Acceptable QT setup?

So I'm losing my ich battle and I'm tired of screwing with it, I'm pulling the survivors and putting them into a couple of spare ten gallon tanks I am setting up for them.

Setup 1 -- I have my magnum 350 that was running in my DT with all the chemical media removed from it, only the filter sleeve. I am retiring it from the DT and replacing it with a Fluval (supplemental filtration only). Granted, a 350 is certainly overkill on a 10 gal tank, but at the same time I figured the sleeve inside it should contain quite a bit of the cycling bacteria I'd need to keep the tank from cycling on me too badly.

Setup 2 -- I will be using my old penguin 125 HOB filter w/ a bio-wheel and a piece of the filter sponge I have had sitting in the sump on my DT for a few days. My hope is that the sponge from the DT will have enough beneficial bacteria that it will quickly pupulate the bio-wheel and the levels should stay fairly steady.

I am going to put seachem stability into both to hopefully boost the bio filter.

Does anyone thing these setups are somehow fatally flawed? I know the standard setup is the sponge filter, but I always thought that was because they were just the cheapest means to an end. Is there any reason why the two I have going wouldn't accomplish the same thing?

 

I would deff love to give you some help/pointers/encuragement but can you give me/us a little more info about your tank and situation? When did your issues start?

 

I have 130 gal holdover setup. It's new to my house but had been operable for several years prior to me taking it. Ich showed up about 4 weeks ago. I picked up a great looking hippo w/ no signs of anything; in a foolish noob move I didn't have a QT setup and just did a standard acclimation/introduction. That was the source of the outbreak and the first place I noticed it. By the timeI could catch my Hippo tang it was too late and she died. I thought the rest of my fish were going to be healthy enough to hold it off and that would be the end of it. Unfortunately, a very pretty volitan lion I had (big ol' sucker) died about a week later as a result of a poorly timed outbreak (evidently it really hit hard while I was gone for a week over christmas).

The lion proceeded to rot in the tank for a day or 2, throw my levels all out of whack and clearly negatively impact the tank. The combination of losing a very cool lion (personable, ate anything frozen...lot of fun) and then seeing my other fish in such rough shape spun me into a pretty heightened state of pissed off.

So I'm taking a flame angel, Coral beauty, fox-face, dragon banded goby and neon damsel out and letting the tank go fallow. Simply put - this isn't an issue I am inclined to put up with. I'm not going to sit around in fear should I ever get a Naso tang or something else similarly prone to ich. I have a light enough livestock list right now that I can handle removing them.

I figured I'd put the flame angel and the fox-face in 1 ten gallon, the goby, damsel and coral beauty in the other. That seems to spread the bio-load the best as the two biggest fish end up in one, the 3 smallest in the other.

 

My main concern would be the amount of flow being output from the canister into a 10 gal. QT's should be relatively docile with a nice place for a fish to hide.

My QT = 10gal tank, heater, hob filter for light circulation with a sponge gooped with scrapings from inside the DT's filter (there's your bacteria), and a cheap cement rock.

We changed 1/3 of the the water in the QT with water from the DT every day

 

Now wouldn't that be a problem with ich?

If my DT has free-swimming ich in it, wouldn't bringing water in from the DT to the QT continue to re-introduce ich to my QT?

 

Not if the QT water is medicated. The ich won't have a chance to attach.


I used the same method to treat brooklynella with my clowns

 

At what point would you stop moving water from the DT? I'm only going to treat for a couple of weeks, until I get a handle on the Ich.

At that point they'd go from a hospital tanks to mere holding tanks for the next 6 weeks while the tank is fallow. At that point would you just keep bringing in fresh saltwater? The QT would no longer be medicated and the fish should be ich free at that point.

I also have the magnum dialed down a bit (just turned the ball valves closed somewhat). It doesn't seem to have stuff stirred up in the QT so I think it's striking an appropriate balance.

 

I'd start moving fresh saltwater into the holding/qt tanks as soon as you're confident that the bio filtration is up in full swing. Good to hear about toning down that Mag