I need to set up a QT/Hospital tank

[joeyprice]

I'm in the process of losing another fish. Not sure whats wrong with it, water tests fine, it just stopped eating and won't come out of its cave. I can't catch it without tearing up the scape, and I've nothing to do with it even if I COULD catch it. Everything else in there is behaving normally and looking healthy, so I guess I'm going to just cross my fingers.

Back to the QT tank, not going to put anything else in there until I have one setup. What's the process? Do you treat the water regardless of fish showing symptoms, or just leave it in there and make sure it eats and doesn't develop any problems, then throw it in to the display? If the later is the case, I'm not sure it wouldn't have done anything for this fish, its been in the display for months and been fine until just the past few days. If its the former, what do you treat with/for? And for how long?

 

[Cook]

I’ll provide my thoughts. I hope though that you are dealing with just an acclimation issue and not an illness that needs treatment. There are many opinions on the subject of QT, so do your own research. There are some great guides on on Reef2Reef too. I always QT new fish now, I didn’t worry about it until what you are going through now happened to me. It’s expensive and disappointing as a fish keeper.

QT Treatment vs observation: choose both. I always observe first and make sure the fish is eating and look for signs of illness. If no issues, then I treat with Prazipro for internal parasites. If issues, move to the treatment necessary to resolve the problem and treat with prazi later.

Assuming prevention: For ich/velvet/brook, I don’t proactively treat with copper there are those that do, again read up on the pros and cons. I prefer to use Humblefish’s tank transfer method for ich, regardless of whether I observe ich on the fish itself. there is a modified transfer method that will treat Velvet as well. It does use a good bit of salt, you are sanitizing and transferring to a clean tank every 7 days. Some fish are more prone to ich than others and if ich is already present in your main tank, unless you run fallow for 78 days it will never completely disappear.

If you are going the medication route, I prefer chloroquine phosphate over copper, but thanks to ignorant people and CoVID it’s virtually impossible to get CP, it treats ich, velvet, and brook all at once with no harm to the fish.

I have 10 and 20 gallon tanks (2 of each) and which size I use depends on the size of the fish to be quarantined. Hope this helps.

 

[joeyprice]

I’ll provide my thoughts. I hope though that you are dealing with just an acclimation issue and not an illness that needs treatment. There are many opinions on the subject of QT, so do your own research. There are some great guides on on Reef2Reef too. I always QT new fish now, I didn’t worry about it until what you are going through now happened to me. It’s expensive and disappointing as a fish keeper.

QT Treatment vs observation: choose both. I always observe first and make sure the fish is eating and look for signs of illness. If no issues, then I treat with Prazipro for internal parasites. If issues, move to the treatment necessary to resolve the problem and treat with prazi later.

Assuming prevention: For ich/velvet/brook, I don’t proactively treat with copper there are those that do, again read up on the pros and cons. I prefer to use Humblefish’s tank transfer method for ich, regardless of whether I observe ich on the fish itself. there is a modified transfer method that will treat Velvet as well. It does use a good bit of salt, you are sanitizing and transferring to a clean tank every 7 days. Some fish are more prone to ich than others and if ich is already present in your main tank, unless you run fallow for 78 days it will never completely disappear.

If you are going the medication route, I prefer chloroquine phosphate over copper, but thanks to ignorant people and CoVID it’s virtually impossible to get CP, it treats ich, velvet, and brook all at once with no harm to the fish.

I have 10 and 20 gallon tanks (2 of each) and which size I use depends on the size of the fish to be quarantined. Hope this helps.

It does, thank you. I can only assume the problems I am dealing with are interal, as was suggested on another thread, because the fish LOOK fine, they just stop eating and turn up dead a few days to a week later. It's happened to two of them, so not what I'd call a trend, but disturbing to say the least. It also happens after they've been in the tank for months, so I'm not sure an observational qt would help. I'll look into these meds. Thanks again.

 

[lmm1967]

It does, thank you. I can only assume the problems I am dealing with are interal, as was suggested on another thread, because the fish LOOK fine, they just stop eating and turn up dead a few days to a week later. It's happened to two of them, so not what I'd call a trend, but disturbing to say the least. It also happens after they've been in the tank for months, so I'm not sure an observational qt would help. I'll look into these meds. Thanks again.

API General Cure & Selcon soaked food for a week worked well for internal parasites for my tanks. You have to get them eating for this to work obviously. You can also treat the entire tank but you'll likely lose things like bristle worms etc.

 

[joeyprice]

API General Cure & Selcon soaked food for a week worked well for internal parasites for my tanks. You have to get them eating for this to work obviously. You can also treat the entire tank but you'll likely lose things like bristle worms etc.

Will it kill all deutritis eaters, like conch and snail?