Discouraged reefer wannabe

[JayM]

there are 2 schools of thought on that.

I leave mine 'down', and set it up with water from my tank as necessary.....

some leave one running all the time, but I already spend enough on my tanks

 

[JohnK]

there are 2 schools of thought on that.

I leave mine 'down', and set it up with water from my tank as necessary.....

some leave one running all the time, but I already spend enough on my tanks

Similar approach here for the QT tank.

I keep it running all the time, but if I'm planning on bringing something new in, I'll do a good sized water change on my main system and use the old water to do about a %75 water change on the QT system. This way the QT stays somewhat biologically active, but it also gets all it's parameters corrected right before the new addition.

Note, this is much less work than it sounds. The QT is downhill from the display, so I siphion most of the water out of the QT to buckets, then siphion water from the display to the QT until the QT is full again, then pump new water into the display.

 

[Shenlung]

+1 on the patience..... I learned that lesson the hard way, by almost killing $80 worth of corals. If it hadn't been for Ronnie taking them and housing them until I finished my cycle....they wouldn't be in my tank now

If I could go back and do it over again, I would've waited to the end of my cycle, then waited another 2 or 3 weeks before putting in my first corals....I've been battling algae for over 2 months now because I didn't wait those extra 2 weeks.

Bottom line: Wait as long as necessary, then wait some more, you'll thank yourself for it later.

 

[afboundguy]

My wife says she does in the morning, but I dont see anything. So they must be there. I am going to wait, because as many different stories I get for every question, the one thing I keep hearing is patients, When I eventually do a Qt tank do I start that now and always leave it set up, or do you set it up and maintain it before you purchase new fish?

I keep mine set up all the time...

I keep it running all the time, but if I'm planning on bringing something new in, I'll do a good sized water change on my main system and use the old water to do about a %75 water change on the QT system. This way the QT stays somewhat biologically active, but it also gets all it's parameters corrected right before the new addition.

Pretty much the same thing I do... I use the water change water from the DT and put it in the QT...

 

[dcforester1]

Thanks for the input I really appreciate it. Im going to meeting today to get some rock.
Derek