Brass bottom treatment

[Kendiverdown]

Good day folks,

I have a question about treating marine ich. Has anyone heard of the brass bottom method? Supposedly there was a study done where they treated ich by laying brass sheet on the bottom of the bare QT tank. According to this article I read.

6 Tested Saltwater Ich Treatments to Save Your Marine Fish

Did you recently add the perfect fish to your aquarium, just to find it covered in white dots a couple of days later? Fish with ich. Learning how to properly treat a saltwater Ich outbreak

aquanswers.com

Reads. That brass is 70% copper 30% zinc (roughly) and kills the ich when they fall off the fish on to the brass. Supposedly this is less stressful on the fish?
Any thoughts? Recommendations?
I am new to the hobby. 90days. I just bought and in the process of setting up hospital tank. Was just wondering if this is worth a shot. Or should I just go with copper treatments which has been proven already?
thank you!

 

[Gp!]

You're better off buying a Hannah checker and dosing a verifiable amount of copper that is known to work.

 

[davidcalgary29]

Good day folks,

I have a question about treating marine ich. Has anyone heard of the brass bottom method? Supposedly there was a study done where they treated ich by laying brass sheet on the bottom of the bare QT tank. According to this article I read.

6 Tested Saltwater Ich Treatments to Save Your Marine Fish

Did you recently add the perfect fish to your aquarium, just to find it covered in white dots a couple of days later? Fish with ich. Learning how to properly treat a saltwater Ich outbreak

aquanswers.com

Reads. That brass is 70% copper 30% zinc (roughly) and kills the ich when they fall off the fish on to the brass. Supposedly this is less stressful on the fish?
Any thoughts? Recommendations?
I am new to the hobby. 90days. I just bought and in the process of setting up hospital tank. Was just wondering if this is worth a shot. Or should I just go with copper treatments which has been proven already?
thank you!

It's an interesting study. I have, however, a couple of questions that arise from assumptions made in this study, such as:

Since the protomonts and tomonts attach to the bottoms of the aquaculture tanks,

We know that this isn't the case with all tomonts, which can also attach to aquarium glass, snail shells, or instruments, among other things. The study doesn't appear to have taken that into account.

In addition, it states that seawater had a salinity of "29% to 31%". Does that mean that they went hypo in the tanks at 29% of 35ppt, or that SG was 1.029 to 1.031 (which would seem to be unusual), or that it was 29 to 31ppt? If these tanks were hyposaline, how would they determine efficacy of copper sheeting in normal aquarium salinity levels?

How long did they run the study? What are the long-term effects? I couldn't determine that from the paper. The paper seemed to conclude that a high number of tomonts were eliminated from this process, but I can't extrapolate from that a finding that all tomonts were eliminated.

These fish appear to have been newly infected at "a non-lethal rate". How did they control that? And would the results differ with fish that are more heavily-infected?

I'd be curious to see how inverts might be affected by copper sheeting.

I can just see the posts now: "see? I told you we should put pennies in all of our tanks!" Maybe this will finally convince people that putting treaure chests in our builds, with actual treasure in them, is a good thing.

EDIT: Looks like there's already been a longer discussion about this here.

 

[Jay Hemdal]

You need to read the methods section of this study. 100% of the water was changed twice a day. This invalidates any reasonable use in non-aquaculture systems.

Jay

 

[aquaestions]

Hi, I'm the author of this article.

100% of the water was changed twice a day.

@Jay Hemdal Thanks for pointing that out, I somehow missed that part. I edited the article to include it because it's an important detail.

I'd argue that it doesn't invalidate the use of this method in home aquaria, however. Anything is possible if you have enough free time.

Momchil

 

[Jay Hemdal]

Home aquarists pay 25 cents to 50 cents per gallon for synthetic seawater. For a 20 gallon quarantine tank, that works out to be a minimum of $10 per day. I think that even not including the time and effort needed to mix the water up, that cost makes this process a non-starter for home application.

Jay