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melev

New fish in quarantine

Rating: 13 votes, 5.00 average.
When I get new fish, I prefer to put them in quarantine for a duration to make sure they are healthy and well-fed. I set up my old quarantine tank on the angled tank's stand, and filled it up with reef water, a heater, a MP10, and a simple LED light on top. PVC fittings were addded to give fish a place to hide if need be.

Keeping the tank at 78F is easier this time, because the tank is lower in the room. The previous one would get hotter due to warmer air up high.

Having a ton of saltwater at the ready makes keeping this QT easy. I can drain out water, dispose of it, and add more water from my reef to refill it daily. Whatever is taken from the reef is replaced with the saltwater in my 265g poly tank. Tiny easy water changes on both systems should work out well.

The new fish are:
10 blue/green Chromis
3 Helfrichi firefish
1 Tailspot blenny
6 Red Spot Cardinalfish
1 Mimic Filefish (google image)










John Coppolino recommends feeding new arrivals often, as much as 8x a day. Get them fat quickly, and change lots of water. So that's the plan. The sooner I can get them in my tank, the better.

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Comments

  1. byrdman's Avatar
    Nice additions. How long u plan on qt them. Seems like alot of fish in that tank
  2. mhowe9's Avatar
    How big is your QT Marc? Are you dosing any medications?
  3. melev's Avatar
    No medications at this time. I'm planning to do big water changes daily. 50% wouldn't be bad. It's probably 10-12g of water in the tank.

    QT is usually best for 3 weeks, but I have a trip coming up in 10 days so I may add them sooner. I'll only be gone a total of 24 hours, but still... If I don't see any obvious signs of disease, I'll add them.

    It isn't very big, but it was convenient. I have LR I could put in there to help a little, but anticipate the large water changes being an acceptable solution that is easy to accomplish.
  4. Reefski's Avatar
    choram-X works great for QT tanks and is not harmful for inverts either. cheaper than water changes too. if you put in live rock and your fish are sick the live rock will not be able to go back in the main system.

    why do you keep your reef so cold? http://www.ronshimek.com/salinity_temperature.html#

    Carl
  5. melev's Avatar
    I don't keep my reef cold. The temperature is usually around 79F. The average is more around 81F, so if my tank goes up in temperature a little, it has room. 79-81F is pretty much what the tank is most of the year. I don't agree with Dr Ron's point of keeping corals at 84F, especially when oxygen levels plummet if the tank hits 85F. At that point, you need to add an airstone to your system for the fish to be okay. My tank is set up to kill the lights if the tank goes up to 83F or more.

    I'll pick up some Chloram-X if my LFS has it. Thanks.

    Btw, I got a little nervous about the water quality and did another water change, added some Prime, and introduced an airstone to add oxygen to the water, and I added two more gallons to the volume. I tested Ammonia but it read 0. I was running it a little shallow to help prevent any jumpers.
  6. dougS's Avatar
    Correct me if I'm wrong, but those cardinals look more like Pajama Cardinals to me: http://fishbase.org/Summary/speciesS...me=nematoptera

    fishbase lists two redspot cardinals: http://fishbase.org/Summary/speciesS...iesname=dispar
    and http://fishbase.org/Summary/SpeciesS...t+cardinalfish
  7. melev's Avatar
    I do refer to them at Pajama cardinals, but they were also listed on a website as Red Spotted cardinalfish, so I carried over that mistake, apparently.
  8. melev's Avatar
    Got some new pictures last night.







  9. melev's Avatar
    After testing the ammonia today, I did a bigger water change. Probably 70%. There's too many fish in this little tank, so I've got to stay on top of it. Testing Ammonia again, and it was down, around .25
  10. melev's Avatar
    The tilefish ate some mini mysis tonight.