Can you provide a list of your fish? Some treatments are safe for some but not for others. You can't use hypo and copper together just so you know. Some pics to confirm a diagnosis would help as well
Wow! Did you add anything new recently like a new fish, coral, etc? Just curious how ich got into your system.....
Sure did and he's dead can't find him anywhere. Hoping my crabs eat him up because I can't find him anywhere. And before anyone asks I did not qt, lol, never have. I get my fish from a trusted source. Only this time I grabbed him early before my lfs was able to qt him. After over 15 years I finally learned my lesson. I'm now debating on uv sterilizer and water change to help manage rather than pull everything out. Also thinking it may be easier to remove all rock from DT, then treat the DT. Think it might be easier than catching fish. Idk, just throwing ideas out. Like I said never dealt with this so I'm essentially new in this area and don't know how to approach it
First of all, best practice is to NEVER dose copper in a display tank, and to use a quarantine tank. It is much easier and safer. Copper in a DT can heavily dampen your nitrogen cycle in your tank, and will leach in to your rock, substrate, and equipment. As a result, the amount of copper you'll need to dose will be astronomically higher in a DT. You may well have ammonia issues because it hinders your nitrogen cycles to varying degrees for a bit. It also makes your copper levels volitile (due to leaching) which is not conducive for an effective 30 day treatment with copper-- as the levels cannot ever dip below 2PPM for chelated copper (such as coppersafe, copperaid, and copper power) or .5PPM (.6 is what I use) for ionic copper (such as cupramine). If the levels do drop below this threshold at any point, you restart your 30 day clock. This can take weeks to stabilize, and subjects your fish to more time in copper than need be. Some fish handle it fine, others may struggle.
So, now that you've been advised NOT to use copper in a DT, here's how I have successfully removed it 5-6 times over the years, succcessfully. My 180 reef has run through copper treatments 3 times over the years and housed clams, inverts, coral, etc without issue afterward.
2018 Edit: If you’re bent on using copper in your DT, buy a Hanna copper checker to accurately measure copper so that your efforts need not be repeated many times due to copper swings.
This works for all types of copper. Polyfiber pads remove chelated copper better, cuprisorb removes ionic copper faster. I use all three regardless.
I use poly fiber pads, cuprisorb, and carbon in conjunction with MASSIVE water changes. After two massive water changes I replace all of the media and let it run a week with all new cuprisorb, carbon, and polyfiber pads and test after a full week. The process takes about two weeks in my experience. Here's how I do it:
Before Treatment:
Remove all rock, coral, and inverts you wish to keep. You can leave some rock for structure but PVC as a replacement is more advisable. I've always left some rock in the tank for structure, say 10-20% of what was there originally. This will work if you don't remove most or all rock but it increases your chances of the removal being more difficult. Remove all carbon, media, phosban, filter pads, seeding sponges (I keep one in sump for seeding new tanks) before dosing copper. Buy an ammonia alert badge by seachem to monitor ammonia, as most tests will test false positives in copper. You can skim for the duration of treatment, or at least I do.
Before Copper Removal:
Remove most/all rock used in the copper treatment. Sand (if applicable) can stay. Equipment and everything else is fine.
Step 1) giant water change (85-90%)
Step 2) add cuprisorb, carbon, and pokyfiber pads
Step 3) replace poly fiber pad after 3-4 days. I run it attached to powerhead for max exposure/flow
Step 4) wait a week, giant water change again.
Step 5) replace all media, wait another week
Step 6) giant water change again. Leave media in for 1-2 more weeks.
Step 7) Test after one week. If not zero, repeat large water change and replace all media.
Step 8) Don't add coral or inverts back until after 3 consecutive days testing twice per day of 0 copper readings. I would recommend using more than one brand of copper test to confirm.
I've done this several times and had the coral back in 2-4 weeks. Test several times over a period of a few days to be sure before adding inverts/coral.
Again, don't go through all of this aggravation. Get a quarantine. This is a pain in the neck and a lot of unnecessary work and risk you need not take in 99/100 cases. Use a hospital tank/QT, instead.
Update: Here is my analysis report from @Christoph. There’s an interesting piece here for the level of copper in my tank after using copper in this tank (and the same sand and rocks remain, I have done it a few times in the same sand and rock) over the years. See below.
