Fallow Because Marine Velvet

[jackalexander]

Marine velvet took out 5 of my clowns and a powder brown which was very very upsetting.. I have a pair of diamond gobies that haven’t shown any signs of any disease but I was told that they are asymptotic and I should go fallow for 6 weeks and QT the gobies. My question is; do I need to medicate the gobies in copper or will the velvet dissipate?

 

[Jay Hemdal Verified Community Expert]

Typically, the advice is to quarantine the exposed fish in copper. Velvet doesn’t usually create a chronic infection, but if it did, the gobies could possibly harbor it and then bring it back when returned to the fallow tank.
Jay

 

[vetteguy53081]

For me, anytime ich or velvet is present, I react and assume all occupants have it and treat accordingly

 

[jackalexander]

Typically, the advice is to quarantine the exposed fish in copper. Velvet doesn’t usually create a chronic infection, but if it did, the gobies could possibly harbor it and then bring it back when returned to the fallow tank.
Jay

Thank you Jay for the help! So even if the gobies don’t actually show any signs of velvet, I should still do therapeutic copper for 30 days?

 

[Jay Hemdal Verified Community Expert]

Thank you Jay for the help! So even if the gobies don’t actually show any signs of velvet, I should still do therapeutic copper for 30 days?

I would, but I’m pretty conservative. You could also just go two weeks.
Jay

 

[jackalexander]

I would, but I’m pretty conservative. You could also just go two weeks.
Jay

So slowly bring up the copper levels to a therapeutic range of 0.5 and bring that up to 2.0 over the course of 3-5 days and hold that for 2 weeks? When the treatment is done, do I do water changes to bring that back down? Thank you for the help! I’m struggling with this new world of quarantine haha!

 

[Jay Hemdal Verified Community Expert]

So slowly bring up the copper levels to a therapeutic range of 0.5 and bring that up to 2.0 over the course of 3-5 days and hold that for 2 weeks? When the treatment is done, do I do water changes to bring that back down? Thank you for the help! I’m struggling with this new world of quarantine haha!

Well, in that respect I'm not so conservative - there is no reason to not take the copper level up to full dose right away, you don't need to take days to do that. That is left over from old advice used when people dosed with copper/citric acid. With today's complexed coppers, there is no need to go that slow, and indeed, going slow often gives parasites a chance to gain a foothold. You don't want to overshoot the mark of course, but with a good test kit, you calculate what a full dose would be (using the tank's net volume, not its rated one) and then you add half the copper, let it mix, test it, and if you are at 50%, just add the second half of the dose.

I always prefer to bring copper back down with water changes as opposed to filtration pads or chemicals.

Jay

 

[jackalexander]

Well, in that respect I'm not so conservative - there is no reason to not take the copper level up to full dose right away, you don't need to take days to do that. That is left over from old advice used when people dosed with copper/citric acid. With today's complexed coppers, there is no need to go that slow, and indeed, going slow often gives parasites a chance to gain a foothold. You don't want to overshoot the mark of course, but with a good test kit, you calculate what a full dose would be (using the tank's net volume, not its rated one) and then you add half the copper, let it mix, test it, and if you are at 50%, just add the second half of the dose.

I always prefer to bring copper back down with water changes as opposed to filtration pads or chemicals.

Jay

Sounds good! Always thankful for the information Jay.