My fish have ich, well the tangs do anyway but I plan to quarantine all fish as per the instructions on the great threads posted...dont worry I have read them all. However i have a clarification question.
I did not seed a sponge for the filter for the biological filtering to happen so I am setting up a new hospital tank as we speak. I set it up with 5 gal new RO/DI saltwater and 5 gal from the DT. I added some chaeto that was in the sump. It is small, only 10 gallon however it will have to do for now...housing a yellow tang (3 inches), blue tang (2 inches), two clowns (3 inch total) a mandarin and a goby.
So my first question,
1) do I need to wait for the bare bottom Hospital tank to cycle? This may take too long as I am feel I should be treating the fish ASAP. I put some mysis shrimp in the tank and left it in there for three days now. I am getting some ammonia reading of .25 ppm (mg/L). So I am concerned about dropping my fish into the tank but I want to treat them now....can I treat them now or do I have to wait until Ammonia is 0 ppm?
2) Quarantining a Mandarin, what will they eat since the tank will not have any pods for it to eat? What do most do in this situation? Buy pods from the fish store and add them to the tank? Or drop an algae screen in the tank every week to drop pods into the tank (will this repopulate the parasites though)?
Sorry for the flurry of question but I think they are good ones that are not explicitly answered in the threads.
I did not seed a sponge for the filter for the biological filtering to happen so I am setting up a new hospital tank as we speak. I set it up with 5 gal new RO/DI saltwater and 5 gal from the DT. I added some chaeto that was in the sump. It is small, only 10 gallon however it will have to do for now...housing a yellow tang (3 inches), blue tang (2 inches), two clowns (3 inch total) a mandarin and a goby.
So my first question,
1) do I need to wait for the bare bottom Hospital tank to cycle? This may take too long as I am feel I should be treating the fish ASAP. I put some mysis shrimp in the tank and left it in there for three days now. I am getting some ammonia reading of .25 ppm (mg/L). So I am concerned about dropping my fish into the tank but I want to treat them now....can I treat them now or do I have to wait until Ammonia is 0 ppm?
2) Quarantining a Mandarin, what will they eat since the tank will not have any pods for it to eat? What do most do in this situation? Buy pods from the fish store and add them to the tank? Or drop an algae screen in the tank every week to drop pods into the tank (will this repopulate the parasites though)?
Sorry for the flurry of question but I think they are good ones that are not explicitly answered in the threads.