[abcha0s]

Hi Tony

I'm certainly not an expert on qt, so take my comments with a grain of thought. I have thought a lot about it and have also been trying to figure out how to avoid transferring ich from my old to my new tank.

Edit: That's was supposed to say a grain of salt, but really a grain of thought seems more appropriate

Paul makes some good points. In particular, each fish species has unique tolerances to copper and hyposalinity. The ideal treatment might depend more on the fish than anything else.

If you are only treating ich, I personally would try to go the hyposalinity route (as long as your fish can tolerate it). This also means that you could potentially move some live rock into the qt tank as hypo won't necessarily kill the bacteria. I found many references on WetWebMedia that suggest hyposalinity doesn't always work, but it seems that many aquarists’ have had success.

There's also the Daily Water Change approach which I really like (in theory).

Fish are put into a quarantine/hospital tank and then everyday for two weeks the tank is completely cleaned and a 50% water change is performed. ... This method helps to remove the tomites, tomonts, and theronts from the tank and lessens the chance of reinfection. - Source

When I move my tangs between the two tanks, I am planning to try a combination of these two methods. The idea would be to perform 50% water changes daily using tank water diluted to 1.009 SG. In performing the water change, the bottom of the qt tank is thoroughly vacuumed.

I do believe that ammonia accumulates rapidly in qt without substantial live rock. When I attempted qt in the past, I measured large amounts of ammonia and nitrite. I almost lost my fish, but instead abandoned the qt and subsequently introduced ich into my tank. I knew it was there, I just couldn't sacrifice the fish.

It is because of the requirement for frequent water changes that I think a combination of the hyposalinity and daily water changes is what I will try.

If you’re going to use cleated copper (Cupramine), I don't think there is much point in trying to run any biological filtration. In my experience, and in most of my reading, I think the copper all but destroys the bacterial colonies. Manage your parameters through water changes. Add the copper to the make up water, not the qt tank. As always, stability is the key.

I'd suggest somewhere in the neighborhood of 50% total volume daily for water changes.

Just my thoughts... I'm going to have to attempt this sometime soon as well.

You might also consider adding PraziPro to your qt strategy. Not for ich, but for various other parasites that are not necessarily visible. As the saying goes, most healthy fish can fight off ich. If they are busy fighting off other parasites, I would speculate that they become more susceptible to ich.

One last thought about Ammonia test kits

Q: I'm using Cupramine™ and my ammonia test kit is showing ammonia off the scale. What is going on?
A: Ammonia test kits can not distinguish ammonia from the amine based complex present in Cupramine™ and will therefore give a false high reading for ammonia while using Cupramine™. Our Ammonia Alert™ and MultiTest: Free & Total Ammonia™ test kit do not suffer from this problem as they utilize a gas exchange technology that can distinguish ammonia from amines. - Source

Food for thought...

- Brad