High Nitrates in Q-Tank

[J_Vee]

I am having a hard time keeping the nitrates down in my Q-Tank. I wanted to add some live rock. I am using a biowheel which I have been Slowly pouring "Bacter Vital" on for 4 days. I am also adding some to the tank water. The tank has been up and running since 3/25/05. I do regular H20 changes and vacuum the gravel weekly. I have been feeding the Bicolored angelfish and scooter Blenny small amounts of food. It is a 12 gallon tank, with the 3 stage filtration including a Biowheel will 5-10 lbs. of live rock be good enough ?Thanks for the help.


Joe

[Max]

Be careful if you do decide to add l.r. What you use in your q.t. tank you can't ever use in a tank that you want to keep inverts in. That being said the l.r. will help with nitrates the thing is though having a 30 gal main tank you probably won't use your q.t. very often. In cases such as that the bacteria in your l.r. will starve and it won't do any good you'll have a cycle everytime you add a fish.
Another idea would be to remove the gravel from the bottom of the tank and run it b.b. Then get just a cheap old sponge filter keep a new sponge in your main tank at all times. When you get a new fish voila instantly cycled filter system ready to go. IMO hospital/q.t. = simple keep it bare bottom for easy cleaning and to avoid build up of toxic chemicals from medication. Just get a few larger pvc pipes or other plastic containers for hiding spots.
Just the way I do it . Not to steal your thread but, it might be sort of cool if everyone else would chime in.
Chris

[FloridaBoy]

All good comments... a few more thoughts here;
1. No LR in a QT; you may need to medicate with copper at some point and so inverts on rock are not good here as copper will kill them.
2. Agreed, simple is best; gravel not required.
3. You could get away with a damsel or clown there as a resident, I hope the angelfish is going to be moved into the display soon? Some merit to keeping a resident fish in QT; forces you to stay on top of parameters, and you never know when you will need a hospital tank. I also like to keep a QT isolated from other tanks with its own biofilter, which isolates from diseases or sudden poisoning that may arise in display(s), etc. but that's just me.
4. Some nitrates in a QT are not a huge problem here IMO; not sure what kind of reading you are getting but may not be cause for concern. The wheel is likley source, water changes should resolve and are easy in this size tank anyway. You're on the right track; many forget the QT is key to success.

[wayne]

I would comment here - I frequently use live rock in QT as otherwise it's tough to get some fish to eat anything. Know that it needs to come out if you use meds though.
2. Agree, no gravel, sand
3. I barely cycle my QT, and I certainly don't give a rats a!!e re: nitrates. I water change to deal with all these issues. Everytime you water change your main tank, use that to water change into QT. Almost anything you want to do to fix nnitrates is going to either be prohibitively expensive or complex or render using meds impossible.

The other advantage of using your changed water to refresh QT is that they become very used upfront to your system parameters