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- Oct 22, 2016
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I couldn't think of any other title to put. Just thought I would put this out there for any other new reefer dealing with a disease so they don't make the same mistake I did.
There've been plenty of people here who have helped me with treating my fish for velvet and ich outbreak. After treating my fish for 2 weeks with copper in a 10 gallon tank, I decided they needed to be transferred to a 30-gallon tank to give them more room to swim. I finally manage to test for ammonia a week after I started using the 30 gallon tank (I know it was stupid). I panicked because my ammonia came out sky high.
I rushed to treat my tank with nitrifying bacteria, and I dosed with seachem prime to help make the ammonia and nitrite safer for my fish. Luckily started looking online after treating the tank, and found that seachem Prime will actually break down the copper medication from a safe form to a highly poisonous form to the fish. The Forum also stated that most ammonia test kits will give you false readings when treating with seachem's copper.
As quoted from their website:
Ammonia test kits can not distinguish ammonia from the amine based complex present in Cupramine[emoji769] and will therefore give a false high reading for ammonia while using Cupramine[emoji769]. Our Ammonia Alert[emoji769] and MultiTest: Free & Total Ammonia[emoji769] test kit do not suffer from this problem as they utilize a gas exchange technology that can distinguish ammonia from amines.
Again I panicked knowing I possibly killed all of my fish, and started by placing carbon in my filter to remove all the copper, and mixed up enough salt water to do a 50% water change.
Now all I can do is wait and hope that my fish are okay in the morning. I figure in a couple days I'll do another large water change, then start treating with copper again and restart my 30-day treatment.
It's a little long but hopefully somebody will read this and not make the same mistake I did.
There've been plenty of people here who have helped me with treating my fish for velvet and ich outbreak. After treating my fish for 2 weeks with copper in a 10 gallon tank, I decided they needed to be transferred to a 30-gallon tank to give them more room to swim. I finally manage to test for ammonia a week after I started using the 30 gallon tank (I know it was stupid). I panicked because my ammonia came out sky high.
I rushed to treat my tank with nitrifying bacteria, and I dosed with seachem prime to help make the ammonia and nitrite safer for my fish. Luckily started looking online after treating the tank, and found that seachem Prime will actually break down the copper medication from a safe form to a highly poisonous form to the fish. The Forum also stated that most ammonia test kits will give you false readings when treating with seachem's copper.
As quoted from their website:
Ammonia test kits can not distinguish ammonia from the amine based complex present in Cupramine[emoji769] and will therefore give a false high reading for ammonia while using Cupramine[emoji769]. Our Ammonia Alert[emoji769] and MultiTest: Free & Total Ammonia[emoji769] test kit do not suffer from this problem as they utilize a gas exchange technology that can distinguish ammonia from amines.
Again I panicked knowing I possibly killed all of my fish, and started by placing carbon in my filter to remove all the copper, and mixed up enough salt water to do a 50% water change.
Now all I can do is wait and hope that my fish are okay in the morning. I figure in a couple days I'll do another large water change, then start treating with copper again and restart my 30-day treatment.
It's a little long but hopefully somebody will read this and not make the same mistake I did.