Hey guys, how are you doing. Sorry this will be a long post, but the main questions are in Bold.
I am in the process of restarting my tank after a velvet wipeout. The surviving fish are in a hospital tank treating them with CP. I want to start restocking slowly and start doing TTM on new arrivals. I reserved a powder blue tang a month ago and it is doing great in the LFS. When I first asked them they said that they quarantine fish and medicate them in the tanks before moving them to display, but then after several discussions and questions I discovered that they treat the fish in quarantine for a week or two with copper and praziquantel pro, then they move them into display tank which are dosed at 0.3 and not always monitored. So basically there is a very high chance that parasites are still available. From my understanding, treating fish with copper below the recommended dosage will hide the symptoms of the parasites for weeks.
Now the question is: If the fish is exposed to copper (below therapeutic range) and parasites are present but showing no effect, will TTM be effective, or should I wait few weeks and then start TTM procedure. (very likely fish are exposed to ich because another tank [seperate system] has kole eye tang with two white spots)
I observed 3 PBT, one of them developed 1 white spot that went away the next day, so I kept my eyes on the other two and both had no signs of ich or any other infection at all, but still copper is present so its risky to decide.
And can someone explain why copper at low levels hide the symptoms? Does the parasite still reproduce normally but at much lower concentration since some are killed by copper, or does it go to a state similar to hibernation where when copper is stopped it will become active again?
Im very disappointed with shops not being honest about their quarantine procedures and running copper in their displays at low conc. Whenever I go to a store they convince me that they are doing very thorough quarantine where fish spend like 7 days acclimating, then 3 weeks treatment then 2 weeks observation before being sold, and then when you investigate more and try asking several questions about quarantine method or procedure you find out its all lies, most of them just quarantine for a week in order to remove fish that couldn't handle the shipping and then the fishes hit the display tank with copper to cover anything. I understand that they want to sell and be profitable, but I think many of us are willing to pay extra for fish but we know that it has been properly quarantined and no fishy business is involved especially the useless toxic chemicals the fish are always exposed to.
Sorry for the long post
I am in the process of restarting my tank after a velvet wipeout. The surviving fish are in a hospital tank treating them with CP. I want to start restocking slowly and start doing TTM on new arrivals. I reserved a powder blue tang a month ago and it is doing great in the LFS. When I first asked them they said that they quarantine fish and medicate them in the tanks before moving them to display, but then after several discussions and questions I discovered that they treat the fish in quarantine for a week or two with copper and praziquantel pro, then they move them into display tank which are dosed at 0.3 and not always monitored. So basically there is a very high chance that parasites are still available. From my understanding, treating fish with copper below the recommended dosage will hide the symptoms of the parasites for weeks.
Now the question is: If the fish is exposed to copper (below therapeutic range) and parasites are present but showing no effect, will TTM be effective, or should I wait few weeks and then start TTM procedure. (very likely fish are exposed to ich because another tank [seperate system] has kole eye tang with two white spots)
I observed 3 PBT, one of them developed 1 white spot that went away the next day, so I kept my eyes on the other two and both had no signs of ich or any other infection at all, but still copper is present so its risky to decide.
And can someone explain why copper at low levels hide the symptoms? Does the parasite still reproduce normally but at much lower concentration since some are killed by copper, or does it go to a state similar to hibernation where when copper is stopped it will become active again?
Im very disappointed with shops not being honest about their quarantine procedures and running copper in their displays at low conc. Whenever I go to a store they convince me that they are doing very thorough quarantine where fish spend like 7 days acclimating, then 3 weeks treatment then 2 weeks observation before being sold, and then when you investigate more and try asking several questions about quarantine method or procedure you find out its all lies, most of them just quarantine for a week in order to remove fish that couldn't handle the shipping and then the fishes hit the display tank with copper to cover anything. I understand that they want to sell and be profitable, but I think many of us are willing to pay extra for fish but we know that it has been properly quarantined and no fishy business is involved especially the useless toxic chemicals the fish are always exposed to.
Sorry for the long post
