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Re: Keeping Quarantine Tank Filter Media in a Planted Tank
George Booth wrote:
Sorry, I don't know anything about trickle filters. However, I did recently
set up a quarantine tank, adding fish the same day, with no problems. Mine
is a 10-gal without gravel. On the bottom, I just have polished river rocks
to make cleaning easy. I also have plastic plants in there (UGH!, but hey,
it's a quarantine tank). I run another 10-gal (planted) tank with an
AquaClear Mini filter. That filter has two sponges (no charcoal) instead of
the usual one sponge plus charcoal. When I set up the quarantine tank, I
took one of the sponges out of the established AquaClear, and put it into
the filter of the quarantine tank. Then I added a new sponge to each filter
so that they each have two. I believe I added a dozen small fish, and I
tested the water every day. Never had an ammonia problem. After a few
days, I read very small amounts of NitrIte, did daily 25% water changes for
a few days, and after that didn't see any more NitrIte or anything. I
didn't have any problems in the tank from which I exchanged an established
sponge with a new one either.
I also recently set up a 20-gal tank, into which I simply squeezed a sponge
from an established filter (yuck!), plus a capful of household ammonia
daily. It took only 2 days for ammonia levels to drop and start reading
very high levels nitrIte, and I kept adding a capful of ammonia on a daily
basis until the nitrIte levels dropped (which took a couple of weeks).
Gitte
<<<<<<Since we don't get new fish all that often, we normally don't have an
active quarantine tank. We have a 29 g tank in storage
that we use when the need arises but it needs a filter seeded with bacteria
to
function. My plan was to keep a bag of Eheim media (Ehfistuffofsomekind) in
the
sump of a trickle filter. When needed, the media would be put in a 2213
canister
to run the quarantine tank.
We tried that recently and it didn't seem to work. After two days, we
noticed
ammonia building up in the quarantine tank. We've resorted to frequent
emergency
water changes and replaced the media with bioballs from one of the trickle
filters. Luckily, the quarantinees are doing fine but our self-image of
"expert
aquarists" has taken a beating. >>>>>>