Quarantine

"This is a copulation of some of my own info, experience along with some that is easily found on the internet." I don't claim to be the author of all this information just part of it.

Quarantine, Quarantine, Did I mention Quarantine?

Red bugs, nudibrachs, flatworms, crabs, pistol shrimp, Aliens, mantis shrimp, Bristle worms, a giant worm that eats clams, Welks, bristleworms and sea spiders. I’m probably leaving a few things out but you get my point. So why do we spend all this money and time and just plop an organism right into our most prized possession our aquarium. Maybe we are the gambling type or like living on the edge but I’m here to tell you that it has to stop. I see it on a daily basis.

“ Do you have a Quarantine tank?” and 99% of the time the answer is a puzzled “no”. (My percentages might be off since I have not use any type of statistical analysis to come up with my numbers.) So my goal is to have us all pest free. So we can feel reasonably safe that we are not passing anything to each other or introducing something from any place else. Maybe I might even save you some money.

Quarantine System For Corals

A quarantine system can be one small aquarium or multiple tanks but one is better than none. The general rule of thumb is a quarantine system should be about 10 percent of the cost and size of your main system.

Parts List

Aquarium 10-20 gallons

Heater

Thermometer (digital w/high low alarm)

Small filter (hang on the back, sponge or canister)

Water pump

Lights

U.V. sterilizer

Maybe a protein skimmer in some situations

Bare Bottomed

PVC

Egg crating

Oh, don’t forget a trap!!!

The quarantine (QT) should last a minimum of 30 days.

To set up the QT just use water out of your main display. You can keep a sponge filter in your sump, transfer it to your QT when the need arises. This will maintain a healthy colony of the benifical bacteria preventing any unwanted ammonia or nitrite spikes.

Once the QT is up and running the photoperiod should mimic the main display that the organism is eventually going to end up in. All other parameters calcium, phosphate, Alk. and specific gravity should be similar.

Water changes:

Should be preformed daily. With a small gravel vac or a small diameter hose 1/2” or smaller. Vacuum the bottom of the QT removing all debris this will help siphon out any unwanted pests, seen and unseen. The amount is dependent on the situation or the medication being used. On average 10-20% if you are using water from your main display it can be up to 100%. With pre-mixed not more than 50% at any one time. A large water change could reduce the beneficial bacteria population and cause a spike in ammonia or nitrite.

Don’t forget to get the temperature and specific gravity of the new water to match the QT system.

Example Schedule

1^st 24 hours w/c at 1hour and 12 hours.

24-72 hours w/c every 12 hours.

3^rd –28^th day w/c every 24 hours.

Plus two days for good measure, completing the 30 day QT.

Lighting

Most QT systems lighting will not be as intense as the main tank. Close is good. If it is as bright or brighter there might be a need for some screening. Keep on the photoperiod as the main display.

(Sometimes it is necessary to give up some color for the long term health of the organism. The color can be back in a coral in just a few weeks in the main display.) *Remember it’s not brown it’s “chocolate.”

Traps

Keep a trap in the QT on a continuous basis. Be mindful that the food in the trap should be changed out regularly. Don’t let it foul the water or your newly prized “uber rare LE” frag will be lost.

Aquascaping

A platform made from PVC pipe and egg crate work the best for most applications. You can find it all at Friedman Brothers. Remember shop local.

Bare bottom.

Unwanted pests are easier to see.

Water volume is easier to calculate.

Less organisms to add to the bio-load the better.

The rule of 6 - if multiple coral frags are in one system keep at laest 6 inches in all directions between each coral. Same species are safe near each other. (alleopathy)

If you introduce a new coral to an existing QT system with corals the clock turns back to day 1.

Tips

Remove any and all plugs, rocks from corals before putting in the QT system. Little critters love to hide out in the cracks and crevices.

Don’t attach freshly fraged corals to plug or rock. Give the coral time to heal.

Keep QT system separate from your main system.

Do not mix equipment from system to system. (Algae pads, hoses, nets, ect.)

Sterilize everything that comes out of the QT 1/2 oz bleach per gallon for at least 5 min. Declor (Sodium Thyoslfate) and rinse in hot water for 10 min. Let dry.

After the QT is over break down the system clean and sterilize everything.

Keep a log.

Post your experiences on-line.

Remember to share your results with other hobbyists.

Preventatives, Dips and Drugs.

Melafix

Prazi-pro

Flatworm exit

Aptasia control

Interceptor

Iodine (lugol’s solution)

Tropic Marin pro coral dip

Medication removal

Water changes. “Dilution is the solution to pollution.”

GAC-Granulated Activated Carbon

Poly filter

Chemi-pure

Protein Skimming

This Last Section I got straight off a web page that does not exist any more. It probably is posted some where else too.

The Red Bug Treatment

*******Disclaimer*******

If you use this medication it is at your own risk. No one but yourself is responsible for your actions with this medication. Please read carefully and follow the directions. This medication will most likely kill off all crustaceans in your aquarium.

If you use this medication it is at your own risk. No one but yourself is responsible for your actions with this medication.

------------------

The medication is a DOG heartworm medication called Interceptor, it is only available from a veterinarian with a prescription. The tablets used in the initial treatments were for large dogs, 51-100lbs. These tablets are just under 1 gram each and contain 23mg of Milbemycin Oxime, the rest of it is a lovely smelling beef flavor. This chemical is active against Nematodes (Heartworms in dogs) and select arthropods (some types of Mange in dogs). Luckily, our red bugs are one of those select arthropods. The tablets come 6 to a box.

Here is the official information from Novartis on the medication.

http://www.ah.novartis.com/products/en/cab/interceptor.shtml

Refer to this thread and read the whole thing before you begin the treatment.

http://reefs.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=43945

The dosage used in an aquarium to kill redbugs is 25mg (0.025 grams) per 10 gallons of actual tank water. That is 25mg of the entire tablet. Each tablet in the pack of 6 will treat about 380 gallons. The tablets are ground with a mortar and pestle into a fine powder.

Do you’re very best to calculate your actual water volume. Take into consideration your sump, oversized plumbing and things like that. All of the initial tests were done with the estimated volume of live rock and live sand subtracted from the total gallons. You need to make sure that every part of the system that’s capable of holding water is treated. This means your refugium, the water inside your calcium reactor, the water inside your skimmer while it is not foaming. It’s easier to calculate in a bare bottom system.

Measure out the Interceptor on a very accurate scale that is capable of reading down to 0.001 grams. Remember, the dosage is 0.025grams per 10 gallons. For safety’s sake get as close as you possibly can. It has been pointed out that it may not be necessary to get down to the 1/1000th of a gram point when we are guessing on the actual water volume. This is an excellent point, however, since we are pretty much guessing our water volume, we should do our very best to make sure that we treat that guess accurately. We don’t want to over treat an over estimate.

Before adding the medication to your tank, turn off your skimmer (water needs to run through it, but you do not want it producing any bubbles. Remove any mechanical filtration if present. Remove any carbon if present. Turn off UV sterilizers and ozone generators.

Remove any shrimp or crabs that you want to save. They will have to stay out of the system for the duration of the treatment. Remember, that when you add them back to your tank, there is a slight chance that you will re-introduce the red bugs to your tank.

The medication is dissolved into some aquarium water (it is not easily soluble, you will have to stir for a while) and spread evenly across the surface of the water. Your tank should remain perfectly clear and look very normal the entire time. The bugs hang on well into the 4th and 5th hour of the treatment, don’t be alarmed. Many of the bugs will hang on for days even after they are dead.

If anything goes wrong during treatment perform a water change ASAP and add a large amount of carbon to your system.

After 6 hours, a 25% MINIMUM water change is performed and as much activated carbon as you can fit should be added to the tank. Normally for general maintenance most tanks it is about 1 cup per 100 gallons. For SPS systems it is a 1/2cup per 100 gallons. So doubling or even tripling it to remove medication is the way to go. In the initial tests, crustaceans that were reintroduced to a tank after a 25% water change and carbon were unaffected by the medication.

24 hours later the water should be changed again and the carbon replaced.

There is no maximum for the water changes or carbon, the more you do the better.

The treatment needs to be performed a MINIMUM of 3 times. We know it kills the bugs, but we don’t know enough about their lifecycle to determine if it kills them at every stage of their life. We have to assume that all of the most of the adults are killed in the first treatment. The goal of the second treatment is to clean up any left over adults, and any juveniles that have hatched out of eggs that might have been unaffected. The third treatment is a just in case treatment, its goal is to get any bugs that could have possibly survived the first two. I know that three treatments sounds scary, after the first one you will feel much more comfortable with it though.

The frequency of the treatment: Depending on infestation. I have been done 2 treatments 24 hours apart every 7 days. I will repeat this 4 times for a total of 8 treatments. For a light infestation, 3 treatments every twenty four hours usually does the trick.

The medication seems to be fairly safe, it is best to err on the side of caution and treat several times. Pretend its an antibiotic, if your going to use it once, make sure you do the whole treatment process at least 3 times!!!

A Low Tech System

About eight months ago I decided to set up a low tech reef tank. Not a "getto" reef but one that has the basic elements of the traditional reef tank without all the bells and whistles. Live Rock (Tongan Branch and some Fiji rock), 100 lbs of Carib-sea aragamax sand, a sump with a Little Giant pump to recirculate water, two 175 watt 20,000k xm bulbs, 4x32 watt actinics, and nothing else. NO SKIMMER. I am using kalkwasser additions for my make up water. The Tank is a 150 gallon plexiglass tank with an overflow which runs from front to back on the right side of the tank. The tank is at least 15 years old and I had to buff the scratches and dried coraline algae off which took about 10 hours.

After going through the normal break in period brown diatoms to a little red slime I have reached the point of nirvana an algae magnet once a week. Well at least that is what I call my nirvana. How about you?

I have a breeding pair of Ocellaris clowns. I had them in another tank and moved them to the 150 and about a week later the female layed eggs. They have had that same ritual every two weeks for the last six months. And when I have the time and the patience I promise I will raise the fry up to healthy clowns that I can give to my friends.

The tank has five species of soft corals Cladiella spp., Sarcophyton sp., green Sinularia sp., Capinella sp. and green Nephthya sp. Also some red mushrooms Discosoma sp. and one purple and red Rhodactis sp. I have never seen this combination of color in a mushroom coralmorph before. I'll try to post a picture.

I am not going to bore you with my water chemistry stats. But they are with in all the generally accepted levels. And seem to stay that way as long as I do my monthly water changes and kalkwasser additions.

So if your looking for a simple and easy reef tank I recommend low tech soft coral reef tank.

Aquarium,

Lights,

Live rock,

Araganite sand,

Sump,

Return pump,

Saltwater,

A few animals,

and you are set.

The Northcoast Reefers Should Be Renamed The Northcoast Beer Drinkers

Last Week I spoke at The Northcoast Reefers meeting at The Russian River Brewery in Santa Rosa. It was a Monday night football night and there still was a good turn out. My talk was on reef aquarium books and magazines. It is not the most interesting topic but i think it is one that is over looked by many hobbyists. Books and periodicals like magazines and newsletters are great sources of information. Unlike the Internet (which you and I are both using at this moment) where there is so much information you can't tell if what you are reading is accurate on any of these sites and forums. You never know who is making the claim. On most sites with you should be skeptical even on my blog DO NOT EVER BELIEVE ANYTHING I WRITE ON THIS BLOG OR WHAT YOU READ ON THE INTERNET without checking out the sources yourself. If I make any claims I will provide sources.

Where was I ?... Oh ya books at the brewery. I wanted to bring a can of PVC glue and have everyone take a sniff so they could enjoy the talk just a little bit more. But judging from the feedback from everyone I didn't need it, or maybe it was all that beer ? I can't remember.

Books and magazine are great resources. I like to keep them around as references. Say I see this creature crawling up the glass of my reef tank and it is waving at me I know that I can always run over to my book shelf and pull out Anthony Calfo's Reef Invertebrates book and without fail he will have a picture and a brief description of this waving creature. The Charles Veron book helps me most at my work. We get these long lists of available corals from our wholesaler and it never fails that there are some corals that we are not sure what they are and most of the time I can find it in the Veron book.

Anyway I want to thank the Northcoast Reefers for putting up with me and hopefully I can do it again in the near future.

Keep on Reefin'

A Must See Event

I just found out that on October 14th Steve Tyree is going to speak at the next Bay area reefers meeting on coral propagation as a business. If you don't who steve is or whar he does check out his web site:

www.dynamicecomorphology.com

I will definately be attending maybe a few of us can car pool the 14th is a saturday and it starts at 1pm and the meeting is in hayward. For directions and more info go to www.barereefers.org
I am really looking forward to this the last time saw steve talk was I think back in 1996 at the San francisco aquarium society meeting i'm not sure. Check out Steve's web site it is great.

Keep on reefin'

I Love The Smell Of Skimate In The Morning

I was given this over sized Euro-Reef RC-500 by my boss at Caesars. It just did not fit right on the 300 gallon reef. So I took it home. It's an external model. But I am going to put in a sump. I have had a couple of these lg. external skimmers leak from the seals around the pump. I'm not going to let that happen again. I have used a number euro-reefs skimmers and love the ease of the plug and play design it's great. My favorite euro-reef model is their smallest it is the RS-80 it is rated to only +/- 80 gallons. But it will out work anything that is comparable to its size.
The last time I was impressed with a skimmer was back in 1984 when I bought my first Sanders skimmer. It was 30" tall and had two large lime wood airstones, a Dynamaster piston pump to run it. I remember thinking that it couldn't get better than this. Oh how time fly's when your messing around with your reef tank. If you have opinions on skimmer brands or anything else feel free to post a comment.

Keep on Reefin'
James

More Rants

I has been a while since I have posted anything it is amazing how life can just be so crazy. Now since everything has calmed down I am going to get back to business.
I wanted to remained everyone that the next Northcoast Reefers Club meeting is on Oct 9th at the Russian River Brewery on 4th st. In Santa Rosa at 7pm. I am going to give a talk on the variety of media that is at our disposal to learn as much as we can about reefkeeping. And how to wade through the B.S. that is posted all over the internet from the wantabe's on many of the chat forums to the guy's at your local fish store. By the way don't even believe the info that I post here go out and do your own research and then decide if you can deem it reliable. I am also going to bring a few speices of macro-algae to share. It should be a fun night.

Open Sharing of Information

Yesterday, I had an interesting conversation with a long time friend who shall stay anonymous. He has been keeping reef tanks for well over 10 years and is now dealing in rare marine fish. He told me that he was finished with having people over to see his tanks because they just want to know where he got a certain fish or coral. Trying to find out his sources, and just pumping him for information about his techniques on reef keeping.
I respect his views but I feel that he is so wrong, communication between hobbyists is crucial. Of course he would not be where he is without other hobbyists sharing information with him.
So, I wonder were would the hobby be without the sharing of ideas anecdotal, scientific or just plain crazy ones.
Even though I have a background in marine biology most of my practical hands on info has come from talking to other aquarists and by trial and error with my own tanks and passing on what works and doesn't work.

I curious to find out what people think about this subject.

Keep on Reefin'

James

New Reef Club in Sonoma County

There is some very exiting news out of the Northbay. A new and I think the only reef club has formed called The North Coast Reefers. There has been a few meetings, one about every two months. It is my understanding the group is going to start meeting once a month. If you want to subscribe to their newsletter here is the link

http://lists.sonic.net/mailman/listinfo/northcoastreefers

The next meeting is March 10th at 7pm directions to the location is in the newsletter.
Hope to see you there.

I was at www.reefkeeping.com and I noticed that one one of there articles they had a pod cast about the article. It turns out there is a web site that is pod casting information on reef tanks it is really great! www.talkingreef.com I encourage everyone to check it out.

Welcome reef geeks!
Most of the discussion will be about reef aquariums. But I may touch on many other aspects of the aquarium hobby from African Cichlids to Amano planted aquariums but I will mainly focus on the reef keeping aspect of the hobby.
I have been keeping aquariums for most of the thirty seven years that I have been walking and swimming on this wonderful blue orb we call Earth. I have kept most every type of fish at one time or another. And have tried every concievable method of fish keeping from reverse undergravel to the Ing method.
But this does not prevent me from learning new things everyday, that is what has kept me going for so long in this hobby.

My hope is to share Ideas and thoughts and get feedback from you the reader to create a dialog that will help us all become more aware of what we are thinking and doing in the aquarium hobby.