How To: Hospital Tank

Alright, it looks like I need a hospital tank in a big way. My clown died of ich last week and my starry blenny isn't looking too good. Right now they're in a 10gal with some corals, just something to hold me over until my 75 is set up. What do I need to do to convert this to a hospital tank and if I did this would I kill my corals in the process? If he dies I'm not getting another fish until I have a seperate hospital/quarantine tank set up

 

A 'hospital' tank is nothing more than a separate tank used for treating sick fish. As far as your corals go, they may or may not be harmed based upon the treatment you choose to perform. Lots of medications are reef safe, but other options (such as copper dosing) will kill inverts.

If you can get another tank running with a heater (and maybe an airstone), that would be a good place to put your fish that have come down with ick. Then you can treat them without having to worry about your corals.

If getting another tank running isn't an option, you might want to look into treatment options that you can perform w/o harming your corals. Doing a FW dip on the fish in question should help to remove the parasites.

 

Also getting a hospital tank as small that you can for the fish you have will be cheaper for you to treat the fish. Treating a 5 or 10gal will be much cheaper then treating a larger tank also the heater and other equipment will be cheaper for you to buy for a smaller tank

 

Okay, so how do I do a FW dip? I assume it's not like the iodine dip I did for my new corals?

 

Read here:

How To Give Fish a Freshwater Dip or Bath

 

For Ich dose with garlic well the food and get a two part system helped me cure my ich and in the 10 gallon which is what I used to house my ich infested fish hyposalitate. If that is the right spelling.

 

As an update, I lost him too. Went to the LFS and he said it could be a chemical that was introduced into the system and because it was only ten gallons it just wasn't enough dilution. This makes perfect sense because A) I remember reaching my hand in the tank to spot feed and thinking "Oh crap, I wonder if my cologne will do anything?" and B) seeing a rainbow slick along the surface about a week ago. So for now I'm going to let my carbon clean it. I may or may not get another fish for it. I'm perfectly happy with my corals and they love the attenion they get. Each one gets spot fed, Duncans and Sun daily and Ricordea and Zoa weekly. Thanks for the replies but I'm still really wary on the whole FW dip thing. It just goes against all common sense and I'd think that the stress of dropping a SW fish into FW would outweigh any benefits possibly gained. Maybe I'll get a chromis and try it. $6 Experiment fish lol.