Old tank into a QT tank ?

[chaoslite]

I am selling of some of my juvenile discus and that will leave me with an empty tank. If I wanted to use this tank as a QT tank, would I have to scrap the whole tank, cycled media and all and start the cycling process all over again so not to contaminate any new fish I purchase?

All advice s really appreciated!
Mishka

[Eddie]

I am selling of some of my juvenile discus and that will leave me with an empty tank. If I wanted to use this tank as a QT tank, would I have to scrap the whole tank, cycled media and all and start the cycling process all over again so not to contaminate any new fish I purchase?

All advice s really appreciated!
Mishka

Yes, you will need to start from scratch and sterilize everything.

[chaoslite]

Grrrrrrrrrrrr. I was afraid of that. Thanks Eddie!:D

Mishka

[Eddie]

Grrrrrrrrrrrr. I was afraid of that. Thanks Eddie!:D

Mishka


Anytime ;) Trust me, its well worth it. It'll save a ton of heart/head ache in the future.

[Jhhnn]

Yes, you will need to start from scratch and sterilize everything.

I don't really understand your POV, Eddie. I realize that you weathered some extraordinary difficulties in the past that I'll hopefully never experience, but I don't understand the need to protect new fish from what they'll ultimately be exposed to anyway.

Not in situations where a given hobbyist has long established disease free systems and very good water quality. Yeh, sure, if you're moving fish in and out rather quickly, it's a different story- something might get past you, be waiting for new arrivals. If the hobbyist has recurring issues they haven't eliminated it's probably also wise to start fresh.

I'll admit my experience level is pretty low, but I have no qualms about seeding new tanks for new arrivals with filter material from my now long established healthy systems. That's pretty infrequent, admittedly, but I know what I have wrt my known healthy systems... And, at this point, I figure that even if I were to start a new tank from scratch that the vast majority of bacteria colonizing it would likely have become airborne from my existing tanks, anyway.

Just my opinion and POV, seemingly shared by others who have some measure of success... And I intend to be extremely cautious wrt the origin of any new arrivals, having witnessed a few horror stories second hand on this forum.

[Keith Perkins]

One advantage of having a clean QT tank as Eddie suggests is that you minimize the additional things a newly moved and netted fish has to deal with at the receiving end. Many fish are weakened by this process and it's better that they recover from the netting and move before they have to deal with any low grade bugs you may have in your tanks that your established fish have immunity to.

[Eddie]

I don't really understand your POV, Eddie. I realize that you weathered some extraordinary difficulties in the past that I'll hopefully never experience, but I don't understand the need to protect new fish from what they'll ultimately be exposed to anyway.

Not in situations where a given hobbyist has long established disease free systems and very good water quality. Yeh, sure, if you're moving fish in and out rather quickly, it's a different story- something might get past you, be waiting for new arrivals. If the hobbyist has recurring issues they haven't eliminated it's probably also wise to start fresh.

I'll admit my experience level is pretty low, but I have no qualms about seeding new tanks for new arrivals with filter material from my now long established healthy systems. That's pretty infrequent, admittedly, but I know what I have wrt my known healthy systems... And, at this point, I figure that even if I were to start a new tank from scratch that the vast majority of bacteria colonizing it would likely have become airborne from my existing tanks, anyway.

Just my opinion and POV, seemingly shared by others who have some measure of success... And I intend to be extremely cautious wrt the origin of any new arrivals, having witnessed a few horror stories second hand on this forum.


LOL, what! There are rarely any disease free systems. And she asked for advice. That was mine and if you see otherwise, just give yours Jhhnn, without bringing my name into it.

[Ed13]

I'm with Eddie here. To me, it reduces the unknown factors and it gives the new fish a chance to recover and gain strength to fight off whatever your current fish have.

[Jhhnn]

Meh. I didn't say pathogen-free, I said healthy. A huge variety of unicellular organisms can become pathogenic to fish whose immune systems are compromised by poor conditions, and exist to some degree or another in all aquaria, I suspect.

If I start a tank from scratch, cycle it with ammonia, the colonizing microorganisms ultimately living there come from somewhere. If there are other aquaria in the home, the environment, they're the likely source for all bacteria in subsequent tanks, regardless of the beneficial or deletorious aspects of those bacteria. We literally pump them into the air we breathe with bubbles breaking at the surface. I suspect that many protozoans can travel the same way.

It's not like forcing the bacteria to become airborne to travel from tank to tank acts as a filter, at all. Hell, the unfortunate outbreaks of plague experienced by some members only confirm that.

Metazoans, like flukes and capillaria, won't travel that way, to my limited knowledge, but their existence in hobbyists' long established aquaria would be obvious, because they never really exist at a relatively benign level like potentially pathogenic bacteria. The aquarium environment is entirely too conducive for their propagation. Population growth is explosive because of the easy availability of hosts. Either they're a problem or they're not there at all in aquaria that have had stable fish populations for a period of several months, imo, provided no live or poorly processed foods have been introduced.

If the hobbyist has experienced such outbreaks in the recent past, then the health of that system is suspect until enough time passes for them to be sure it's really, really gone entirely. Obviously, it's not a suitable donor of biofilter material until such determination can be made.

I've done my best to take a scientific POV wrt these things, and that's what works for me, so far, anyway. I won't hesitate to seed the new home of some of Dale's Solomons (when and if they become available) with material from my RSxAF tank, for example. They've been in my home in the same aquarium since June of 2009, grown like weeds, and have never shown the slightest indication of any illness whatsoever.