Since starting reefing about 7 months back I’ve read every thread I could find on QT, copper, cycling, and just about everything else. It seems there’s a bit of a catch 22 when it comes to this topic.
Summary of my take away points combining different threads:
1) Fish die quickly without a biofilter or extremely frequent water changes.
2) Copper damages the biofilter
3) In the presence of copper, no ammonia test can be relied on
So, a QT tank likely has a poor biofilter even with a seeded sponge. Copper damages it to an unknown degree, and you can’t actually measure ammonia accurately with copper yet the fish are supposed to survive those conditions for at least 30 days.
This leads me to my current conundrum. My next QT had a good biofilter and I made it through with some prime and weekly water changes. But on this round I had some sick fish and a bigger fish and ultimately 2 weeks of neoplex/metroplex/furan-2 wiped out my biofilter. After a huge water change and carbon I added a sponge from my rock solid DT (6 months old plus a bags worth of cycled media). Results haven’t been ideal; I’m stuck at the ammonia/nitrite stage with q3 day water changes, but it seems to be improving. Definitely didn’t get an “instant cycled” tank.
I want to start copper as soon as ammonia stays down but I don’t trust this tank, and adding copper could set back biofilter gains. I feel like starting copper without being able to monitor ammonia is risky. Sure dosing prime throughout and picking a random water change interval could work ok, but I definitely don’t want to be doing water changes every few days during copper with all the measurement and redosing headaches.
Any suggestions to deal with this set of contradictory problems?
Note:
Now before anyone suggests the Seachem ammonia badge let me just stop you right there. I have 3. On my first ever QT I tried to fish cycle 2 clowns with Turbostart. Before a week was up, the fish were dead. Ammonia (API) was ~0.25-0.5 and the badge was still solid yellow. I never used Prime so it’s not about bound vs. unbound. (Yes, mistakes were made- I should have used Prime and should have tested daily with a proper kit and not trusted the badge). After that I decided to cycle my empty DT with ammonia directly in addition to the 2 QT’s. I would add ammonia up to 1.0 and the badges would barely start to change from yellow, certainly nowhere near the 0.5 high alert blue color. No prime had ever touched the tanks. Suffice it to say, I consider the badges a decoration, not something to keep fish alive.
Summary of my take away points combining different threads:
1) Fish die quickly without a biofilter or extremely frequent water changes.
2) Copper damages the biofilter
3) In the presence of copper, no ammonia test can be relied on
So, a QT tank likely has a poor biofilter even with a seeded sponge. Copper damages it to an unknown degree, and you can’t actually measure ammonia accurately with copper yet the fish are supposed to survive those conditions for at least 30 days.
This leads me to my current conundrum. My next QT had a good biofilter and I made it through with some prime and weekly water changes. But on this round I had some sick fish and a bigger fish and ultimately 2 weeks of neoplex/metroplex/furan-2 wiped out my biofilter. After a huge water change and carbon I added a sponge from my rock solid DT (6 months old plus a bags worth of cycled media). Results haven’t been ideal; I’m stuck at the ammonia/nitrite stage with q3 day water changes, but it seems to be improving. Definitely didn’t get an “instant cycled” tank.
I want to start copper as soon as ammonia stays down but I don’t trust this tank, and adding copper could set back biofilter gains. I feel like starting copper without being able to monitor ammonia is risky. Sure dosing prime throughout and picking a random water change interval could work ok, but I definitely don’t want to be doing water changes every few days during copper with all the measurement and redosing headaches.
Any suggestions to deal with this set of contradictory problems?
Note:
Now before anyone suggests the Seachem ammonia badge let me just stop you right there. I have 3. On my first ever QT I tried to fish cycle 2 clowns with Turbostart. Before a week was up, the fish were dead. Ammonia (API) was ~0.25-0.5 and the badge was still solid yellow. I never used Prime so it’s not about bound vs. unbound. (Yes, mistakes were made- I should have used Prime and should have tested daily with a proper kit and not trusted the badge). After that I decided to cycle my empty DT with ammonia directly in addition to the 2 QT’s. I would add ammonia up to 1.0 and the badges would barely start to change from yellow, certainly nowhere near the 0.5 high alert blue color. No prime had ever touched the tanks. Suffice it to say, I consider the badges a decoration, not something to keep fish alive.