Few questions?????

[Stefnmike]

Ok...I have a 55g FOWLR. I have been dealing with the wonderful ICK problem. I set up a qt for the last 2 fish I had. One percula and one coral beauty. I did the hyposalinity, but the Coral Beauty never seemed to get better...after the ICK was gone it looked like his fin was slowly disappearing. Once I noticed his fin, the next day he died. Anyway, the percua never had Ick, but I took him back to the LFS before he died. I have been letting my main tank be fish free for 8 wks, just to be safe and make sure the ICK is gone.

I now have no fish. I cleaned out my 10g qt and put fresh RO water in it and made sure the salinity was normal. I will now qt ALL new fish before I put them in my main tank. My question is, do I have to check anything other than my salinity right now before I add the fish to qt? Or will all the nitrate, ph and so on come after the fish is added?

My other question is...I am going to do what my LFS calls a "community tank" Can anyone give me a list of non-aggressive fish?

THANK YOU!

[marshalrckman]

How long has your tank been set up?How long was it up before you added fish?What kind of filtration do you have?
Do you have any corals or inverts in your tank?Any live rock?
You need to have all your water perams checked-Especially before adding anymore fish-!Do a major water change around 25% would be good-to stay on the safe side.
I like community tanks myself-you can have more color and movement that way! Some good non aggressive fish would be several species of clowns-cant mix clown species though-Gobies and blennies are verey calm-They also help with algea and pests witch could lead to ICK.Maybe a yellow tang.Fairy basselets always look good in a big tank.Some wrasses.Dwarf angles are usually calm-like the pigmey angel or lemon peel.The coral beuty and species such as that prefer a tank that has been set-up for 6 or more months and require 35 or lbs. of LR.Dragonets are vereycalm but you have to have alot of LR and the tank has to be mature.

[specsgirl]

I would say if your QT tank is bare without sand or rock then you're safe to add fish there. If there is rock or sand then you need to monitor your params as you don't want to stress your fish anymore than you need to.

[TranZ]

Another suggestion on QT is use your main tank water in QT.. that way your QT tank is cycled. and always check the parameters of ur QT...maybe every 3 days...and do water change (depends on how many fish) 1 or 2 times a week. QT sometimes will do more harm than good if not maintain right. the water will go bad fast because most QT has a small water volume.