dlee9707

basicly i'm just curious how i could keep a hospital tank thats ready to use within a few minutes notice without waiting a month to cycle it. i figure if i stick a small hob in there i could fill the back part with a small handfull of the ceramic from the canister filter, would that be ok to get it going?

how do you guys do it? or do you leave it running all the time, maybe adding a few drops of ammonia a day to keep some bacteria roids in there.

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55 Gallon Tank:
4X yellow lab
Breeding pair of Red Empress
Female OB peacock
S. Fryeri
Syno. Catfish
Blue Batia
Generic Pleco
One Tinfoil Barb (i couldnt get the thing out with a net or anything else, so i guess its there to stay...)

gm333

Right now mine is down, but I kept an hob filter on mine and when I changed the water in the main tank I change the water in the hospital tank, around 30%.

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dlee9707

i mean to keep filter media that has sufficient bacteria quantities. maybe i could just keep it on my main tank and stick it on the hospital tank when i need it.

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55 Gallon Tank:
4X yellow lab
Breeding pair of Red Empress
Female OB peacock
S. Fryeri
Syno. Catfish
Blue Batia
Generic Pleco
One Tinfoil Barb (i couldnt get the thing out with a net or anything else, so i guess its there to stay...)

Tommy Gun

I use a very cheap 10 gallon set up and have three of them. Two of the HOB filters I keep hanging on the back of my main tank until I need them. The only problem with that is after treating a fish in the hospital tank or having a quaranteened fish in there that ends up with some contagous problem, the filter really shouldnt be put back on the main tank again for fear of transmitting all the bad stuff that was just treated for to all the fish.

I also have a couple of filter bags on hand to put substrate from my main tank in to transport bacteria to the hospital tank if need be. I like my hosp/Q-tank to have just a bare glass bottom so the bags help me take it out when I am done. Again though, I dont put it back into the main tank afterwards.

I have also heard some people who use feeder fish or ghost shrimp to keep a tank cycled, but in my mind, it would be just as easy to put some flake food in it every other day or something and just clean it up while doing water changes on the main tank. It certainly something that comes in really handy and as soon as I really needed one, I didnt fully understand how important they are.

fishobsessed

Im starting to set up my hospital tank today how do i jump start the biological filter? Do i take some from my tank (those white disks?)

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65 gal freshwater tank
uv sterilizer
fluval 304 pump filter
2 aereators
heater
gouramis,rainbow,loaches,silverdollars
angelfish,Parrot cichlids,algea eaters,barbs,2,real plants
rest fake.
30 gal saltwater tank
5- 4 striped damsel fish
2 Crabs
5 live rocks
fluval 205
2 aquaclear pumps 30
heater@ 80*
protein skimmer sea clone 100
Uv Sterilizer
30 inch twin tube w/ marine glo- 20 watts
10 gal hospital fwt. rock
whisper hang on filter
heater@80*