Quarantine Tank Set Up

Aquarium Diseases & Medication Discussion
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Redfish
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My SetUp: AGA 150g 48x30x25, Reef Octopus Skimmer, Bio Pellet, Phosphate, Carbon reactor. Mostly a SPS coral tank with a few zoas a Green Polyp Toadstool, a Chalice or two and a couple of Scollys thrown in there. Top Off System and dosing pump system for Calcium and Alk.
Location: D'Iberville Mississippi

Quarantine Tank Set Up

Post by Redfish » Sun Mar 06, 2011 8:46 am

This is a follow up to Archies advice to set up a quarantine tank for SPS corals. I have read that, setting up a quarantine tank is the first, most important thing you can do in keeping them, although, I feel this is kinda a taboo subject that nobody really wants to talk about, everyone wants to pretend, their corals are pest free. I know of only one online company that guarantees their corals pest free. To this end,, how should this Quarantine tank be set up? I am guessing that since most SPS corals frags are small, the tank wouldn't need to be big, 10 gallons would most likely be big enough to do a dozen or more frags, a good light is a must.
I would think a HOB filter be good enough, not like you are going to keep a big fish bio load,requiring a skimmer, water changes once a week, would you take the frags out everyday and dip each coral in something that would remove the AEFW or Red Bugs or would you just treat the tank as a whole, what is the best thing to treat the corals with. How long do you treat the corals before you would feel safe to put them into the display tank, pest free? Any other advice we might need to know about setting this tank up?

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bluwtr
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Re: Quarantine Tank Set Up

Post by bluwtr » Sun Mar 06, 2011 8:57 am

I've actually never heard of qt vitals,.but dipping is a must. Every coral I've put iny tank goes into 1 gallon of tank water with the appropriate amount of a product called CoralRX. The pieces stay in the solution for about 10 minutes. They then rinsed in clean tank water. Next the are soaked in a product called Coral Revive, again for roughly ten minutes. Quick rinse then to the tank. I generally put the where I want them. I don't light acclimate. Almost all of my pieces were given tow and came from similar light conditons. I will end up moving them anyway until I get them where I like them.

Redfish
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My SetUp: AGA 150g 48x30x25, Reef Octopus Skimmer, Bio Pellet, Phosphate, Carbon reactor. Mostly a SPS coral tank with a few zoas a Green Polyp Toadstool, a Chalice or two and a couple of Scollys thrown in there. Top Off System and dosing pump system for Calcium and Alk.
Location: D'Iberville Mississippi

Re: Quarantine Tank Set Up

Post by Redfish » Sun Mar 06, 2011 10:07 am

bluwtr,, from what I have read :lol: dipping the SPS coral frags into CoralRX and Revive (the best products on the market I belive) is a good thing to do. The down side is, I think both AEFW and Redbugs (I think) lay eggs, although dipping one time in each of the products is better than doing nothing at all, it will do nothing to help when the eggs start to hatch, and then you have them in your display tank. A Quarantine tank is the only answer to the problem (I belive) you have to cover the egg cycle with dipping the corals. Of course, the smaller the tank the less corals you have and the less chance of getting the pest, but it only takes one. If you have a big tank like Archie with thousands of $$$ in corals, chances increase you will get one, if not both of these pest.

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goalk33p3r
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Re: Quarantine Tank Set Up

Post by goalk33p3r » Sun Mar 06, 2011 10:24 am

is this just sps or all coral we should do this to

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bluwtr
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Re: Quarantine Tank Set Up

Post by bluwtr » Sun Mar 06, 2011 10:27 am

Good points. Haven't heard one way or the other if RX.gets the eggs, but I wonder if a fresh water dip would get them? Since eggs are osmotic by nature, I wonder if a fw dip would lyse the eggs through osmotic imbalance.

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bluwtr
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Re: Quarantine Tank Set Up

Post by bluwtr » Sun Mar 06, 2011 10:29 am

At the least dip in RX or similar product for everything. As Pete said when money is on the line better safe than sorry.

Redfish
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My SetUp: AGA 150g 48x30x25, Reef Octopus Skimmer, Bio Pellet, Phosphate, Carbon reactor. Mostly a SPS coral tank with a few zoas a Green Polyp Toadstool, a Chalice or two and a couple of Scollys thrown in there. Top Off System and dosing pump system for Calcium and Alk.
Location: D'Iberville Mississippi

Re: Quarantine Tank Set Up

Post by Redfish » Sun Mar 06, 2011 2:46 pm

We need Gerwin or Archie to chime in on this :lol: , am sure they know all about it :lol: I have never heard of soft corals having either Red Bugs or AEFW, not sure about SPS corals that aren't considered Acros, such as encrusting Montiporas and the like. Most of the online coral companies go to great pains to see that their corals are pest free. Can you imangine companines like Vivid, Liveaquaria and the like, if word got out if they were selling infested corals. The problem comes from, pardon a term taken from the dog industry, back yard breeders. The online coral companies sell a frag of ( pick any well named sps coral) for $75.00 to $100.00 or more. The local reefer will sell you the same frag for $15 to $20, and he may or may not go to the trouble to sell you a pest free frag. its sort of like treating ich on fish in a tank. You have to remove all of the fish to a quarantine tank and treat the fish, you have to leave the display tank fish free for like 8 weeks or so, so that when the eggs hatch, they haven't any fish to host on.

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Re: Quarantine Tank Set Up

Post by Archie » Sun Mar 06, 2011 5:42 pm

you all need to read my thread again very very carefully. you all are missing the purpose of my thread.

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Gerwin
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Re: Quarantine Tank Set Up

Post by Gerwin » Sun Mar 06, 2011 7:16 pm

as I understand it, nothing kills the eggs and there lay the issue, also most of these pests are species specific, aefw eat acros but there are monti eating nudibranchs and leather eating nudibranchs and zoa eating snails and nudibranchs as well and the list goes on,
one should be careful and dipping should be a standard procedure BUT you could be bring the eggs and flatworms or snails or nudibranchs in on fresh live rock as well as the water as well as a coral that happens to be transporting and not even on the diet of the pest. So that being said do we all lock ourselves in our homes and wear gas masks and radiation suits all day? NO but we take precautions, you observe, you dip etc. Do you need to set up super kill QT systems? I do not plan on it, Arch is learning a tuff lesson that we all can learn from but in his 20 plus years this is his first incident and he has been doing nothing previous at all, the odds are not huge but if you are dealing with ACROPORA this is the AIDS of the invert pests, and they are the one coral sp. you should examine careful.
To touch on Petes question the Acro eating FW, does not seem to like Digis or Montiporas nor Birdsnest or pocilloporas as far as sps goes matter fact one way to get rid of them is to eliminate the diet from the menu and they die off from starvation!

AS it was explained me to me. There are 3 levels of responsibility:
The Distributor should not knowingly send out a bad product
The Retailer should not knowingly sell a bad product,
BUT the greatest responsibility goes to the Hobbyist as you have the ability to look, see and treat before bringing anything to its final resting place in your tank.
Sexually transmitted diseases being ever so frequent these days does not seem to stop folks from having casual sex, thats what condoms are for :wink:

Redfish
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My SetUp: AGA 150g 48x30x25, Reef Octopus Skimmer, Bio Pellet, Phosphate, Carbon reactor. Mostly a SPS coral tank with a few zoas a Green Polyp Toadstool, a Chalice or two and a couple of Scollys thrown in there. Top Off System and dosing pump system for Calcium and Alk.
Location: D'Iberville Mississippi

Re: Quarantine Tank Set Up

Post by Redfish » Sun Mar 06, 2011 8:26 pm

Archie wrote:you all need to read my thread again very very carefully. you all are missing the purpose of my thread.
I just picked up on the quarantining issue, that you have suggested that we do before we place anything new into our tanks. A quarantine tank is something I bet very few in the hobby do, weither it be corals or fish, its a subject that is worth talking about and better yet, implementing into our tank systems. I have known of the danger these pest can do to a tank, but have always kinda looked at it like it will happen to the other guy, not me. Just can't look at it like that.

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Re: Quarantine Tank Set Up

Post by C-21 USAF » Tue Mar 08, 2011 12:57 am

Don't think I'll be setting up a QT anytime soon...proper precautions can be taken to remedy infestations.

If I find a frag that has AEFW, in the trash it goes...peroid. A frag, no matter what it is, is not worth losing an entire system over.

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Re: Quarantine Tank Set Up

Post by C-21 USAF » Tue Mar 08, 2011 12:59 am

Archie wrote:you all need to read my thread again very very carefully. you all are missing the purpose of my thread.

If we're all missing the point, just state it for us please.... :mrgreen:

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