QT Cardinal Getting Worse

ccombs · Mar 30, 2019

Cardinal is very active today, copper still therapeutic.

Spots still look partially faded as they did yesterday.

EDIT- Fish is actually getting a lot of spot all over body upon further review. This seems like it might be a losing battle, especially with fully therapeutic copper right now.

ccombs · Apr 3, 2019

Cardinal still has the white spots and copper is still at therapeutic level. Do I need to do anything additional or just give them time to go through their cycle and fall off and die?

Frtdrmrose7 · Apr 4, 2019

ccombs said:
Cardinal still has the white spots and copper is still at therapeutic level. Do I need to do anything additional or just give them time to go through their cycle and fall off and die?

How long has the fish been in therapeutic copper?

ngoodermuth · Apr 4, 2019

If it’s been over a week, at therapeutic copper and still getting worse... that makes me think it’s not actually velvet. Brook can present similarly... there’s also the possibility of infection. The fact that the ruby reef rally appeared to help a bit, could confirm either of those.

I would up the aeration in the tank as much as possible, And add to the copper metroplex + Kanaplex + furan-2. Will need dosed every 48 hours, and I would do a 20% waterchange at least every 2 doses. Make sure to do the water change right before a scheduled dose, and add copper to the water before it hits the tank. This will address both the possibilities of brook and infection.

I can’t stress enough, the importance of keeping the tank heavily aerated. When I do this I have an airline running directly under my powerhead so that it shoots bubbles all over the tank...

ccombs · Apr 4, 2019

Frtdrmrose7 said:
How long has the fish been in therapeutic copper?

10 Days Therapeutic.

Almost a month total, I dropped out of therapeutic accidentally.

Frtdrmrose7 · Apr 4, 2019

I agree with @ngoodermuth, velvet should have started improving in 10 days of therapeutic copper.

ccombs · Apr 14, 2019

For those of you following along, here is a copy of part of a post from my build thread about the QT. Before the QT I was very aware that media like carbon does not play well with copper. That being said I still missed a small but important detail.....

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Well... I did something dumb...

I have been treating my cardinal for well over a month now and have done everything from freshwater dips, ruby reef rally, therapeutic copper, metro, furan-2, kanaplex and have not been able to cure this guy. When I first got my QT set up, I knew that carbon was bad and I needed to remove all filters. I checked the HOB filter and found it was just a filter floss sort of thing, so I left that to hopefully give my bacteria a place to thrive. Today at the frag swap in Nashville, @Eagle_Steve was kind enough to offer to double check my copper level with his hanna checker, I have just been using the salifert test. Before I met up with him I took another copper measurement and found my copper to be .75 with cupramine. When a sample was put in the Hanna, however, it came back as no copper in the water. This was quite puzzling. Eagle_Steve was kind enough to discuss possibilities with me at length, and he finally pointed out something I did not realize. The filter floss type filter has carbon in the middle of it, when I checked it out before QT I 100% missed that, I apparently didn't feel the copper between the layers. The theory is that the carbon has been absorbing all of my copper. This still does not answer why the salifert test reads the amount that I expect, though. All that to say, I removed the carbon and I am resetting my QT clock. It makes me sad to know that I may have lost my other fish in QT because I missed this detail. It is frustrating to know that I should not have carbon in there, but miss that it was actually integrated into the filter.....