QT/Hospital Setups For Large Tanks

aggieoil11 · Sep 17, 2019

My wife and i are building a new home with a fish room to accomodate a 350 gallon display tank. While working through the planning process, there was one question I haven't been able to answer by perusing the build threads on this forum - How do folks with large display tanks handle the QT/Hospital requirements? I'm assuming with the larger tanks the quarantine tanks scale up in number or size, but I'm curious how specifically folks with fish rooms handle it.

Peach02 · Sep 18, 2019

I havnt got a fish room personally but quarentene tanks don’t need to scale to the display tank, as long as the fish being quarentened is happy in that space for the short period of time it’s a good quarentene tank. Eg it’s wrong but I’ve seen a unicorn tang in observation in a 10-20L cube and it recovered well

S2G · Sep 19, 2019

It depends on the size of fish and what you're doing. Medicating you want a small tank. Quarantine observation I use a 40b with fish up to 8" and 20 long for smaller. If they come from the same system I'll put them together if not they get separate tanks. I usually only run 1-2 tanks at a time along with the display just due to the time I have available.

This includes inverts. When I first started back I kept an eel solo in a 20L and like 5 fish in a 40b. Once 2 months went by I released the eel then cleaned that tank to put inverts in. Then I released the others cleaned that tank and put another fish in it. The process just continues until you're stocked up. Get your common peaceful fish first all at once that way you can add a big group to your display in 2 months to scratch the itch. Then start chipping away at you're heavy hitters. No quarantine is quicker but you're risking a lot of money in livestock if you infect your tank.

Here's a beauty in observation right now. 6 weeks left

aggieoil11 · Sep 19, 2019

Thanks very much for that reply - that makes a lot of sense. Any particular reason you went with 1 40g and 1 20g rather than two 40g? Was that a space consideration or more for accommodating the smaller fish?

S2G · Sep 20, 2019

aggieoil11 said:
Thanks very much for that reply - that makes a lot of sense. Any particular reason you went with 1 40g and 1 20g rather than two 40g? Was that a space consideration or more for accommodating the smaller fish?

Just so I can get the food to the fish easier and keep a closer eye on them. It's mainly for flight risks and timid fish.

foxt · Sep 20, 2019

aggieoil11 said:
Thanks very much for that reply - that makes a lot of sense. Any particular reason you went with 1 40g and 1 20g rather than two 40g? Was that a space consideration or more for accommodating the smaller fish?

I do something similar to S2G. I keep a 40b running all the time so that it can be a QT for new arrivals ( mostly corals these days, but when I ramped up stocking my 220 it was fish). I did not treat prophylactically, just observed. If I did need to treat a fish, I would set up a 20l as a treatment tank, and sterilize the 40b and restart it for use as an observation tank. I keep a lot of rock in my 200g sump, and seed the 40b from there as needed. Overtime I have collected several of the 40b and 20l tanks (Petco sales), along with HOB filters and heaters for them. I have a large basement, so I have a lot of room for all of this....