Angela's Dream Tank (for now lol)

[Joshua Huff]

Looks like your tank is going to be awesome! Congrats! On the paint subject tho you may want to check what type of paint you are using as well. latex base vs acrylic and such... I know they react a bit different when they dry. I'm not sure witch is best, the vynel actually seems like a great idea, it's comes in all sorts of colors and you could change it if you ever wanted to pretty easily.

 

[CanadianReefer]

So, I have repainted (hopefully it will be fine in the morning!) and my hubby is finished mudding and drywalling the wall. He built me a new entrance to what will now be my fish room, and eventually he is going to reconfigure the laundry room so that he can expand my fish room space. What a saint! In the meantime, I will be painting the walls tomorrow once all the mudding dries, and now that I don't have height issues, I can go ahead and configure my new sump pretty easily. I'm so thankful I won't be trying to work on the sump under the tank! It would have been a pain in the you-know-what.

So here's how everything is looking right now

 

[CanadianReefer]

So here's my dilemma of the day. In order to get the go ahead for my big tank, I had to promise to amalgamate all of my little (ok not so little, unless compared to this monster!) tanks. Unfortunately, I have one tank that is known to have ich. I had even left the tank fallow and quarantined all the fish, running them through copper and losing some wrasses along the way, only to put the fish back in and watch them instantly get ich again. So I surrendered to the fact that the ich was there to stay and thankfully only had to pull one fish out again who wasn't doing well.

I digress....

I obviously have to transfer these fish to the new tank, and that's no problem - I can quarantine them all and cross my fingers I don't lose any of them.... But how best would I go about transferring the live rock, inverts and the thousands of dollars worth of corals and clams I have in there without transferring the ich with them?? I understand that these things can't host ich, but the transfer of water, even if minute, can introduce ich to the new tank... and if a tank can stay fallow for 70 some odd days and still have ich, then I'd say that the ich parasite is pretty hardy even without fish present.

I figure I can put all the live rock into a brute container with an air stone and heater and leave it sit for 5 or 6 months before transferring it, but my dilemma rests with the inverts, corals, and clams, especially when considering the order in which they should be put into the big tank. By that, for example, I mean that I have a hawkfish in another tank and he should go in after my shrimp. I have dwarf angels that should go in after my clams... Etc.

I need to time this while keeping conscience of the fact that the hubby does not want more tanks in here and wants me to decommission all the extras.

Can I drain that tank, take out the substrate, dip the corals, then refill the tank and let them sit there for a period of time? If I did that, how long would they need to sit in the tank without fish (so any ich would be dead and so I can prepare my hubby for the bad news that the tank will have to remain operational for a while longer??)... And what is the snails, shrimp, starfish, conches and urchins? I could dip them in hydroplex and put them back in with the corals, but with no substrate, would my pistol shrimp or sand sifting snails make it?? I could also never dip the starfish without killing it, I figure.

Any thoughts on how best to go about this would be appreciated. It's a fairly complicated issue and I don't want to introduce ich into the new system, especially when it will be full of stressed fish until they settle in.

 

[Zero Nitrates]

That's a tough one.
Any thought? @Humblefish

 

[Humblefish]

@CanadianReefer You would need to isolate all rock/corals/inverts to a fishless environment for 76 days to eliminate any leftover tomonts, which can encyst upon any hard surface really. You also need to take aerosol transmission into consideration whenever going fallow: https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/aerosol-transmission.190292/

For the fish infected with ich, TTM would be the fastest way to get them into the new tank: https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/tank-transfer-method.192655/

 

[CanadianReefer]

@Humblefish I can do this for sure, but I have a question. I had left this tank fallow for the prescribed amount of time previously, but when I put the fish back in, they got ich again instantly (started noticing it within a few days after re-entry). They had been put through copper in QT and were in the QT tank after that with no signs of issue for well over a month. I wonder if it's possible that I have a strain of ich that survives past the 76 day period or if it is MV that is living off of the light?? If so, how long should they be isolated in this case?

 

[CanadianReefer]

Here's the latest progress. Walls all painted, the paint on the aquarium stayed intact, and you wouldn't even know there used to be a door behind this!!

fyi I have no idea why it keeps adding my pictures upside down. Sorry folks!

 

[CanadianReefer]

Congrats. I have their 300DD with an 80 gallon sump. I love mine.

@Sharvey103 how did you design your sump, out of curiousity? I'm in the middle of designing mine and would love to hear how someone else did theirs with a similar setup...

 

[Humblefish]

I wonder if it's possible that I have a strain of ich that survives past the 76 day period or if it is MV that is living off of the light?? If so, how long should they be isolated in this case?

MV has an even shorter fallow period (6 weeks) than ich, lights & all.

There are many reasons a fallow period can fail: cross contamination, aerosol transmission, adding an un-QTd coral/invert during the fallow period, disease was not completely eradicated during the QT process; and yes, encountering a previously unknown strain of ich with a life cycle >72 days is also a possibility.

 

[CanadianReefer]

MV has an even shorter fallow period (6 weeks) than ich, lights & all.

There are many reasons a fallow period can fail: cross contamination, aerosol transmission, adding an un-QTd coral/invert during the fallow period, disease was not completely eradicated during the QT process; and yes, encountering a previously unknown strain of ich with a life cycle >72 days is also a possibility.

Out of curiosity, @Humblefish, could one, in theory, do a TTM on corals and inverts? TTM with a dip of some sort in between? I don't care if the live rock from that tank sits in a bucket for months until it is entirely ich free, but it's hard to add a hawkfish before the shrimp, and angels before my clams... etc. If I can TTM my corals and inverts, I could clear out some space in the QTs, since I have 2 dwarf angels and a hawkfish waiting to go into the big tank.

 

[Humblefish]

Out of curiosity, @Humblefish, could one, in theory, do a TTM on corals and inverts? TTM with a dip of some sort in between? I don't care if the live rock from that tank sits in a bucket for months until it is entirely ich free, but it's hard to add a hawkfish before the shrimp, and angels before my clams... etc. If I can TTM my corals and inverts, I could clear out some space in the QTs, since I have 2 dwarf angels and a hawkfish waiting to go into the big tank.

Negative, because corals/inverts only "host" the tomont stage. Which can last up to 72 days (for ich) before releasing all of their theronts/free swimmers.

 

[Daniel@R2R]

Looks like the tank is coming along nicely.

 

[CanadianReefer]

Negative, because corals/inverts only "host" the tomont stage. Which can last up to 72 days (for ich) before releasing all of their theronts/free swimmers.

Darn. They don't make this a simple hobby, do they lol

 

[GEP0934]

Congrats keep posting

 

[revhtree]

Congrats on the new tank!

 

[CanadianReefer]

So I guess the question becomes this: is it better to risk introducing ich to save my clams and shrimp (which are worth more than my fish at this point) or to not take the chance of having ich, but risk my clams and shrimps if introduced after the fish are in the tank. Hmm. Tough choice. My only other option is to leave two angels and a hawkfish in QT for 80 days... They only have a little 10g each, which the hawkfish doesn't seem to care about, but neither angel looks thrilled - especially since I do water changes every 2nd or 3rd day.... Out of curiosity, what would you folks do??

 

[Humblefish]

So I guess the question becomes this: is it better to risk introducing ich to save my clams and shrimp (which are worth more than my fish at this point) or to not take the chance of having ich, but risk my clams and shrimps if introduced after the fish are in the tank. Hmm. Tough choice. My only other option is to leave two angels and a hawkfish in QT for 80 days... They only have a little 10g each, which the hawkfish doesn't seem to care about, but neither angel looks thrilled - especially since I do water changes every 2nd or 3rd day.... Out of curiosity, what would you folks do??

Why not transfer all your rock, corals, inverts into the 300gal? Go fallow in there for 80 days, while treating your fish for ich in their old tanks. You would just need to give all those tanks a good wipe down using a vinegar soaked rag post treatment, to remove any copper residue. I assume they are all going to be broken down anyway, no?

 

[CanadianReefer]

That's a viable option. My only concern is that I have a very heathy blonde naso Tang and purple Tang in QT right now: both will be ready for a tank within a few weeks. Though they are small, they are individually in 20g QT tanks. I'd worry about the health of these tangs if they were couped up for 80 more days. All my QT tanks are either 10 or 20g. I had a 55g bowfront, which would have been perfect, but we broke it down when we decided to downsize a freshwater tank, and now it's their new home. A regrettable decision, as it turns out. The naso seems comfortable, oddly, he likes food and a good petting, but the purple Tang doesn't seem as amused. Do you figure the angels and tangs will fair ok if they were left in QT for another 80 days?

The tank that would need to be treated would have to be split up, since I would have to do TTM on the more gentle species. I have a Mandy and a Ruby Red that need to be taken into account as well, since they need their pods.

 

[Humblefish]

Do you figure the angels and tangs will fair ok if they were left in QT for another 80 days?

I'd feel a lot more comfortable saying "yes" to this if you had a larger QT for the duration. Tangs can be QTd in small tanks for short periods, but they really need a long tank for swimming space. The 55 would have been perfect.

 

[CanadianReefer]

Well that's it, unfortunately... I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place... My hubby would definitely not be ok with me buying another tank. I feel the tangs have done their QT time and need to be in the big tank once it's habitable.

I could possibly move the tangs to the big tank and move the angels to the 20g tanks. At the very least, this could help save my clams. I think the angels would be ok in the 20s. They are pretty small. Perhaps the hawkfish too. The only problem I would run into with this plan is that my purple Tang would be going in sooner than many ofmy other fish, and as small as he is, he's a bit of a bully.

The trials and tribulations... I'll figure it out

The glass for my baffles should be in early next week, so my sump and plumbing should be done by next weekend. Woot woot!!