- ( Matthew ) Hey everybody. Matthew here.
Your BRS beginner guru coming at you with episode 32 part B
quarantine tanks.
This episode, we are going to build a quarantine tank
using all BRS gear, give you some tips on how to save
money and answer all of those beginner
quarantine tank questions.
That's all I got for you. Let's get right to the video.
So I went ahead and set up a quarantine tank with everything
you can get from bulk reef supply.
It's a little bit expensive. It came out just over $300.
We'll put links to this entire system down below.
So if you just don't want to think about it,
look down below buy everything on the list
and you will be on your way to a quarantine tank.
So the tank we had the Aquamaxx 17.1 gallon tank.
It's low iron glass. It's gorgeous.
And it's definitely overkill.
Remember if you don't go with this one,
which costs about $130,
you're going to save probably more than a hundred dollars by
buying it from your local big box store.
For filtration we have the Seachem Tidal 35
hanging on the back filter.
This is a great size for this system and I like
the Seachem Tidal hang on the back filter
because it actually has an overflow that will remove
the surface skin unlike most hang on the back filters.
For the light we want the Reef Brite 50/50 Luma light 24.
You can go with whatever color configuration you want.
They have completely blue or completely white,
but I think that mix of blue and white will really make the
colors and the fish pop, and not only that,
but it can be used for certain low light corals as well.
This retails for just over $80.
For your heater, we're going with the Eheim Jager 75 watt.
I've probably owned 30 of these in my lifetime.
I've never had one fail and it's a good affordable option
coming in at about 25 bucks.
For your mesh screen, Innovative Marine sells a really
high quality DIY mesh screen kit that will
fit a 24 inch by 24 inch tank. It retails for about $40.
You could also save a little bit of money here
if you go to your ACE hardware or your big box hardware
store and do a DIY kit yourself.
It won't look quite as nice, but it'll work just fine.
And the last two items are just a couple of medications.
I don't recommend going out and buying every medication out
there but why not pick up two that I have seen to work
really well.
The first one is a very, very tiny bottle of Prazi Pro.
This is really good for a lot of external parasites and it
can be used in conjunction with some sort of copper.
I like this Copper Power but you could also go with
Seachem's Cupramine, this is great, especially for ich.
I'm sure there's a lot I'm going to be missing here,
but I'm going to try to answer the most frequently asked
questions about quarantine tanks.
I have found quarantine tanks to be one of the most
confusing topics for beginners and one of the topics they
have the most questions about.
So let's jump right in and with some of the most common ones
that I hear. Can I use reef rock in my quarantine tank?
I personally don't like to because I like to completely
break down and sterilize my quarantine tank in between uses,
but as long as you're okay not using certain antibiotics
or certain things like copper that might get absorbed
into the reef rock, then yeah,
you can go ahead and go with a cycled aquarium.
Then how about reef sand?
Can I put a sandy substrate in my quarantine tank?
There are certain types of livestock, Rasses, sand sifting
gobies and certain kinds of snails that are going
to be much, much happier and feel at home with a sand bed in
your quarantine tank.
But I wouldn't add a sand bed to the entire tank.
Rather I'd get some sort of container.
Sometimes I just use like one of those Pyrex squares and
I'll fill that with sand.
That way after each use, you can remove that sand
and just toss it because if you don't, a sand bed can be a
great place for marine ich to lie dormant.
So you might leave that sand bed in there, think
everything's hunky Dory.
Hunky Dory? Who the heck says hunky Dory anymore?
I don't even know where that came from.
You might think things are hunky Dory.
You put new fish in there.
And then all of a sudden that ich goes through its
life cycle attaches to the fish and wipes them out.
So yeah, you can use it. Don't put it in the entire tank.
Rather put in some sort of container that you can remove and
discard after each use.
Do I need to quarantine inverts such as crabs and snails?
Unfortunately, there's just no easy answer here.
While it's true that most fish diseases can't be
actively carried by inverts, there is still water inside
those invert shells and inside their bodies,
and that could be carrying some sort of fish disease.
So while there is a low chance that they're going to carry
fish disease, it's not no chance.
I do quarantine all of my corals, but that's
because I fear the pests that are going to carry,
not so much the fact that they might be carriers of certain
fish diseases.
If you do decide to quarantine snails and other inverts,
the biggest problem is making sure they have enough food.
So you're going to have to supplement their food with Nori,
with pellets or other things that they're going to find
palatable.
What I like to do is I like to drip acclimate them,
and then I have several buckets of the new tank water,
and I'll take them and I'll dip them from one to the other.
And I figured that's probably good enough.
It may come back to bite me in the long run.
It's definitely no guarantee, but I think that is probably
more precaution than most hobbyists take.
How do I quarantine fish that like to burrow in the sand?
That one's an easy answer. Just get some sort of container,
a piece of Pyrex or some sort of plastic,
fill it with sand and then put that in the tank.
They will feel at home in there. And then when you're done,
you can just discard that stand or sterilize it and then
reuse it.
Should I preventatively treat all new fish with medication?
I really wish I could give you a good answer here.
Some hobbyist do, but most hobbyists don't.
Treating your fish with certain medications can be
super stressful. Just take copper as an example,
copper is poison. When we add copper into a tank,
we're essentially poisoning our fish,
but it works because our fish for the most part can handle a
certain level of poison greater than other parasites.
So while your fish is able to survive that poison a lot of
the parasites aren't going to be able to.
Personally, I've tried it both ways, but currently I've
decided to not preventatively treat my fish.
Does that mean that sometimes my fish gets sick and die?
Yeah, but I've noticed when I've done them both ways,
the death rate from bringing new fish home seems to be about
the same.
So I've just chosen not to add that extra stress into the
process.
And even if you do decide to preventatively treat your fish,
what are you going to treat them for?
Is it going to be Brooklynella?
Is it going to be ich? Is going to be velvet?
Is it going to be bacterial infections?
Is it going to be parasitic infection?
Infection is going to be for fungus? We just don't know.
And we can't pretreat for every single disease.
So you have to pick and choose what diseases you think the
fish might have and go from there.
So as a beginner, I would just recommend to you
don't preventatively treat your fish.
I haven't seen it be super helpful
and it's just going to over-complicate things.
(Matthew laughs)
I was just reading this next question and it make me laugh.
How do I know which medication to use?
And my answer is good luck.
It's almost impossible as a beginner to figure out which is
the right medication to use.
I have my own personal blog and the longest and most
difficult blog I've ever written in my life was fish disease
and medication.
It probably took me over two weeks just to write that one
blog.
And it was so big that I ended up having to break it into
two separate parts.
So let me just say that I don't think that treating
beginner fish is a beginner topic. Like at all.
The only way to properly treat a sick fish is to be able to
successfully identified the disease,
and that's just no easy task.
What does reef safe means?
Reef safe is a medication that will not harm your inverts.
For example, copper is not reef safe.
If you use copper in a tank that also has invertebrates,
those inverts are going to die.
That is oftentimes why you see at your local fish store
the fish kept separate from the inverts because sometimes
the fish tanks are treated with copper preventatively.
And if there were inverts in there, they would just die.
So then what does Biofilter Safe mean?
Well biofilfers safe medications are those medications that
won't harm the beneficial bacteria because if you
think about it, beneficial bacteria, they're bacteria,
so antibiotics are going to kill them,
but there are certain types of antibiotics and right now,
I can't remember. There's gram positive,
there's gram negative and there's broad spectrum,
but there are certain antibiotic medications out there that
can be safely used in low quantities that won't adversely
affect your beneficial bacteria.
The next question I've already answered,
but I'm going to say it again because it's a biggie.
Do I need to cycle my quarantine tank? No you don't.
If you choose to follow the methodology we're doing in this
video, you don't need to cycle your tank.
You will just have to do a lot of water testing and water
changes to remove that ammonia from the tank.
But trust me, there are a lot of hobbyists who
vehemently disagree with me and I wouldn't be surprised
if they put some sort of snarky comment down below actually,
because there are people out there that absolutely think you
need to cycle your quarantine tank.
And it's not that they're wrong, that's just a different
type of quarantine tank.
That's a quarantine tank where you really can't use certain
antibiotics or certain other medications that will damage
the beneficial bacteria or be absorbed into the ceramic
media or live rock.
Do I need to keep all of my gear, my nets, my scrapers,
my gravel backs separate from my display tank?
In an ideal world, the answer is, yes.
You don't want any chance of cross-contamination.
So anything that gets wet in your quarantine tank should
never go into your display tank, but realistically,
a lot of us are going to use that material back and forth.
So a bare minimum what you should do is sterilize
between use. Good ways to sterilize is using a small amount
of bleach and water.
I've also heard of people soaking whatever gear they have in
a five gallon bucket filled with RDI water for 72 hours.
I'm not sure what the best method is going to be.
And honestly, I think in the long run,
it's just so much easier to buy separate gear for each tank.
You're talking probably about a $40 investment rather than
having to sterilize between each use.
Okay everybody we're not done yet. We're not done.
You know, the basics now of how to set up a quarantine tank,
but we haven't even talked about how to quarantine your
fish.
So stick around.
I believe this is episode 32 and episode 35.
We will give you step-by-step instructions on how to
quarantine your fish. And don't forget,
we're going to put links to our BRS quarantine tank set up
below. Next up in episode 33,
we're going to teach you how to choose a healthy fish from
your local fish store as always everybody thank you for
watching. Happy reefing.
Be well. We'll see you next time.
(upbeat pop music)