Equipment needed for coral quarantine?

[AlanM]

I have read lots of threads about fish quarantine and what's needed to keep them in a tank for treatment.  I don't see much about what's needed for a coral quarantine tank.  Seems like you'd need much less because for most corals you're feeding them very little at least while they're in quarantine.  I'd be wanting to reduce the risk of redbugs and AEFW or zoa eating nudis but also fish diseases that have part of their lifecycle on rocks and frag plugs like MV and ich.  I know for those diseases I'd have to not add new frags for the entire fallow period for ich, for instance.  I could also treat the tank with Flatworm exit and interceptor spectrum or just dip everything every few days if there were no inverts.

 

Anyway, I was considering setting one up.  I have a 10 gallon tank, some old MJ powerheads, and an Aqua-C Remora HOB skimmer that I could play with.  I'd buy a D2040 from Richard or something and could drop in some fully cycled and algae free rocks from my current sump.  Other than a heater and some egg-crate is there anything else I'd need?  I'd get a bigger tank than that 10 gallon, but then it would be too tempting to turn it into more of a display frag tank (cough,... Marco, haha).  Is that about it?  Tank/heater/light/movement/fragrack, maybe skimmer, and a water change from time to time?

 

Edited March 4, 2014 by AlanM

[scott711]

that is pretty much it.  However, you want to maintain stability so keeping sps in a smaller tank might be tough. 

[bqq100]

I've been wanting to put together a low maintenance coral only tank (5-10 gal).  My thought was to try to do a system based only on water changes.  Drill a small overflow in the tank and run it straight to a drain.  Then every hour or so use an aqualifter to pump in some fresh SW into the tank (targeting about 50% of the tank size per week).  The fresh SW would have to be somewhat lower than the tank to account for evaporation and would take some time to dial in the right number.  Not sure how well it would work in practice, but I'm pretty sure I'll give it a shot at some point.

[lutz123]

I agree that stability is going to be key if you are adding more delicate species.  The lighting will be challenging in such a small space if you mix coral types with different needs.  It doesn't really provide enough room for shade (or flow difference for that matter).  Chemistry I think will be fine because doing regular water changes should keep parameters okay, as long as detritus is relatively controlled. 

 

I'm not sure about not adding new frags because of a fish parasite risk.  Since rocks and corals don't host these parasites naturally, any risk should be if fish were in the tank too, right?  Anything is possible though.

[sen5241b]

I've been wanting to put together a low maintenance coral only tank (5-10 gal).  My thought was to try to do a system based only on water changes.  Drill a small overflow in the tank and run it straight to a drain.  Then every hour or so use an aqualifter to pump in some fresh SW into the tank (targeting about 50% of the tank size per week).  The fresh SW would have to be somewhat lower than the tank to account for evaporation and would take some time to dial in the right number.  Not sure how well it would work in practice, but I'm pretty sure I'll give it a shot at some point.

 

 

Tried that and I ended up having to do a lot of water changes but then I had a fish in a little 10G.

 

Poor man's ATO:  About once a week, balance a half gallon jug of distilled water on the corner of a tank and poke a tiny hole in the bottom and top. Let water slowly trickle in.

[Almon]

I could be wrong, but I believe the reason you don't see many posts for coral quarantine tanks is because most be people don't quarantine corals. Corals are usually visually inspected, cleaned, and treated immediately by dipping the coral in some type of toxic fluid that will kill everything except the coral. Sometimes it kills the coral too.

 

Does anybody posting (or reading) this thread use (now or in the past) a quarantine tank for corals?

 

I used quarantine tanks for fish, but not for corals.

[JR-Tanked150]

We are qt corals for several weeks before adding to are DT. We also dip and inspect every coral we get prior to the qt.

[monkiboy]

alan, here's a video from mark talking about everything you've asked and thought it'd be helpful. click the "watch on vimeo" link.

 

Edited March 4, 2014 by monkiboy

[monkiboy]

I'm not sure about not adding new frags because of a fish parasite risk.  Since rocks and corals don't host these parasites naturally, any risk should be if fish were in the tank too, right?  Anything is possible though.

right, anything is possible. and while the parasite will harbor in a fish it can reside on anything wet for part of it's lifecycle. anything wet whether it be frags, macro algae, etc needs to be quarantined if you're going to be 100% diligent about avoiding parasites in your tank.

 

I could be wrong, but I believe the reason you don't see many posts for coral quarantine tanks is because most be people don't quarantine corals. Corals are usually visually inspected, cleaned, and treated immediately by dipping the coral in some type of toxic fluid that will kill everything except the coral. Sometimes it kills the coral too.

 

Does anybody posting (or reading) this thread use (now or in the past) a quarantine tank for corals?

 

I used quarantine tanks for fish, but not for corals.

i agree that most people do not quarantine corals. i use a qt system for anything that will be entering my display tank. the problem with dips is that no dip will get everything the first time and sometimes not the third. i've had coral colonies in qt for three weeks after three dips (one dip each week) and found AEFW eggs. that is just a risk i am not willing to take to simply inspect, clean, and dip when the more secure solution is only a bit more work to save a whole lot of heartache.

[AlanM]

Marco, do you set up a coral quarantine for a group of frags you get and then not add anything to it to "break" the quarantine period or do you feel OK with rotating stuff through there after they've been in for a while? 

[YHSublime]

Marco, do you set up a coral quarantine for a group of frags you get and then not add anything to it to "break" the quarantine period or do you feel OK with rotating stuff through there after they've been in for a while?

Alan, I imagine that defeats the purpose of what a qt is. All or nothing. But let's see what Marcos says.

[AlanM]

If it's ich, as I understand it, once the substrate dwelling portion hatches it swims around looking for a host and if it finds none it dies without re-attaching to the rock.  In that case, it may not reset the clock if there are no fish in the tank to host it and advance the lifecycle. In that case, if you're worried about fish diseases, it might not hurt anything to introduce new coral.  If you're worried about coral pests, it could very well reset the clock...  Just seems hard to do since typically corals are not bought in a bunch like that, but rather a frag here and there.

 

Sorry, I don't remember the names, theront, tomont, protomont etc.

[monkiboy]

Marco, do you set up a coral quarantine for a group of frags you get and then not add anything to it to "break" the quarantine period or do you feel OK with rotating stuff through there after they've been in for a while? 

so same protocol as with fish - i place all my colonies or frags in at once into qt and nothing new is introduced until those are cleared and moved out.