Fish Quarantine Without Filter

Hi!

I need to quarantine a fish but I have not had a change to fully cycle it yet.

If I transfer substrate, water, and spare heater from old tank, and put it in my new tank... can I put fish in without a filter so long as I do extra water changes?

Thanks!

 

I would at least have a sponge filter in the QT. What kind of fish are we talking about? Some fish will be alright with just and airstone running the break up the surface of water. A Betta fits this description.

If you move all you plan on moving and add a sponge filter to it you should be good to go although it would be better to also move some of the filter media as well from your cycled tank as that is where most of the bacteria lives.

 

In theory you could do a QT w/o a filter. As sponge filter would work. But if you don’t have anything or even throwing in extra media into the tank you would need to do daily water changes to reduce the ammonia.

 

I would at least have a sponge filter in the QT. What kind of fish are we talking about? Some fish will be alright with just and airstone running the break up the surface of water. A Betta fits this description.

If you move all you plan on moving and add a sponge filter to it you should be good to go although it would be better to also move some of the filter media as well from your cycled tank as that is where most of the bacteria lives.

Ok here's my big question on this.... ...

I have a double carbon filter with my HOB aqueon. HOW do you transfer a PORTION of this media to another tank for it to work? If I were transferring to another HOB, I'd just put one of them right in the new HOB with a new filter correct (i.e., one old filter + one new filter...)

However, If I'm transferring from my HOB to a sponge... can I just take a little bit of my carbon filter and attach it somehow to the sponge?

If so, can someone shine light on the process? (How much media, how to attach, etc etc)

Thank you!

 

Since you have a dual cartridge filter you can take one of them out and replace it. Cut the fiber off of the cartridge and wrap that fiber around the sponge. It can be held in place with rubber bands.

Only do this if your existing tank is well established though. As long as the tank you are taking the media from has a strong cycle removing and replacing one of the cartridges shouldn't be a problem.