Needs some help Reef2reef......

[sante21079]

Had a velvet/ich/maybe fluke outbreak in my FOWLR. Have lost all but 2 fish..... remainder 2 fish will be in a 29 gallon quarantine. I tried going the ich management route and failed miserably (turned the UV off for prazipro and stuff went downhill quick)! Prazi pro has been stopped.


This tank will only every be a FOWLR. I have dosed the recommended 2 amounts worth of cupramine (1st day was at .25) and will be checking later today to see if its in the .5 range.

Do I need to continue the copper and eradicate ich and velvet or discontinue and go fallow for 76 days?


Thanks in advance.

 

[SaltwaterGuruNeeded]

Had a velvet/ich/maybe fluke outbreak in my FOWLR. Have lost all but 2 fish..... remainder 2 fish will be in a 29 gallon quarantine. I tried going the ich management route and failed miserably (turned the UV off for prazipro and stuff went downhill quick)!

This tank will only every be a FOWLR. I have dosed the recommended 2 amounts worth of cupramine (1st day was at .25) and will be checking later today to see if its in the .5 range.

Do I need to continue the copper and eradicate ich and velvet or discontinue and go fallow for 76 days?


Thanks in advance.

Would recommend going fallow for a bit. Raising the temperature will help speed up the process. Try 82 degrees for your fallow period. Read on the back of the bottle, some medications say to not use copper with them/inverts. You can also do a freshwater dip for 2 minutes to try to remove some of the parasites on the fish, but use caution with the dip. If they look like they aren't doing well, it might be too late, but if they are going to die, might aswell try something like the freshwater dip, it may save them.

 

[Spare time]

As long as you do the cupramine for 45 days min at 81 ish degrees (45 min for marine ich), you should be able to keep them in there. Obviously if you have inverts they need to be removed. If the fish all died within something like 2 days then it would probably be velvet is my guess.

If you don't see spots all over them, then prazi alone should work for the most part. Freshwater (at the same temp) dipping the fish can reveal some flukes.

 

[Spare time]

I guess the main thing you need to do is figure out if they are flukes or ich or velvet. Flukes are much easier to deal with.

 

[sante21079]

@Jay Hemdal @Humblefish

 

[BostonReefer300]

Therapeutic copper level in saltwater is 0.2 - 0.25 ppm. Don't go higher than that! Make sure you're testing with something really reliable. The only copper test that I've ever had any confidence in is the Hanna one. It's definitely worth the cost given how easily you can lose fish to disease or excess copper. Jay keeps an updated sticky thread going in the disease section that deals with copper and fallow periods. I'd suggest reading that. It'll answer all your questions. Good luck and sorry for your troubles!

 

[sante21079]

Thanks for the responses.

 

[Jay Hemdal]

Had a velvet/ich/maybe fluke outbreak in my FOWLR. Have lost all but 2 fish..... remainder 2 fish will be in a 29 gallon quarantine. I tried going the ich management route and failed miserably (turned the UV off for prazipro and stuff went downhill quick)! Prazi pro has been stopped.


This tank will only every be a FOWLR. I have dosed the recommended 2 amounts worth of cupramine (1st day was at .25) and will be checking later today to see if its in the .5 range.

Do I need to continue the copper and eradicate ich and velvet or discontinue and go fallow for 76 days?


Thanks in advance.

I would run 30 days of Cupramine at 0.50 ppm. At a bare minimum, you should go for at least 14 days at full dose. Copper is ineffective against flukes though.

Jay

 

[sante21079]

I would run 30 days of Cupramine at 0.50 ppm. At a bear minimum, you should go for at least 14 days at full dose. Copper is ineffective against flukes though.

Jay

thanks man!

 

[BostonReefer300]

Sorry 0.5ppm. Start with a target of 0.2-0.25. Test after several hours. If it's at your target level, then double what you added to get around 0.5ppm. Going directly to 0.5ppm risks overdosing.

 

[sante21079]

Sorry 0.5ppm. Start with a target of 0.2-0.25. Test after several hours. If it's at your target level, then double what you added to get around 0.5ppm. Going directly to 0.5ppm risks overdosing.

No worries, I followed the instructions and thats what they said to do.