Hello my name is Bill and I am new to the site. However not new to the hobby. I have been in the saltwater/reefing hobby for 4 years now. I never quarantined anything other than a freshwater dip to remove flukes from any of my fish. I also had LPS corals and after 4 years it finally caught up with me. I had an outbreak of aiptasia infestation from a coral I introduced into my 150 gallon DT about a year ago. I tried all the chemical ways of ridding them from my tank for a year and could not get aiptasia free. I also tried adding filefish, peppermint shrimp, six line wrasse, and finally a copper band. Unfortunately, the copper band showed signs of velvet two days into the DT. I believe he was incredibly stressed as my current fish stock were all very aggressive when eating and the velvet showed itself. with a furry. Within 2 days 80% of my fish had velvet as well. I tried treating my afflicted fish in six 20 gallon hospital tanks and immediately started copper power. Unfortunately, I lost almost every fish aside from my clowns, a blue throat trigger, a blood shrimp, a sea urchin, and a skunk shrimp. I lost about $3k of fish and all my corals. I tore the tank down and bleached everything including my live rock and all my equipment. I started the tank up again about 3 months ago via a fishless sterile tank approach. I transported my remaining fish once treated for 40 days at 2.4ppm Copper Power and so far, things are going well. I learned my lesson the hard way and nothing will go into my DT unless observed and/or treated in my hospital tanks for a month. I read and learned a lot from reading threads from Humble Fish. My question to the group for consideration is whether I treat my new fish additions as if they have a disease with copper or should I just observe and watch for any diseases? I recently put black mollies which are brackish water fish in my hospital tanks to be the canary in the coal mine per Humble Fish's recommendation. He points out that if my new saltwater fish addition has a disease, the mollies have no immunity to it and will show signs of the new fish's disease very quickly. He does this as well as treating with copper for a month at therapeutic levels. I also realize that if I treat copper prophylactically, I run the risk of losing my new fish from the stress of the copper while in quarantine. Any thoughts would be welcomed.
Bill
Bill
