.

Thank you for taking the time to reply, and you're probably right on this point. The rate and speed of fatality was far too fast.

As I have no fish now, all future ones will be store bought and will go through a range of prophylactic treatments before going into the new tank. So that's 'safe' as it can be.

The corals and inverts currently in the old tank can stay in there for 70 days, that's not a problem. So in theory they'd be 'safe' too, right? The last fish died in there on 29th February, so the magic day will be 9th May.

I'm confident that I can remove any obvious nasties from the corals and inverts such as bubble algae, bristleworms, etc.

And any eggs or cysts would have cycled out in that 70 days, agreed?

So that just leaves the copepods/rotifers - how do I transfer them safely?

 

[Sailingeric]

If it was me, I would start with fresh sand and either bleach the rock or start with fresh white dry rock and dip the H-E-Double Hocky sticks out of the corals so you don't bring any aiptasia and other nasties over.

 

[ScottF83]

If it was me, I would start with fresh sand and either bleach the rock or start with fresh white dry rock and dip the H-E-Double Hocky sticks out of the corals so you don't bring any aiptasia and other nasties over.

Haha yes I will be starting with brand new sand and dead rock in the new tank to avoid any issues there

Corals will be in the fishless old tank for as long as possible and definitely dipped to within an inch of their life.

So there's a plan for everything except the pods... Help?

 

[KrisReef]

Pods?
@AlgaeBarn

 

[ScottF83]

Pods?
@AlgaeBarn

So you think I should just start again with them too? just seems a shame to kill off the large existing population when I drain that old tank

 

[heniochus]

They generally don’t affect pods or inverts because they cannot live off them. It’s just the reproduction pattern from what I know. Generally just keeping the tank fallow works and adding fish later. You can try using black mollies as canaries first and try to see if velvet is still in the tank. There’s a thread somewhere about mollies and velvet. As for the algae, it may not solve everything by scrubbing because of the spores, but you can keep the population down.

Thank you for taking the time to reply, and you're probably right on this point. The rate and speed of fatality was far too fast.

As I have no fish now, all future ones will be store bought and will go through a range of prophylactic treatments before going into the new tank. So that's 'safe' as it can be.

The corals and inverts currently in the old tank can stay in there for 70 days, that's not a problem. So in theory they'd be 'safe' too, right? The last fish died in there on 29th February, so the magic day will be 9th May.

I'm confident that I can remove any obvious nasties from the corals and inverts such as bubble algae, bristleworms, etc.

And any eggs or cysts would have cycled out in that 70 days, agreed?

So that just leaves the copepods/rotifers - how do I transfer them safely?