Copper Treatment Without Checker

atlantean

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I have an orchid dottyback that's been in QT for 16 days. It was aquacultured and in the LFS tanks for 2-3 days. It appears healthy, is active, and eats well aside from two concerns:
1) Breathing has been a bit "active" since the beginning in that its mouth moves with its breathing. I've seen this in some videos of this dottyback on YouTube (though not all).
2) I've seen it flash a few times since having it, but its been very rare (probably 3 times since I've had it). I observe it multiple times a day.

I've treated it 2x with Prazipro and could either start copper or do another two weeks of observation. I am not willing to buy a Hanna Copper checker since I am not planning on putting any more fish in the tank and there are no clearcut visible signs of Ich.

Is it sensible to calculate Copper dosing for the 10 gallon QT and assume no absorption? I could measure out any water changes and redose accordingly. But, I'm not sure if the symptoms and behavior warrant a shabby copper treatment. Advice?
 

Mariette

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copper levels are tricky. I’ve used exact dosing and had reading be way off. Personally, I wouldn’t risk it without a checker. Could you use a different treatment? Maybe CP?
 

ehealy13

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I have an orchid dottyback that's been in QT for 16 days. It was aquacultured and in the LFS tanks for 2-3 days. It appears healthy, is active, and eats well aside from two concerns:
1) Breathing has been a bit "active" since the beginning in that its mouth moves with its breathing. I've seen this in some videos of this dottyback on YouTube (though not all).
2) I've seen it flash a few times since having it, but its been very rare (probably 3 times since I've had it). I observe it multiple times a day.

I've treated it 2x with Prazipro and could either start copper or do another two weeks of observation. I am not willing to buy a Hanna Copper checker since I am not planning on putting any more fish in the tank and there are no clearcut visible signs of Ich.

Is it sensible to calculate Copper dosing for the 10 gallon QT and assume no absorption? I could measure out any water changes and redose accordingly. But, I'm not sure if the symptoms and behavior warrant a shabby copper treatment. Advice?
Cheap insurance to get the tester and treat, from my perspective. There's usually a decent resale value on those, should you decide you didn't want to keep it.
 

Joe31415

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I could measure out any water changes and redose accordingly.
Just to address this. Whether you have a checker or not, you don't want to water change and then redose the copper. What you need to do is dose the new water before it goes into the tank. For example, fill up a bucket with new water, bring the copper level of that water up to the same level as the tank water, then remove old tank water and dump that in.
The reason being that this assures that the copper level never falls below the threshold and reset the clock.

FWIW, this is based on my expierence using Humble Fish's method(s) for copper treatment. Once you get above the theraputic level, you can't let it dip below it or it's like starting from day 1 again.
 

Jay Hemdal

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Coppersafe can be dosed without a test kit, but you need to know the exact volume of the tank (10 gallons hold about 8.2 gallons) and you must measure the copper accurately- like a syringe, not a teaspoon.
Multiply the inside of the tank, length x width x water depth in inches and divide by 231 to get gallons.
Jay
 

vetteguy53081

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theocorals537

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I’ve killed more fish than I care to admit doing it with no checker. The threshold of copper being harmless and deadly is very small , it’s not worth the risk imo
 

Joe31415

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Something popped into my head that may make water changes easier, particularly if you're attempting to do this without a checker.
If you know the exact volume of water in your QT and have a bucket of fresh saltwater that has a known volume. Each time you add copper to the QT, you can calculate how much to add to your water change bucket. Then they should both always be at the same ppm, and you can freely change the water without having to worry about the copper in the QT dipping until you get it fixed or having to go through multiple reagent packages to check and double check everything.

For example, if you have 10 gallons of water in your QT and 5 gallons of water in a bucket for water changes (lets make the numbers easy).
Every time you add 1ml of copper to the QT, you add 0.5ml to the WC bucket. The ppm of copper in each one should remain the same. Now, you can do a 2.5 gallon water change and, going forward, for every 1ml of copper you add to the QT, you add 0.25ml to the WC bucket.

As long as you keep everything in sync and you're comfortable doing the math, I'd think this would work.
 

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