Trying To Decide On A QT Tank

[Cannons Fish]

I have a 46 gallon bow front reef tank. So far I have a green star polyp, fire and ice zoanthids, and a few kenya trees. And as for fish I have a percula clownfish, melunarus wrasse, banggai cardinalfish, yellow eye kole tang, striped eel catfish, alleni dameslefis, and a coral beuty angelfish. I plan on getting sps and lps coral in the future. I want to know if a QT tank is necessary and about how much it would cost.

 

[mike550]

I have a 46 gallon bow front reef tank. So far I have a green star polyp, fire and ice zoanthids, and a few kenya trees. And as for fish I have a percula clownfish, melunarus wrasse, banggai cardinalfish, yellow eye kole tang, striped eel catfish, alleni dameslefis, and a coral beuty angelfish. I plan on getting sps and lps coral in the future. I want to know if a QT tank is necessary and about how much it would cost.

This is probably one of the more hotly debated topics in this forum. But here are my thoughts.

I have a separate 20G tank with a simple HOB filter, heater, and a couple of PVC Tee pipes. The tank really serves a couple of purposes for me. First, I keep it running all of the time so if a fish looks sick or something, I can pull it out of my DT for observation and then possible treatment. Super easy to maintain. Second, any new fish or corals I get go directly into this tank for observation. I observe the fish / coral for at least two weeks. I may / may not do a quarantine treatment depending upon how things look. I like to give fish / coral a few days to recover from shipping before I do any treatments.

So if you can maintain a separate tank (10G or 20G) I'd probably do it. Whether or not you quarantine and the process you use is up to you. Lots of thoughts on that from this group.