Gina423

I know it is very smart to have quartine tanks, but I do not know much baout them. How big should they be? Filter, heater? gravel, plants, etc? do they have to be fully cycled? how long to keep fish in there?

any advice about quarentine tanks would be hekpful, thanks.

Luniyn

First off, yes it needs to be cycled because you are going to be putting new fish and on occasion sick fish into this tank and having them have to deal with cycling wouldn't be good. Also the new fish need to be in the tank for at least a couple weeks to be sure they don't get sick after a few days. If after 2 weeks they are still happy and healthy then chances are they aren't going to infect your current fish and are ok to move to the main tank. However, when you don't have any fish in the tank, note that you have to keep the tank cycled. Either by using pure ammonia drops or putting a few flakes of food in the tank every 12 hours. This will feed the good bacteria ammonia and keep the process going when there aren't any fish in the tank. It's ok for this tank to be smaller then your main tank and some people even use a 5 or 10 Gal for this purpose, but that would depend on the type of fish you are buying as a larger fish won't be happy in a small tank. Decoration can be sparse (but without fish in there it might be boring to look at, so personal preference here) and should only be fake plants as the last thing you need to worry about in this tank is live plants too. You certainly can have live plants, but that's just one more thing to deal with and if you are putting sick fish in here to medicate them, you then have to worry will this hurt your plants and once you put activated carbon in the filter to remove the meds from the water that will hurt the live plants. Speaking of the filter, yes it is a good idea to have this set up though its possible to have just a airstone in there as well. If it's a permanent tank then the filter method is best, I would only use the airstone method if you are setting up an emergency tank. Heater is dependent on the temperature of your house. The smaller tank is at the mercy of outside temperature changes, so if you house gets cold then you will need a heater. However, if you live in sunnier places then it's optional.

Gina423

thank you very much. i also went to fish lore and read about quarentine tanks there. Thank you somuch, I think I pretty much know what to do!