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Lion King's disclaimer: I am a hobbyist just like you, I am not an internet expert with fake letters behind my name or have an app to make my rants look like I run a magazine. I share my info and experiences of things that appear to work more times than not, and warn of things that don't work more times than do.
Copper kills lionfish, I really thought this was common knowledge, it has been to me for at least 20 years. Even if a lionfish survives copper treatment, they will die soon after; whether days, weeks, months, and maybe just maybe a year, but that's kind of pushing it. Some species are more affected by copper than others, and members of the scorpaenidae family, more so than others. Copper severely effects the liver of the lionfish. I have done countless dissections to verify this, and seen livers literally disintegrated into liquified mush to less severe damage when deaths occurred months after treatment. This is not "my" theory, it wouldn't take much research to find much similar info on this subject. Healthy lionfish are very resistant to protazoan type diseases, so before exposing your lionfish to copper, there are other methods to try. Ask me about those options if you ever get into that predicament. I strongly suggest to never purchase a lionfish from a source that runs copper in their system; at the least they will have a shortened life; there are many variable involved by not only the individual lion and the way they are cared for, but the concentration of the systems copper and how long they were exposed.
Prazi pro has been proven to be safe and effective in treatment for lionfish. Many lions come in with parasites and flukes and need treatment, pp is pretty much a necessity to have around when you bring in new lions. Pp doesn't deal with all the potential internal parasites but we will keep this conversation to pp. I have successfully treated dozens of lions and advised many hobbyists in using pp successfully, it's really a safe and easy to use med. 1st off you must determine the volume of water you are dosing, not the tank size, I'll expand on this in the next paragraph. Dose in a high flow area as not to blast the concentrated liquid into the face. Make sure you have proper aeration, powerheads to the surface to just cause a surface break is fine. The only time I've seen a problem with lions and pp is when there was an overdose or there were contributing factors, which may include previous copper treatment or possible cyanide poisoning.
Displacement, calculating and using the proper dosage. Overdosing pp is the main reason people have a problem. I didn't realize how common it was until I perused some posts today, and found many people likely od this drug. You do not dose this drug to the size of the tank, you dose it to the actual volume of water. We'll use my 90g venom tank as an example. If you look closely estimate the amount of rock and substrate to size of the tank. In the pic it may not be as clear as in real life, but it appears to be a third of the tank is filled with rocks and substrate. So for a 90g that would leave about 60g of water. The sump is 18g, most sumps run about half of the total volume with water, so that's 9g of water. So a rough estimation would be 69g of water. Pp is dosed at 1 tsp per 20g, so you could call it 70g and be safe and dose this tank at 3.5 tsp. If you were to dose this tank at 90g you would use 4.5 tsp, which would be a 28.5% overdose and likely kill everyone. Inside info: this tank holds exactly 68g of water, I calculated it when I filled the tank. If you are building a tank it may come in handy to actually have an exact calculation of water volume, not only for meds, but even for elements.
Other species of scorpaenidae; with caution! I have not had as much experience using pp with other scorps but have had a few delicate experiences. The rhino, leaf fish, and yellow spot scorps all seemed to react adversely; but since this was a limited experience, who's to say for sure. I did just recently successfully treat a scorpeana brasiliensis. If you are apprehensive or are treating one of the other scorps without a history of success, you can split the dose into 3 doses 12 hours apart. You don't want to spread out the dose longer than that because the strength the 1st dose will be depleted before you get to the total dose.
Copper kills lionfish, I really thought this was common knowledge, it has been to me for at least 20 years. Even if a lionfish survives copper treatment, they will die soon after; whether days, weeks, months, and maybe just maybe a year, but that's kind of pushing it. Some species are more affected by copper than others, and members of the scorpaenidae family, more so than others. Copper severely effects the liver of the lionfish. I have done countless dissections to verify this, and seen livers literally disintegrated into liquified mush to less severe damage when deaths occurred months after treatment. This is not "my" theory, it wouldn't take much research to find much similar info on this subject. Healthy lionfish are very resistant to protazoan type diseases, so before exposing your lionfish to copper, there are other methods to try. Ask me about those options if you ever get into that predicament. I strongly suggest to never purchase a lionfish from a source that runs copper in their system; at the least they will have a shortened life; there are many variable involved by not only the individual lion and the way they are cared for, but the concentration of the systems copper and how long they were exposed.
Prazi pro has been proven to be safe and effective in treatment for lionfish. Many lions come in with parasites and flukes and need treatment, pp is pretty much a necessity to have around when you bring in new lions. Pp doesn't deal with all the potential internal parasites but we will keep this conversation to pp. I have successfully treated dozens of lions and advised many hobbyists in using pp successfully, it's really a safe and easy to use med. 1st off you must determine the volume of water you are dosing, not the tank size, I'll expand on this in the next paragraph. Dose in a high flow area as not to blast the concentrated liquid into the face. Make sure you have proper aeration, powerheads to the surface to just cause a surface break is fine. The only time I've seen a problem with lions and pp is when there was an overdose or there were contributing factors, which may include previous copper treatment or possible cyanide poisoning.
Displacement, calculating and using the proper dosage. Overdosing pp is the main reason people have a problem. I didn't realize how common it was until I perused some posts today, and found many people likely od this drug. You do not dose this drug to the size of the tank, you dose it to the actual volume of water. We'll use my 90g venom tank as an example. If you look closely estimate the amount of rock and substrate to size of the tank. In the pic it may not be as clear as in real life, but it appears to be a third of the tank is filled with rocks and substrate. So for a 90g that would leave about 60g of water. The sump is 18g, most sumps run about half of the total volume with water, so that's 9g of water. So a rough estimation would be 69g of water. Pp is dosed at 1 tsp per 20g, so you could call it 70g and be safe and dose this tank at 3.5 tsp. If you were to dose this tank at 90g you would use 4.5 tsp, which would be a 28.5% overdose and likely kill everyone. Inside info: this tank holds exactly 68g of water, I calculated it when I filled the tank. If you are building a tank it may come in handy to actually have an exact calculation of water volume, not only for meds, but even for elements.
Other species of scorpaenidae; with caution! I have not had as much experience using pp with other scorps but have had a few delicate experiences. The rhino, leaf fish, and yellow spot scorps all seemed to react adversely; but since this was a limited experience, who's to say for sure. I did just recently successfully treat a scorpeana brasiliensis. If you are apprehensive or are treating one of the other scorps without a history of success, you can split the dose into 3 doses 12 hours apart. You don't want to spread out the dose longer than that because the strength the 1st dose will be depleted before you get to the total dose.