quarentine tank questions

[sonycrr]

planning to do a fishless cycle on my 10g quarantine tank.
once cycled can i keep pouring in ammonia to keep the tank cycled?
or is there another way to keep the tank cycled when there are no fish in the tank.

i tried to put an extra sponge filter and extra bag of biomax in my ac in a cycled tank but everytime i move them to my quarantine tank when needed, i never see any nitrate . maybe i didnt let enough bacteria grow on them? =/

 

[Toby_H]

I've always the method you previously used... I keep a spogne filter in a mature tank for the times I need to set up a gt or fry tank. I've never had problems doing this...

When you have done this and didn't see nitrates building up... did you see nitrite or ammonia? Chances are the tank was lightly stocked and stocked for a limited time. Could it be possible that not enough waste was created to be measurable?


But in response to your question... adding ammonia on a near daily basis is an acceptible way to keep a qt or fry tank...

Another approach you may consier is to stock it with guppies, endlers or some other small non aggressive hardy fish that will not stress your new or sick fish that is in qt...

 

[sonycrr]

i saw ammonia build up in the qt tank.
im thinking that i didnt let the sponge or biomax stay long enough in a cycled tank for enough bb to grow on it,been about a month in a cycled tank before moving it to qt tank to treat sick or new fish.

i guess im going to just keep putting in ammonia in the qt tank but also may consider putting other fish in there to keep it cycled

thanks for the info

 

[Toby_H]

I've seen the question asked "how long does it take for new media to become "cycled" when placed in a new tank"... and I've seen people share a wide variety of experience...

There is no short and simple answer to this as there are so many variables at work. My suggestion is, if you are trying to 'mature' or 'cycle' new media, it's best to clean the old media. When you clean the old media you will be removing a small portion of the bacteria which allows the existing bacteria to reproduce and replace it. In this siutation the new media is more likely to become home to the newly "born" bacteria. If the bacterial colony is left relatively undisturbed, bacteria is less likely to spread to the new media.

One option that I've also used is when setting up a qt or fry tank is to pull the old/cycled/mature media out of the mature tank and put it in the new qt/fry tank. Then replace the mature media with new/clean media. A mature tank can easily give away a small percent of it's bacteria without any detectable disruption in it's bio filtration.

It's not a bad idea to play around with approaches using healthy/hardy fish to see which one works best for you. Naturally any fish that needs to be put in a qt tank isn't one you want to subject to stress or contaminents. But you know that already ;-)

 

[sonycrr]

thanks for the abundance of information.
i guess i can cycle the media in the qt tank then move the cycled media in to my main tanks and then move them back to qt tank when necessary.


=D