Brett S
Valuable Member
- Joined
- Nov 28, 2016
- Messages
- 1,062
- Reaction score
- 1,375
- Location
- Orlando
- What state or country do you live in
- Florida
So I use the TTM as part of my quarantine process and for smaller fish I’ve just been using 5 gallon buckets with a heater and an air stone and a piece of PVC pipe.
I’m nearly through the process with four small lyretail anthias from LiveAquaria and when I went to do the last transfer I discovered that three of them had died. I’m still not sure what happened, but that’s a problem for another thread.
The problem for this thread is that unfortunately with orange Home Depot buckets and orange fish it was very difficult to see the fish in the buckets and other than when I was doing the transfers I really had no idea how the fish were doing.
It occurred to me that observing the fish is really a big part of the quarantine process and even when I’m quarantining fish that aren’t orange it can be difficult to observe them through the top of an orange bucket... especially while the air stone is going, so I think I need a better container.
I looked online and it looks like petco has 5.5G tanks for about $14 and 2.5G tanks for $13.
I’m debating getting two 5.5 and two 2.5’s. I feel like smaller fish like these anthias would probably do fine in the 2.5’s during quarantine and that would save a bit in terms of salt and effort filling and emptying the tanks, but at the same time that’s now four tanks that I would need to find somewhere to store when I’m not using them, so it might be easier just to get two 5.5G tanks and use them for all the small fish I quarantine.
On the other side of the spectrum, at times I also need to quarantine some larger fish, typically 4-6 inches, occasionally even a bit larger than that. I have been using 15G totes for the larger fish which are clear, but a bit translucent, so it’s somewhat easier to observe them during the process. But with some of the bigger fish I feel that 15G might not really be big enough. I’m thinking that it might be helpful to pick up a pair of 20s or maybe even 40s for the bigger fish, but again with the bigger tanks it’s more stuff I need to store, more salt during the TTM and more effort to empty and refill them.
So after all that, in a perfect world I might have 3 or 4 different size tank pairs that I could use for QT depending on the size of the fish. But I really don’t have a good place to store all those tanks while I’m not using them, so I’ll need to make some compromises. Maybe get one pair of smaller tanks for smaller fish and one par of larger tanks for larger fish.
What size tanks do you guys use for quarantine and TTM? What sizes do you find to be best to give the fish enough room without being so big that water changes are difficult and expensive or that storage is a problem?
I’m nearly through the process with four small lyretail anthias from LiveAquaria and when I went to do the last transfer I discovered that three of them had died. I’m still not sure what happened, but that’s a problem for another thread.
The problem for this thread is that unfortunately with orange Home Depot buckets and orange fish it was very difficult to see the fish in the buckets and other than when I was doing the transfers I really had no idea how the fish were doing.
It occurred to me that observing the fish is really a big part of the quarantine process and even when I’m quarantining fish that aren’t orange it can be difficult to observe them through the top of an orange bucket... especially while the air stone is going, so I think I need a better container.
I looked online and it looks like petco has 5.5G tanks for about $14 and 2.5G tanks for $13.
I’m debating getting two 5.5 and two 2.5’s. I feel like smaller fish like these anthias would probably do fine in the 2.5’s during quarantine and that would save a bit in terms of salt and effort filling and emptying the tanks, but at the same time that’s now four tanks that I would need to find somewhere to store when I’m not using them, so it might be easier just to get two 5.5G tanks and use them for all the small fish I quarantine.
On the other side of the spectrum, at times I also need to quarantine some larger fish, typically 4-6 inches, occasionally even a bit larger than that. I have been using 15G totes for the larger fish which are clear, but a bit translucent, so it’s somewhat easier to observe them during the process. But with some of the bigger fish I feel that 15G might not really be big enough. I’m thinking that it might be helpful to pick up a pair of 20s or maybe even 40s for the bigger fish, but again with the bigger tanks it’s more stuff I need to store, more salt during the TTM and more effort to empty and refill them.
So after all that, in a perfect world I might have 3 or 4 different size tank pairs that I could use for QT depending on the size of the fish. But I really don’t have a good place to store all those tanks while I’m not using them, so I’ll need to make some compromises. Maybe get one pair of smaller tanks for smaller fish and one par of larger tanks for larger fish.
What size tanks do you guys use for quarantine and TTM? What sizes do you find to be best to give the fish enough room without being so big that water changes are difficult and expensive or that storage is a problem?
