shortcut mary

Good morning Fishlore pals...My computer is still down but my gracious husband is letting me use his. As long as I don't crash it we'll be fine.

Since we are kinda starting from scratch again in setting up the tank, I want to make sure we do it the right way. A few questions please:
1. Should we remove the rough rocks and replace w/smoother river rock?
2. How long until we can add fish again? After water tests are consistent?I know we wait for that, but is there anything else we have/should do? Don't worry friends, we're making sure everyone left is ok. We have schooling fish that have lost almost all in the group i.e. cardinal tetra, glass cat, a couple of rummy nose Don't want to add any stress.
3. Do we sterilize the driftwood that was in the tank?

4. Hospital tank...How do we keep it ready w/out fish in it?

Thanks for all your help! I thank you for attending my "pity party" on Monday. Your support is helping me get through this tough time!!!

COBettaCouple

Hey.. I like smoother rocks and it should be ok to add fish when the tanks cycled. I tend to sterilize everything if there's been illness in a tank.

To keep a hospital tank ready, just keep a sponge filter and maybe some extra substrate in the tank. Then you can just setup the h tank when needed and move the filter and substrate to it. Some meds kill the good bacteria though, so often a h. tank ends up uncycled and just needs daily treatment of prime to help with the toxins.

shortcut mary

Thanks CoBetta! I've been meaning to tell you how much I like your fish memorial slideshow. Nice tribute!

COBettaCouple

Thanks, I need to add our newest Betta, Rocky, to the slideshow.