Run young DT FALLOW or disinfect & start over?
- Thread starter GGonzo
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Gtinnel
10K Club member
Personally I'd just go fallow. IMO the age of a tank makes a big difference in stability and how easy they are to take care of and I would want to lose the 8 months of maturity.
ariellemermaid
Well-Known Member
Just imagining for myself what disinfecting would look like. Throw away the sand? Bleach the rocks? Thoroughly cleaning every millimeter of the tank and maybe letting it be completely dry for a while, then re-cycling everything. But what if just one cyst survived my cleaning efforts? In the world of science it takes extremely high heat steam/pressure for a minimum period of time to consider something to be completely “sterilized.” I just don’t have the same faith in cleaning methods I would carry out at home. Not to mention the loss of bacterial biodiversity mentioned above.
Between the two options I would definitely go for fallow. The time, effort, energy, and expense of disinfecting and re-cycling seems huge compared to just waiting 76 days and having high confidence that the ich is dead and everything I want in the tank is still alive. Even the 76 days is probably overkill as just one study that I’m aware of found a species of ich releasing up to that time. Trying to clean with disinfectant and getting everything back in the tank quickly seems much more risky to me.
green behind the ears
Community Member
Hi all just want some advice , so I set up a quarantine tank , managed to catch all the fish (one died in the process ) and they are now on day 5 of treatment with Cuprinol , what my question is how should I run the Dt ? Should I switch off protein skimmer etc etc . I’ve got a fleece roller mat and currently I’m feeding a pinch of pellet food as I have hermits cleaner shrimp sand sifting starfish and the usual suspects I have various early stage corals Duncan’s ,Zoas ,hammers birds nest and what not.
green behind the ears
Community Member
I’m still carbon dosing and running roa phos
ariellemermaid
Well-Known Member
I can’t offer experience in this regard but maybe a bump will draw some. So far my reef tanks have been nano’s without skimmers. Now that you’ve removed the biggest source of waste in the tank (fish + feeding), between the skimmer and the carbon dosing I’d just keep an eye on the nitrates. You don’t want to go to zero. I will say though that my invert QT seems to produce a fair amount of nitrate on its own with just corals, crabs, and snails, only feeding a bit of nori that all gets fully consumed. So long as your tank parameters are holding where you want them, I don’t see a problem with the skimmer but I’d keep an eye on things. Making any big change to the tank might require adjustment to your previous routine.
Sorry to hear about the fish loss, hopefully the rest make it!
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