Uncycled Hospital Tank Question.

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Gardengnomes

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I have a small blood parrot that I had to remove from my tank to a 5 gallon bc it looked like it was dying. It was hiding in the plants, heavy breathing and the other fish started picking at it. Its back fin and side fins look damaged. I added salt, tea tree meds, an air stone and heater to the other tank. The fish after two days looks great. I'm shocked bc it looked minutes away from death when I moved it. Prior to this incident all the fish got along fine. I never saw this fish picked on. Anyway, my question is about water changes and filtration in this hospital tank. The meds say no water changes for 7 days but this tank is not cycled so I don't know how to handle this. I'm picking up a small filter to add to the tank today bc I did not have one on hand. Any advice is welcomed.
 
Take some filter media (sponge or ceramic rings are best, if you have them) from the filter in the main tank (but no more than one third) and put that in a filter in the hospital tank.
 
There are easier ways. They say no water changes, but, imo, you can ignore that. The most important consideration in medicating is making sure the medications gets to the patient. In water dosed medications, they get to the patient simply by being in the water. So there are two key factors in the potential success of the treatment- adequate dose and duration of the treatment. As long as what you do does not affect these things, the level of success should be pretty constant.
 
In plainer English- you can do a water change as long as when you are done the amount of medication in the water is basically unchanged. So, all  you must do is to replace any medication removed. If you do a 50% water change, you have removed 1/2 the medication so you will add a 1/2 dose back into the tank with the new water.
 
This becomes much simpler when the needed water change coincides with dosing. Some meds you may dose daily, some meds you may dose every other or every third day, some just once. If you change water on a day you are supposed to dose, all you have to do is change the water first and then administer the medication.
 
With medications not dosed daily, you may need to fudge a bit. For example, if a medication is done in one single dose and you wait some number of days to change the water at the end of the period, you do not want to add back the same amount of the medication if you do a water change on day 2 vs day 4. And this is where it gets less then scientific. You will have to use your best judgement. Do you want to add back a bit less medication to compensate for the time factor or not.
 
While the last example clearly is not precise, it is likely much less of an issue than the effects of ammonia on a sick fish because one does not change the water. One might argue that it is better to try to use a cycled tank and follow the dosing instructions to the letter. But this may not work if a med is also destroying the bio-filter in the H tank.
 
I have always worked with uncycled H tanks and changed water and compensated with additional dosing to restore the medication levels. But that is me. You will have to decide what you feel will work best for you in light of the specific situation. Bear in mind that when we start treating in an H tank, the first medication we try may not work. So even if it was filter safe, the next medication we need to administer may not be.
 
Finally, consider the cases where you fail and you are not quite sure what the disease/illness was. Good practices indicate you need to sterilize everything in the tank, including the filter and filter media. So in such a case you must kill the filter bacteria anyway.
 
I just checked the hospital tank and the water quality looks good. The ammonia level is at zero. I have been freaking out that this tank was going to do more harm than good. I don't really want to change the water unless I have to bc I am afraid it will cause more stress on the fish. I have only fed the fish once in the three days he has been in the new tank. Does it take a while to get high ammonia levels? The fish is swimming around and seems to be back to his old self. His fins are still look ripped up but I am hoping he is a fast healer.
 
You can change water gently, the fish won't mind. I should have stated earlier that one thing I do in an H tank is to put in some plastic plants which I have for just this purpose. I believe it reduces the potential stress levels for the patient to have something to hide behind. And they can be sterilized with everything else when done with the H tank.
 
Food is not the primary producer of ammonia nor is fish poop. Fish exhale ammonia as the way to get it out of their system. And this is from where the biggest share of fish generated ammonia comes. However, reducing feeding will certainly help.
 

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