Hospital tank

[carrie1429]

I was going to setup a hospital tank in case one of my fish gets sick, I have had my clowns for a while (5 months) with no problems of disease at all. My question is I'm probably not going to have to put them in the Hos. tank (hopefully), so do I need to run a filter or anything while there are no fish in there? Or can the tank just sit with water in it until I put fish in?

 

[beth]

You definately need to run a filter and keep the water circulating. Nothing fancy or expensive, but you will want to keep the QT cycled, thus you need filtration of some sort, and will need to add organic material in there [piece of fress uncooked seafood] and do water testing.

 

[melbournefl]

Beth, I'm planning ahead in my design for a QT but I *was* planning to leave it plumbed up and ready to go but empty when not in use. My plumbing allows a one way transfer of water from the display tank to the QT and I was planning on filling it with water from the display, thereby avoiding the water quality/cycling issues of having two tanks. My reading has led me to believe (probably wrongly) that the QT tank is basically an empty glass box with a few places to hide. My logic *was* something* like this ... fill QT with diluted water from display (hypo per Terry's suggestions), turn on circulation and filter (new media), get inmate from lfs, put inmate in solitary, make partial diluted water changes nightly, again using water from display, towards the end of solitary confinement slowly bring salinity back to display tank levels before introducing inmate to general prison population. Am I completely off base here?
Thanks much!!
Paul

 

[beth]

Inmate!! LOL Geez, are you trying to lay a guilt trip on us here!??
Just using the water from the main tank when you are going to add an "inmate" will not produce a fully cycled tank. Thus, you will need to either keep a cycled filter from your sump, etc., to throw on the QT or keep the QT up and going all the time [fully cycled]. If you go with an uncycled tank, once you add an "inmate", then you will need to check water quality frequently and do water changes daily as well as vacuum tank bottom or other debris in tank.

 

[melbournefl]

scratching head and thinking more later but thanks for the info! The more I learn the dumber I get *sigh*
Thanks again,
Paul