W1ngz
Failed Padawan
This is longer than I expected, but I've tried to do what I could to put all the details up front right away. Thanks for reading it attentively before asking questions based solely on the topic title and photo.
This is an established QT that's been online for a few months. Ammonia and nitrite are 0, and nitrate is in the 10ish area. Nothing else lives in this tank. Water changes typically happen using display tank water, which follows my salt parameters pretty closely. Calcium 450, alk 9.0 and Mg at 1400.
On Saturday I picked up a tank bred black ocellaris in the hopes to recreate my pair after losing my female a few months back. It's not going well. Here's exactly what I've done so far:
Got home, floated the bag in my QT for a half hour or so while I dropped the salinity a few points to match, then started adding small amounts of tank water every 5-10 minutes for about an hour, and dumped the bag in.
I left the lights off, and came back an hour later to see if it would eat a little, and sure enough, slurped down what I put in the tank, avoiding anything that wandered too close to the airstone. I figured I was good to go, and brought the tank up to 50% copper ( 0.25 with cupramine) in the evening.
Sunday morning, no so enthusiastic, but still ate a couple of mysis. I dismissed it as stress since it was the first time I'd turned on the lights. Later in the afternoon, I added another 5 drops cupramine to bring things up to about 3/4 of the target 0.5. Testing (Salifert Cu) showed somewhere between 0.25 and 0.5, more or less where I wanted to be.
Sunday night feeding, no reaction at all to the food, so something was up. I decided to push back the last increase in copper from Monday to Tuesday, but I wasn't aware of any special considerations using copper with clownfish.
Monday morning and evening, still no reaction to food. By this point all my instincts are telling me I've landed a copper sensitive fish, and BIG WATER CHANGE RIGHT NOW. Mondays are busy and aside from running home to change and eat (and feed the fish) I'm gone from 7AM until after 11PM.
Tuesday night after work I rush home to do as big a water change as I could muster (about 75%), and put a fresh carbon pouch to remove the last of the copper.
This morning before work, still swimming in place mid-water, no reaction to food, but seemed more active (that could just be me convincing myself there was some improvement). I can already see it getting skinnier after not eating for 3 days, and the pectoral fins look like they are getting ratty. Really not able to get a decent pic, but there's no marks, spots or cloudy areas on the body despite what it looks like in the photo.
Meds are hard to come by, so what I've got is what I have available, and that's it. There's cupramine, prazipro, focus and reef rally. I've also got a bottle pf prime.
Not sure where to go now, or what I did wrong. All I can think of doing is adding some rally and prime, and hope for the best.
This is an established QT that's been online for a few months. Ammonia and nitrite are 0, and nitrate is in the 10ish area. Nothing else lives in this tank. Water changes typically happen using display tank water, which follows my salt parameters pretty closely. Calcium 450, alk 9.0 and Mg at 1400.
On Saturday I picked up a tank bred black ocellaris in the hopes to recreate my pair after losing my female a few months back. It's not going well. Here's exactly what I've done so far:
Got home, floated the bag in my QT for a half hour or so while I dropped the salinity a few points to match, then started adding small amounts of tank water every 5-10 minutes for about an hour, and dumped the bag in.
I left the lights off, and came back an hour later to see if it would eat a little, and sure enough, slurped down what I put in the tank, avoiding anything that wandered too close to the airstone. I figured I was good to go, and brought the tank up to 50% copper ( 0.25 with cupramine) in the evening.
Sunday morning, no so enthusiastic, but still ate a couple of mysis. I dismissed it as stress since it was the first time I'd turned on the lights. Later in the afternoon, I added another 5 drops cupramine to bring things up to about 3/4 of the target 0.5. Testing (Salifert Cu) showed somewhere between 0.25 and 0.5, more or less where I wanted to be.
Sunday night feeding, no reaction at all to the food, so something was up. I decided to push back the last increase in copper from Monday to Tuesday, but I wasn't aware of any special considerations using copper with clownfish.
Monday morning and evening, still no reaction to food. By this point all my instincts are telling me I've landed a copper sensitive fish, and BIG WATER CHANGE RIGHT NOW. Mondays are busy and aside from running home to change and eat (and feed the fish) I'm gone from 7AM until after 11PM.
Tuesday night after work I rush home to do as big a water change as I could muster (about 75%), and put a fresh carbon pouch to remove the last of the copper.
This morning before work, still swimming in place mid-water, no reaction to food, but seemed more active (that could just be me convincing myself there was some improvement). I can already see it getting skinnier after not eating for 3 days, and the pectoral fins look like they are getting ratty. Really not able to get a decent pic, but there's no marks, spots or cloudy areas on the body despite what it looks like in the photo.
Meds are hard to come by, so what I've got is what I have available, and that's it. There's cupramine, prazipro, focus and reef rally. I've also got a bottle pf prime.
Not sure where to go now, or what I did wrong. All I can think of doing is adding some rally and prime, and hope for the best.
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