how to go about a quarintine?

[alyshawn]

hello friends! im about to put my diamond watchman in a seperate tank to medicate him for ich. i was wondering if he needs a piece of the bio-filter in the QT because I heard the medication will just kill the bactiria anyways. as you can tell im confused about the whole process and this is my first time having to do this so any advice would be greatly appriciated. thanks for taking time to read this!!!

[papaya]

putting some of the bio filter in is a good idea because it will keep water conditions closer to what the fish is used to. it also probably couldn't hurt, but be sure NOT to put it back in the tank when your done, because the medication may still be in it and could harm some of your other fish/coral.

[leebca]

All the details you need to know as well as step-by-step instructions are found here:
A Quarantine Process (step-by-step)

Use a biological filter. As far as curing Marine Ich, again these are your step-by-step instructions for that:
Curing Fish of Marine Ich

If you choose one of the two known cures, the biological filter bacteria will not likely be adversely affected. Sometimes they are, however, but will start up again once they adjust to the salinity or the copper.

[alyshawn]

sorry for being so needy and I appriciate all the good advice!!! I also bought a book so am working on building knowledge. anyways when I was filling the QT with water from the main tank the water level dropped lower than the outside filter could keep sucking up and cycling through so I turned the filter off for the night, this was about eight o'clock, I had to go to work at 4 in the morning so didnt get a chance to mix water and refill the tank till I got home around 3 o'clock so did all this then. Im pretty sure this was a mistake and was wondering if this killed all the benificial bactiria in the bio-filter and I need to start over or if this will be ok? thank you again for the help!!!!

[leebca]

There should be no problem. The bacteria aren't that 'sensitive.' Usually, on the one end of the spectrum, they may go into a metabolic 'strike' and just wait for a better environment. However I don't believe that that short of interruption should be a problem.