Hospital Tank

[Moe]

I am currently treating my 20g tank because one fish has fin rot. Yesterday I was at LFS and he said I should not treat the whole tank because it kills off the good bacteria. Which I knew but I thought I had no choice. He suggested buying a 5g and use it as a hospital tank whenever I need it. I told him that I was afraid to put a sick fish in an uncycled tank. He said that you just fill a hospital tank whenever you need to use meds and change about 50% of the water daily before you add the meds. That way the ammonia and nitrites don't build up and the fish should only be in there for about 10 days during the treatment. He said that is how a lot of experienced fish keepers do it. I really like LFS and this guy (the owner) has never steered my wrong. I don't want to set up a permanent hospital tank so this seems like a good solution but I'm still worried. Does anyone else use an uncycled hospital tank just for medicating sick fish???

 

[Waterloo Kid]

I'm currently using my 'uncycled' hospital tank for fry. You can get away with a quick setup by keeping the filter media that you use in the hospital tank in the main tank when the hospital tank is not required. That way, when you set up the hospital tank for use, you simply fill it with water from the main tank, set up the filter using the filter media (usually the sponge from the filter) that has been stored in the main tank and you have an instantly cycled tank! The filter will already be colonised with all the bacteria that are required and your hospital tank should run pretty smoothly. Just don't expect it to work if you happen to chuck in lots of sick fish, there wont be enough bacteria to cope with all the waste straight away. Don't forget that in the main tank the bacteria will also be in the gravel, on the plants etc. as well as in the filter.
Hope that helps.

WK

 

[Mollymomma]

This is a great question!

I have never had a hospital tank ready & waiting. I have used a 2 gal. filtered tank once as a quick qtank and didn't have any luck unfortunatly the fish died only 2 days later.

I wonder though if when setting up the temp tank if you took some of your gravel from the bigger established tank put it in say a filter bag or pantyhose and laid it in the temp tank if this would help the setup ? Kind of like what other's do when starting a new tank to seed it.

We need Alien Anna to read this. She has an answer for pretty much everything and knows her stuff

Sorry I couldn't be more help

 

[Alien Anna]

If you treat the whole tank there is definitely a risk of killing off some of your beneficial bacteria, but even with methylene blue (notorious for doing this), if you tank is well cycled and you don't over-feed, you won't necessarily have a problem. Plus a lot of meds claim not to affect your beneficial bacteria at all - none of the Interpet or Waterlife treatments I use regularly have caused me any problems at all.

For diseases such as ick, Neon Tetra Disease and some virulent forms of fin-rot, you have no choice but to treat the whole tank because it spreads like wildfire. Also, if you put a fish into a not terribly well-cycled hospital tank, the ammonia and nitrite could easily kill an already weakened fish.

If you use a hospital tank you really need to have the sponge from your sponge filter, or a bundle of filter floss already matured (keep some in the back of your main tank all the time, just in case). Set it up with some water from the main tank and the pre-prepared filter and Bob's your uncle. However, you'll need to do regular water changes and keep a close eye on your parameters, particularly if you have a tank with no gravel, as is recommended for hospital tanks (marbles make a good surface).

 

[CFC]

Before i had multiple set ups and the mrs was stricter about how many i could have set up i used to run a small air powered sponge filter in the main tank in addition to the tanks main filter. If for any reason i had to use the hospital/quarentine/fry tank i could just fill the tank with water from the main tank and transfer the fish and the sponge filter to have a instantly cycled tank.

 

[Moe]

CFC - Good idea I will definitely do that in the future. For now I put the sword tail with fin rot in an uncycled 5 gal. He is going to need a full 10 day antibiotic treatment and I did not want to continue to treat my 20g. I have rams in there and I've read they can be sensitive to meds. I don't want to risk killing my rams to help one swordtail. Also treating the 20G is costing a fortune. It will take 20 tabs, that cost about $17.00. I know this may seem mercenary but I'm going to try the uncycled hospital tank thing. It sounds like it will work. How much ammonia can one fish generate? It has been 24 hours and ammonia is at 0ppm. I plan on doing a large water change today before I add the meds and testing for ammonia frequently. I'll let you all know how it goes.

 

[Lithril]

I've actually got a small interpet filter and I keep the sponges for it in the eheim (admittedly at the bottom for the moment) so if I need a rapid filter I'll just take the sponges out and use them.