quarantine tank

[Hettie_48]

Hi,
After setting up a quarantine tank, how do you keep it cycled without any fish in it?

It was fully cycled and then had fish in it and now it's empty untill I get some more fish.


Thanks

[sharn]

you could set it up and wait out the cycle or move some established substrate, water and filters/media from an existing, disease free tank, pretty much eliminates the need for a cycle if the tank isnt stocked heavily, just have to keep and eye on it and do water changes accordingly. just make sure to keep all the bits and pieces used for the Q seperate or clean accordingly between use.

just a quick Q, does moving stuff to a new tank for quarentine from and exisiting tank make it pointless, cause if the existing fish have something they could pass it onto the new one?

[G-1000]

Hettie

The best thing you can do is get liquid ammonia and add a few drops to the quarantine tank each day.

G

[Hettie_48]

Thanks Sharn and G,

If I put a gold fish in the tank would that be OK?

As I understand it it would I have to add either amonia or fish to keep the cycle going?
If I left a cycled filter running with no fish, would the benificial bacteria die?

[sharn]

i prefer using fish flakes each day, lots of people use the ammonia method though, never done it personally. yes, it would be either fish or ammonia/food.

bacteria need something to feed on to multiply so i assume putting a established filter in a tank with a pinch of flakes or something every week or so would keep things going? not too sure on that one but i do know they need something to eat, a new tank probably wouldnt have much

if you use fish you will have to do water changes of at least 20% every day once it starts cycling cause the nasties build up and can make life very uncomfortable for the fish in question. if you want to use goldfish/other fish make sure theyre disease free, dont want to add diseased fish to cycle and then go and add new ones that could be healthy only to have them die of something!