discouraged

Remember when you test the water it is just a snapshot in time and doesn't necessarily mean you had no ammonia spike but regardless any Nitrite is extremely toxic and far worse then ammonia on a fish. The best way to use a QT IME is to have it running/cycled before adding any LS.

 

I agree it would be ideal to have a fully cycled tank up and running unfortunately the wife would kill me lol... How would you keep it cycled without keeping a fish in there all the time and thus defeating the QT aspect of it?

 

Yeah, i second the notion that if you have a quarantine tank that it is cycled and running stable before you put any sick fish in there. Weakened fish and cycling is just going to make things tougher for you.

 

This is the very reason I don't and have never used a QT.IMO using an uncycled tank to QT can be just as dangerous as putting the fish in a cycled stable DT.This is especially true when the size of the QT is very small.Keeping stable parameters can be challenging and counterproductive to acclimating fish.I must qualify these points with the fact I have my LFS quarantine all my fish and I inspect them carefully including witnessing them eat.
P.S. You can keep a tank cycled without the presence of fish by adding small ammounts of fish food periodically or by keeping a fish permanently in the QT.