How to run your new tank without fallow and quarantine, post here for guidance live time, we track your tank out to eight months

[Paul B]

Lukeluke, that rock "looks" fine. I assume you don't use straight tap water so I feel you removed most of the chlorimines. My water used to contain that also.

 

[Lukeluke]

Definitely not tap water. RO/Di.

 

[RipVanWinkle]

Four months old this week, I have had no fish loss, my flame angel had a white spot once and my wrasse was doing some flashing 2-3 weeks ago I ignored both symptoms instead of dumping in meds and they are doing great.
The one problem I do have is there is a camel shrimp loose in here because I’m an idiot and didn’t research, he hasn’t eaten anything successfully but he harrasses my condy nem a lot to the point where it doesn’t look healthy. I’ve been trying to catch him on and off for a long time but I really need to build a trap

 

[brandon429]

Looks excellent and you have been able to control the new tank uglies very well there

 

[salty joe]

I really need to build a trap

A really easy one is to cut the top off a plastic pop bottle and invert the top into the body of the bottle

 

[RipVanWinkle]

A really easy one is to cut the top off a plastic pop bottle and invert the top into the body of the bottle

I will try this, he’s good sized though just as big as the smaller clown, I bet I’ll be dumping fish out of here more than catching shrimp

 

[brandon429]

final bump here is the counter view from the fish disease forum

This thread helps new reefs run without fallow or qt pls post

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/how-to-run-your-new-tank-without-fallow-and-quarantine-post-here-for-guidance-live-time-we-track-your-tank-out-to-eight-months.757418/ Please post new or current reefs there for disease control arrangement help They use methods that don't include fallow or...

www.reef2reef.com

I think this thread is actually harming the hobby with demonstrable fish loss seen daily in the fish disease forum but simply unreported here, the prediction is this: by page twenty, all roses here.

in twenty more pages from the fish disease forum losses will be staggering. A bridge was not made in my opinion regarding opposing claims made here, fish loss due to preventable maladies is making us look bad, it’s wasting animals, it’s harming the hobby simple as that.

 

[Paul B]

as a thought experiment, i believe no fallow no qt can work. probably what this means is that you may lose some or all your fish, but eventually you will be able to have a tank of fish. now even paul should admit in his early days of reefing back in the 70s he lost fish.

Pauls thread in the general forum is 131 pages of no quarantine no fallow posts, but no new threads as a real test, we can get that here.

There's not really skill here imo - it's just like playing Russian roulette.

OMG. This is getting ridiculous. As was said, in the 70s, 1971 to be exact in the US, (Germany started earlier) I, and everyone else (all 3 of us in the hobby then) lost fish. We lost most of them. Then "we" "invented, discovered, came about" the medications and methods to use to eventually end up with clean, disease free, spawning fish.

This was 20 years before those two researchers came out with that Ich Life Cycle chart.

The only other person in the hobby at that time that I knew about who is still alive is Martin Moe. Even the Late (and great) Albert Theil started a few years later.

Yes, people like me and a few others "invented" quarantine, copper and fallow. It isn't something that came about with the invention of computers, instant mashed potatoes and the internet. We always had it and it was a good thing because without those things, and Geezers, all of us would still be keeping fancy guppies.

If it were not for liquid copper there would be no hobby today (we used to use copper pennies)

Those things were good and needed because our tanks were fish only and we took out the dead corals weekly to bleach them and kill any bacteria and algae as thats what we knew then. But we were wrong.

You can see some of those bleached corals here in my tank from about 1979. This is for demonstration purposes only because Brandon will say, I am talking about my tank.



Those tanks were not very healthy even though we could keep the fish alive as there were no real reefs with the correct bacteria.

In the fifty years that passed since then, we found different and better ways, but many people still want to use that fifty year old system and if thats what you want to do, then do that. Many tanks thrive like that but none very long. (5 and 10 years is not very long)

Also almost everyone has the wrong idea about quarantine, medication and fallow. There is a place for those things but it is a short gap, temporary method and IMO, after a tank is set up for a while (I will explain "a while in a minute) those methods should be changed for a much more healthy way to keep fish.

Un natural methods like quarantine, fallow and medication is harmful to fish if you keep up that practice in lieu of a more natural method which virtually all old healthy tanks use. (old is 20, 30 or 50 years)

Most of us do not keep our fish in the sea or a 20,000 gallon tank. We have small volumes of water like 100 gallons which no fish wants to live in so we are limited by that already.

Fish, somewhat like us all want the same thing. To live free, happy and healthy where we have plenty of fresh air, or water and the food that we recognize and like.

In Viet Nam I ate C rations which were little cans of food that were put in the can before I was born. It kept me alive but I was not happy. ;Vomit

I don't want to go into it again as I am getting carpal tunnel syndrome after 5,000 posts and a book so look it up. If you don't like me or what I write, Google "fish health through Gut Bacteria" and find scientific studies. Don't research on these forums or you will get opinions that start with "Playing Russian Roulette" but that will never be by someone with a 30+ year old, healthy tank.

I will just say that medications, all medications either kill or change fish gut biomes. That is what fish health is all about, not your quarantine practices or medications. The fish has no problems eliminating diseases. We are short circuiting their own defenses by these practices which is why so many medicated fish need a different medication after the first one fails.

Do what you want. But it is extremely easy to keep healthy fish and I don't know why we make it so hard.
New tanks, Yes, a disaster and nothing you will do can change that. The reason for that is age.

Bacteria run our tanks, not your bottle of copper, Prizapro or your fallow tank.

Bacteria for whatever reason want to multiply in a natural place with mulm or detritus. Any medication will disrupt that and make our tanks take longer to mature no matter what your test kit reads.

We are adding fish way to early as "Cycled" doesn't mean much. It is just a measure of the ammonia reducing bacteria and the fish don't care to much about that because it's the bacteria inside the fish that keeps it healthy.

Ammonia, nitrate and nitrite is easy to control. But gut bacteria which is basically the immunity of a fish needs to be cultured as it constantly is from the sea. So fish need living bacteria, parasites, viruses, and funguses in the same proportions they get in the sea.
(think fresh or freshly frozen clams or living worms or amphipods)

We fail to give them that which is the reason for a disease forum. Not if you quarantine or not.
(live foods is not the only thing either and that I wrote about ad nauseum)

Tanks age and get healthier only in the absence of medications and with the correct food. Not 100% store bought food as that is frozen to death and will not have all the proper bacteria and will also have no "needed" pathogens.

We call those things pathogens and many of them are, but the fish evolved with them and needs them to stay healthy. Our bodies are covered with parasites and unless we croak, they don't harm us and if we eliminate our stomach bacteria or only have a couple of types of gut bacteria we will die or get any number of diseases which may take decades to kill us.

Now Brandon will say, I only talk about my tank and I didn't mention it once. (well only once) I gave my opinion and if you like you can listen to someone's opinion who has been doing this longer, but you may have to go to Germany.

 

[srobertb]

As someone new to saltwater I hadn't considered gas exchange. (my tank isn't even set up yet)

I personally don't prefer the open top, bright lights in my eyes look of certain tanks, so what would you do if you really wanted a top/canopy/ whatever?
Use fans to move air?

I tend to disagree that fans can’t move air quietly. Cheap fans can not. Using a canopy and adding and venting out the back wall or even the side of the canopy is effective. There are several online companies that make 1-6 fan kits that install very cleanly and have built in thermostats, speed controllers, and digital controllers. You can upgrade the fans easily to higher end brands (like Noctua for instance) and they are near silent…going with 140mm fans will help to push air and do it quietly at lower RPM’s.

 

[RipVanWinkle]

Is there a point to water changes? Nitrates too low to read on my cheap test strips and I’ll sometimes dose seachem reef complete for coral supplements. So what would be the point? I can’t be the only one not doing water changes. I also don’t touch the sand.

 

[brandon429]

its sharp and nice, ride it out till you need to. accessing that open scape and rock set for cleaning wont be hard if needed, accumulations might build up over time but certainly not now.

 

[Lukeluke]

Had to shuck and shred mussles. Have a tub of white wiggly worms. So far... Marine fish keeping is kinda gross. ;Vomit

 

[PeterB113]

I run my tank without fallow and quarantine its been 7mos so far

 

[Lukeluke]

Hey hey. No action here so I thought I'd check in. So far so good in my DT. Did lose a crab from a cleaner pack. Died and the urchin ate it. Bought a new one a couple days ago. Two clowns, a YWG, and a purple firefish. No fish losses so far.

Been feeding LRS, mysis, and mussels I bought fresh,cycling through them each morning. Also tossing in some pellet foods. Then alternating between BBS and white worms in the evening.

I turned my lights on a few weeks ago, so algae is starting to spring up. I've watched the urchin pick up some of it, and I'm on the lookout for a tomini tang to help clean some of it up. But this is "ugly stage" stuff I should just ride out, right? No major changes to get rid of the algae? As I guess would be expected, my nitrate and phosphate level actually dropped between water changes because of the algae.

 

[Saltyreef]

Hey hey. No action here so I thought I'd check in. So far so good in my DT. Did lose a crab from a cleaner pack. Died and the urchin ate it. Bought a new one a couple days ago. Two clowns, a YWG, and a purple firefish. No fish losses so far.

Been feeding LRS, mysis, and mussels I bought fresh,cycling through them each morning. Also tossing in some pellet foods. Then alternating between BBS and white worms in the evening.

I turned my lights on a few weeks ago, so algae is starting to spring up. I've watched the urchin pick up some of it, and I'm on the lookout for a tomini tang to help clean some of it up. But this is "ugly stage" stuff I should just ride out, right? No major changes to get rid of the algae? As I guess would be expected, my nitrate and phosphate level actually dropped between water changes because of the algae.

Thats easy algae to remove by hand. Just keep pulling it out as it gets long enough and sooner or later it should die back while something else out competes it....

 

[Lukeluke]

Thats easy algae to remove by hand. Just keep pulling it out as it gets long enough and sooner or later it should die back while something else out competes it....

I actually kinda like watching it wave around. Despite being "ugly". Maybe I should yank some of it on the next water change though.

 

[MnFish1]

Is there a point to water changes? Nitrates too low to read on my cheap test strips and I’ll sometimes dose seachem reef complete for coral supplements. So what would be the point? I can’t be the only one not doing water changes. I also don’t touch the sand.

I'm not a big fan of IPC tests - the tank looks good. But - eventually things we can't measure are going to build up - and potentially cause problems. Whether thats organics or other elements. Water changes help eliminate organics and other underside elements. An ICP test will help tell if elements (though not organics) are building - and whether a water change is needed. As I said - I prefer not to wait for problems - and an ICP test is more costly than just doing a water change periodically (I'm not religious about it either)

 

[Paul B]

Luke, does this look familiar? I took this off a small Island in Hawaii. Looks natural to me.

 

[Lukeluke]

Luke, does this look familiar? I took this off a small Island in Hawaii. Looks natural to me.

Looks pretty similar! I assumed it was "natural", just didn't want to take any drastic action if it's not really "hurting" anything. I.e. dump in chems or bacteria.

I skipped my last water change this weekend because the algae seems to be managing nitrate/phosphate for me. Phos was actually down to zero as of yesterday. But I think I'll go ahead and do a change this weekend and pull some the green stuff while I'm at it. Might as well take advantage of the free nutrient export, right?

 

[Paul B]

just didn't want to take any drastic action if it's not really "hurting" anything. I.e. dump in chems or bacteria.

Algae is our friend. I change water about 4 times a year and I really don't have to. I think people change way to much water.