Crazy New Critters in my LR

most would remove the fish from the main tank to the QT and not the other way around since I know I do not want medication in my main tank at all.

You're doing more harm taking all your stuff out and moving it so you can medicate your main tank than just taking the fish out and medicating them and leaving everything.

Fish are for the most part pretty hardy compared to small marine organisms and inverts that live on your live rock and sand. Sponges for instance will usually die as soon as they hit the air, so just by taking your rock out you probably caused some die off.

Another point is that you never want medications in your main tank no matter what it says on it, "invert safe" or not.

One of the main goals in a saltwater tank is STABILITY. By removing rock, sand, inverts and whatever else, and them moving it back, you are hurting the stability of your system.

BTW, the centipede looking creature was probably a bristleworm, the little lice looking things are some kind of pods.

futurecanadian said:

I didnt want to medicate my main tank, but I felt that the fish should be in the larger tank to make sure they were comfortable. After all I bought a great medicine that would treat parasites without harming most inverts.

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comfort would come 2nd, IMO. If I was that worried about comfort, I'd buy a tank I felt would work for the 6-8 weeks and have it sitting on my floor. I don't trust "safe for inverts" medicines. It's just not something I'm willing to try. Plus, QT tank (which is your main tank) is advised to have no substrate as various medications would be absorbed by the substrate/rocks thus reducing its effectiveness and potentially remaining in the system and still killing off those things you removed.

No live rock in QT unless yuo will not be putting any medications with the LR, LR doesn't need to be used to cycle a tank at all. you can cycle it as you would with other methods - shrimp if planning ahead or keep a new filter media thing in your main tank to be used. But you're right, nothing fancy here, it's just a temporary stop. You don't medicate a fish that's not sick, actually have read doing so may reduce a fish's immunity and can make them more susceptible to disease. Ideally you know ahead of time you are going to get fish, get QT tank set up and keep fish in QT for the time allotted. I'm religiously sticking to 6+ weeks on all new arrival regardless of how healthy the fish is. Using an uncycled tank just emans you need to be prepared for many water changes and to check ammonia especially, potentially a couple times a day.

My QT is pretty much a 20g long with a heater, powerhead, pvc pipe and glass cover to keep my cats out. I'll be filling it and starting the cycle today knowing i'll be getting about 5 fish in. I won't be ordering the fish until my QT goes through it's cycle.

futurecanadian said:

Lesson Learned... okay let me get this straight. When I add a new fish I am supposed to put them in my QT tank for 30 days or so first right? So shouldnt my QT tank be properly cycled with LR and all of that Jazz to ensure that the fish stays healthy? OR should the QT tank be a copper treated tank with nothing special going on in it?

I really want to do this all correctly. As I mentioned I had set up the 12G and now it is in its cycle. I will be able to do some serious water changes/filter cleanings and hopefully have my main tank medication free very soon. but when my inverts go back to it I will have my QT tank left empty. What do I need to do to make it a proper QT tank?

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this might help: http://www.aquariacentral.com/forums/blog.php?b=129