Hi,
I have recently finished with my 30 days of copper power at 1.8 - 2.30 ppm (Hanna instrument) and I am now removing copper in preparation for API general cure treatment.
My worry is that shortly before I started the copper treatment, one of my new fish for l(a clown fish) was showing symptoms of flashing which could be due to ich or velvets. So, if it was indeed ich or velvets, it was likely that this fish was shedding the parasites and allowing for the encrustment of the tomont stage before I could raise my copper to therapeutic level (I did 7 days ramp up period before reaching 1.5ppm and higher).
Fast forward to now (post 30 days copper treatment), where I lower my copper below the therapeutic level, this means means that tomonts, which can potentially remain dormant for up to 76 days (hence the well known fallow period), could come back and reinfect my fish.
So this bring me to the next question. Are we really supposed to let the fish stay in the QT beyond the 30 days of their therapeutic copper treatment, whether for observation or for any other additional medication? For various reasons we often times either do not start the treatment right away after acquiring a new fish (to let the fish settles in) or we try not to raise the copper level too quickly for it to be less harsh on the fish. This is also especially worrying if the fish were known to be infected and/or had shown symptoms associated with ich or velvets prior to us reaching the therapeutic level of copper in our QT. This could technically let the parasites shed and encrust to become immune and dormant during the active treatment and reinfect once the copper falls below therapeutic level. Could this be part of a reason that we sometimes see ineffective copper treatment with reinfect quickly after? Am I just worrying too much? Or is this a real threat that we should considering in our qt process?
I have recently finished with my 30 days of copper power at 1.8 - 2.30 ppm (Hanna instrument) and I am now removing copper in preparation for API general cure treatment.
My worry is that shortly before I started the copper treatment, one of my new fish for l(a clown fish) was showing symptoms of flashing which could be due to ich or velvets. So, if it was indeed ich or velvets, it was likely that this fish was shedding the parasites and allowing for the encrustment of the tomont stage before I could raise my copper to therapeutic level (I did 7 days ramp up period before reaching 1.5ppm and higher).
Fast forward to now (post 30 days copper treatment), where I lower my copper below the therapeutic level, this means means that tomonts, which can potentially remain dormant for up to 76 days (hence the well known fallow period), could come back and reinfect my fish.
So this bring me to the next question. Are we really supposed to let the fish stay in the QT beyond the 30 days of their therapeutic copper treatment, whether for observation or for any other additional medication? For various reasons we often times either do not start the treatment right away after acquiring a new fish (to let the fish settles in) or we try not to raise the copper level too quickly for it to be less harsh on the fish. This is also especially worrying if the fish were known to be infected and/or had shown symptoms associated with ich or velvets prior to us reaching the therapeutic level of copper in our QT. This could technically let the parasites shed and encrust to become immune and dormant during the active treatment and reinfect once the copper falls below therapeutic level. Could this be part of a reason that we sometimes see ineffective copper treatment with reinfect quickly after? Am I just worrying too much? Or is this a real threat that we should considering in our qt process?