Dosing with copper questions!

[justanotherfishhead]

Hey Chuck, how did it go, are you done with the copper? I finally started mine a week ago because I was too busy and the ich spots hadn't reappeared on the fish that had it. Now after a few days of copper, a previously healthy fish, my Bangaii Cardinal, isn't eating. He tries a few pieces of his favorite food (mysis) and spits it out. Did you see this with your fish and did it get better? He hasn't eaten in 3 days so if he won't eat in another few days I might stop the copper and try hypo instead. Otherwise all the fish are acting normally.

 

[chuck78]

Nah, I won't be done with the copper til' it's been 8 weeks. I really hope that you're treating ALL of your fish, otherwise you're just wasting time & stressing your fish for nothing. Yes! It took my PB Tang 11 days to start eating properly again. I'm using "Copper Power", a product that's 60x less toxic to fish, but still 100% deadly to ich!! This product works so well that I have fish that dont do well in copper, swimming around & eating like nothing's going on. Im so surprised that it didnt phase my Flame Angel, Scotts Fairy Wrasse or my Mandarin Dragonette...That's right! My "scaleless" Dragonette is doing just fine. I ended up using Furan 2 to fight the infection on my Achillies Tang. Oh! & saving grace with my dragonette is that I trained him to eat Mysis & brine. Are you using cupramine? That my be why your lil guy isn't eating cuz cardinals can be little pigs. I hope it works out for you....good luck.

 

[justanotherfishhead]

Thanks for the tip, I will look into the Copper Power product. I am using Cuprimine which I thought was the most gentle. Yes, I am treating ALL my fish outside of the display tank. I want to be sure it's gone and never introduced again. I'm going to treat every new fish I get and also QT everything else I get to make sure. I read your other post of your LFS guy saying it's impossible to get rid of ich completely but I think those people must have added something like a snail that had it in its shell or cross-contaminated tanks or didn't treat every new fish properly.

 

[chuck78]

Yeah, I wish that i had started this hobby with a qtank protocol, but I lacked the patients. I'm about to buy a 24" 150 watt MH fixture so I can qt new corals & clams with inverts. I don't like cupramine because if you overdose just a little bit, that activated stuff will fry your fish. With Copper Power Marine, you over do it a little with no consequence.

 

[justanotherfishhead]

I think it just took the cardinal a few days to adjust, because he's back to being a little pig. They are all doing great :)

 

[chuck78]

I know you're glad for that, there's always a sigh of relief when you see your fish eat again .