Importance of "extra" tank

[Sandyjo]

So...my hubby is supportive of my mts... mostly. Well, last night he finally understands my devotion to having that extra tank and filter.... Came home to a puddle and about 4 gallons in my 5 gallon crystal black shrimp/green neon tetra tank. AAAAHHH. Found leak but it is super low on the tank...so decided to just upgrade them from the 5 gallon to a 10 that I had recently used as qt for some new fish about a month ago that had no issues. I just left it running with some plants and snails... so moved everything in 5 to buckets... Drained the10, added new substrate(was about time for new anyways) put in most of the water, plants and rock, and filter from the 5 gallon, drip acclimated everyone.  keeping the other filter in a bucket of it's tank water today and go get a new 10 gallon to start for extra/qt tonight.  Will do regular water change on the 10/shrimp next week unless get a spike and fill it up slowly over a couple of weeks. Hopefully no losses🤞🤞....❤️🐟🐠🦐🐡🌱 

[Odd Duck]

@Sandyjo Nicely done!  Always have an extra tank ready!

I fell like I’m skating on the edge of danger right now, because I have fish in most of my tanks (except in my shrimp tanks).  I have 2 quarantine tanks with fish right now.  I ordered some fish from Aqua Huna on Wednesday (too late for shipment last week).  Then I came across deals from 2 different people that were closing down tanks and had species I wanted.

Sooooo, I got the first group of local fish (and bought some more nanos from the lfs) on one day, then I got the Aqua Huna fish and second local deal on the same day.  All the fish I got the same day went into the same tank x 2 separate days/tanks.  All nano fish - chilis, Kubotais, embers, otos, and a few CBD’s) and all will be going into the same tank once out of QT.

I already had well seasoned filters in my normal QT and had a filter getting seasoned for the new QT (just transferred it one row up in my 10G bank), plus the big bunch of plants that I got with the second local deal (they needed to be quarantined, too, lol) went right in there, too.  I also pulled 4 big mystery snails out of the normal QT to make certain that filter wouldn’t be overloaded since it doesn’t have live plants.  I haven’t had to treat anything, yet, in my QT tank (hope I didn’t just jinx myself).

Luckily parameters are all good on both tanks, everybody is eating and looking good so far, but I have no wiggle room right now.  😳😬 Well, I have a plant only tank I could use if I *really* needed.  And a 6G cube that’s just barely finished cycling but hasn’t been challenge tested yet.  MTS is real!

Edited July 16, 2021 by Odd Duck