Hello from Seattle
- Thread starter matthias_bln
- Start date
- Tagged users None
Zylberschtein's is literally a block and a half from our place and we do have a weekly "bread subscription" with them as we supported their Kickstarter. The bread however is not that great, so we just pick two pastries every week..
I'll check out the FB group and regarding the QT setup I do already have the tanks. I'll think through the process, however I am wondering what would still be alive in terms of pests if I run copper or medication in the fish tank? I absolutely plan on complete water changes after every batch of fish, however I don't fully understand the sterilizing part. My thinking was that (a) it's probably not needed if the fish didn't show any signs of disease and (b) that the tank is probably pretty clean after killing everything with meds in case there was an issue?
I guess (b) is the part I should re-think and for (a) it's more of an extra careful approach?
I was not planning on ever taking down the coral quarantine tank (and maybe having a fish in there all the time) and not taking down the fish quarantine for quite some time neither.
Lot's to learn here! Thanks!
Not sure what your qt philosophy and plan is but there are a couple ways that people approach qt. Some people use it as a way to screen out obviously unhealthy and sick fish and just accept that diseases will lie dormant in the introduced fish. Others treat everything as that eliminates dormant diseases but it’s a lot more work and it’s harder on the fish. You have enough equipment to do either just kind of depends on how much work you want to put into qt and how much money you plan to invest into exotic fish.
As to why clean tanks in between, for fish you can decrease stress and copper exposure as well as qt duration .
For corals different dips treat different pests, some pests lay eggs as well that survive dips and need to hatch out therefore you need a multi stage dip over the course of a couple weeks to be sure. You need to tank transfer to a clean tank after dip since you can only kill adults on the coral itself and you need to break the hatch cycle.
You can of course take shortcuts if you accept increased risk. If you choose your suppliers well you will be more likely get clean coral, but with the amount of money you are putting into this I’m thinking you aren’t looking for shortcuts in stocking
Rick Mathew
Valuable Member
Partner Member 2024
Excellence Award
Article Contributor
Hospitality Award
Ocala Reef Club Member
Hi Reef2Reefers!
My name is Matthias. While originally from Germany, I'm living on the west coast since about a decade and I don't see that change anytime soon.
Growing up, we had lots of freshwater fish, but we never dabbled with saltwater. When my daughter got a freshwater tank this year, I started redoing large parts of it to make it work for me as a thing to stare at daily ;-) .. However, my wife one day simply said that I "should get my own tank and not ruin my daughter's tank", so here I am. She should have known better what this means!
I spent the better part of the last months researching, but am now finally getting serious. Looking forward to discovering all the magical things I will do terribly wrong and then sharing them here for your amusement (and maybe even for some help!)
I started my build thread over here
Thanks!
Matthias
You are in for a Great Adventure Matthias..…WELCOME to the R2R Family…
Explore…Learn…Share
SuncrestReef
That Apex guy
You might also want to look into PNWMAS which has members in Oregon & Washington, with monthly meetings, raffles, and occasional frag swaps. We also have a Member Map showing fellow reefers and coral/fish shops on a map. See http://www.pnwmas.org
Welcome to R2R!
reef lover
It's a reef thing....
Excellence Award
Reef Tank 365
Hudson Valley Reef Keepers
Hospitality Award
518 Reefers
My Tank Thread
Welcome to r2r and the salt life !
OP
OP
matthias_bln
Active Member
Hi hotdrop!
Thanks a bunch for your thoughts! In my mind I'm moving between "just screening until I see things" and "I will always go through medicating". I definitely do not want to take shortcuts and if it means I would even need a third clean tank, so be it.
What's still blurry to me is what kind of pests I could expect from corals and whether those pests would live on in the tank and potentially "jump" to other corals. I watched a video (I think FishOfHex) which talked about how each coral should be quarantined for 78 days, however I can add more corals anytime and for each coral that timeline would be separate.
I guess I know that two tanks for (1) fish and (2) invertebrates/coral. At some point I simply made the call that I need to get started vs. spending more and more time on listening to various opinions
.. Usually I'm more the "learn while doing" type.
OP
OP
matthias_bln
Active Member
Hi Kevin,
I went there and liked a store a ton. When talking to the folks working there though they were very (very!) skeptical of my plan to do automated water changes. Not sure where this was coming from as it seems to be an accepted fact that AWC works.. Coral and fish looked great though, maybe just not the gadget-lovers I would love to socialize with
Similar threads
