How To Keep A Quarantine Tank Cycled. Size would depend on available room and what you're quarantining. I hope i never have to learn if.
How do you keep bacteria alive in a quarantine tank? Fill the remaining 25% with newly made tank water. Personally, i don't keep a cycled tank for isolation as msjinkzd pointed out.
Another Way To Do This Is To Cycle The Quarantine Tank The Traditional Way Which Would Take About A Week On The Low End (Using Bacteria In A Bottle) And Maybe 4 Weeks On The High End.
You sort of spin it up when you need to quarantine something by using cycled filter media from your existing tank. The fish then get to go through their time in the tank, eventually they are either healthy and getting to join a main tank, or they didn't make it. You do not want anything to hide out in the gravel and infect the next fish that is placed in the aquarium.
A Glass Or Acrylic Bottom Is Fine.
You’ll need to plan ahead for this to work, though! Acclimatise the newly purchased fish as you normally would, and then leave the fish in the quarantine tank for a period of 2 to 4 weeks. Or put the media back in the filter in the cycled tank where you got it.
This Is More Expensive Than #2, But Better For The Fish.
Place the new fish in a bucket or small plastic container and use a drip acclimator to drip water from the quarantine tank into the bucket. I may drain some water from another tank, but most of the time i am hitting quarantined fish with potent drugs that are going to kill the bacteria anyhow. How do you keep the quarantine/treatment tank cycled?
What Can You Do For Biological Filtration?
Most water changes for quarantine will do the job (especially in ttm). After using the quarantine tank, you can put some starter fish like gobies or some shrimps and snails inside to keep it cycled. If you're doing quarantine for a disease you'll probably also be doing large water changes as part of the medication so that would help keep the nitrogen nonsense down.
Does A Quarantine Tank Need To Be Cycled?
Then move that filter to the qt tank when you get new fish. When the other tank has cycled simply put the media from that tank's filter into the one you have fish in. It depends on the tank and the filter.