Lions, copper, prazi pro and displacement

lion king

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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.

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Great post. Lion/Scorpionfish and copper treatment isn’t spoken about enough.
 

Jedi1199

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I never knew any of this... I am actually very glad I found this thread. I just today took a trip down to my favorite coral shop and asked the owner if he could order me some fish for my 180 tank. One of the ones I asked for is the Volitan lion. I know for a fact he runs copper in his QT tanks. I'll have to talk to him about that.
 
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lion king

lion king

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I never knew any of this... I am actually very glad I found this thread. I just today took a trip down to my favorite coral shop and asked the owner if he could order me some fish for my 180 tank. One of the ones I asked for is the Volitan lion. I know for a fact he runs copper in his QT tanks. I'll have to talk to him about that.

What you do is pick the fish up in the bag. Kills 2 birds. 1; it doesn't go into the copper system and 2; one acclimation vs one at the lfs then one at your house. When I get one of my lfs to get me a fish, I always pick it up in the bag, even from my friend that doesn't run copper. That's obviously provide your lfs has a highly reputable source and you're not picking up a fish hanging on by a thread.
 

Jedi1199

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What you do is pick the fish up in the bag. Kills 2 birds. 1; it doesn't go into the copper system and 2; one acclimation vs one at the lfs then one at your house. When I get one of my lfs to get me a fish, I always pick it up in the bag, even from my friend that doesn't run copper. That's obviously provide your lfs has a highly reputable source and you're not picking up a fish hanging on by a thread.

This store is a coral farm, not a "fish store". He does have tanks for fish for customers like me, but he specializes in corals. Part of the reason I asked him to get these fish for me is that my window for receiving deliveries is very limited. I am typically gone for around 18 hours per day for work. The only time I realistically have to go pick them up is on Saturday.
 
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lion king

lion king

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This store is a coral farm, not a "fish store". He does have tanks for fish for customers like me, but he specializes in corals. Part of the reason I asked him to get these fish for me is that my window for receiving deliveries is very limited. I am typically gone for around 18 hours per day for work. The only time I realistically have to go pick them up is on Saturday.

How quickly and at what concentration of copper causes an issue may be a little confusing. This I know, there are 2 stores here in town that run copper, and not one single lion that I have ever tracked from these stores ever lived much more than a year, many dying much quicker. A friend that works at one of these stores confirmed this by telling me none of their customers ever keep a lion much more than a year, that's a volitan; he told me all of the dwarf species die pretty quickly. I don't know at what concentration these stores run, it's common for them to run at a sub-therapeutic level. I'm not sure how quickly a sub-therapeutic dose could cause damage, but some of these fish move out within a day or two or a few days max, and they still don't live much more than a year. Seeing what I've seen and knowing what I know, I would never take a lion that was ever put in a tank with copper, regardless of the concentration.
 
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lion king

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The top pic is an example of what the internals of a dwarf lion looks like after exposure to copper. What you see, the black and greyish gel is where the liver is suppose to be. The 2nd pic is from a dwarf lion tbat was in captivity almost 9 years.

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lion king

lion king

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"Safe and effective". hobbyist that deny the risk of copper treatment are the same humans that deny the risk of big pharma chemicals. I really can't believe that even today I get push back on the dangers of exposing fishes of the Scorpaenidae, eels and other predators to copper. Hobbyist that seem fine to successfully keep many other species and keep a nice tank, but some how kill every lion they try and keep. I've dissected more than one lion from the same hobbyist running copper in their qt's, all had severe liver damage. I've dissected several lions from the 2 lfs that run copper in their systems, they all had sever liver damage. From my own experiences and a number of other hobbyist, I do not know of one lion that survives more than just a few weeks from these lfs. I have at least gotten one of the lfs to start keeping some of these species in copper free systems. They don't care about the volitans or snowflakes, they are cheap and a dime a dozen, and are resilient enough to get sold out the door before they die. "Correlation doesn't equal causation" even though it's as close to 100% as you can get. Oh and by the way, information is coming in that CP may also cause issue leading to death. I haven't dissected any questionable CP exposure deaths yet. As for those that don't understand what the liver does, it processes and expels toxins from the body, Species that naturally live on a gorge/fast feeding cycle, tend to spend alot of their time perching or tucked away in their dens, have a different metabolism, Their metabolism allows the toxins to settle longer in their livers than other species, for those that still can't seem to get their heads wrapped around it. This would be true for all toxins. I'm never going to breach this subject again, do as you will, I can no longer waste my breath.
 

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