2 questions... help needed

[JTrigger]

1) I have a 2" regal angel in a QT. He's been there 2 weeks now. The LFS owner had treated him with Prazi before I purchased him. At the store I noticed the fish was scratching rocks, but couldn't see ich per se. After a few days in QT, eating fine, kept scratching, then had an ich outbreak... started copper.. a few days into copper, all signs of ich gone, anticipating 2 full weeks of treatment at suggested dose. Fish looks great, eats like a pig, but still scratches on occassion. Should I be worried about putting it into DT after 2 wks of Cupramine if it's still scratching?

2) Male maroon clown in DT has been doing fine for the past month or two... with it's female mate... eating voraciously... but today I noticed a white, stringy, puffy looking thing on the edge of one of its pelvic fins... would this be flukes? I have no experience with flukes, but always read that I wouldn't necessarily be able to "see" flukes and that other symptoms/signs might suggest like heavy breathing, cloudy eye, etc.

 

[JTrigger]

Apologies for the crappy phone pic quality, but you can make out the white lesion on the pelvic fin...

 

[geaux xman]

never done copper myself, but i've frequently read that if you call Seachem, they suggest 3 full weeks. Especially since there was visible ich, i would go with 3 full weeks and another couple of weeks for observing.

 

[JTrigger]

Thx. Tonight before bed, I noticed the regal had a round red blotch on it's side... great, have NO clue what this is now... another infection, Vibrio? Too much cupramine despite I'm testing it multiple times per day and it's never >0.5

 

[RBU1]

That is correct at least 3 weeks at .5....My advice would be to call Seachem and see what they tell you as far as Cuprmaine duration.

Now the red spot....Could be a secondary infection from the crypt attach. If the fish is still eating I would just stick with the Cuprmaine and nothing else. Make sure you are keeping the water quality up by doing regular water changes.

You can't keep the level at .5? Why? and rock or sand in the tank? Is your test kit accurate? I would use either Seachems kit or Salifert.

 

[JTrigger]

No problem keeping level at 0.5. I have that ammonia alert badge and it's always 0 ppm... water changes every other day,... no sand, no LR, just PVC elbows... completely inert.. running textbook QT

 

[Enceladus]

Is the Regal Angel showing any other signs of distress at all? If his breathing rate is higher than usual, I'd suggest flukes may also be present. The red blotch on the side of your fish can occur with flukes when they literally tear across the fish's body with their hook-like mouths in search of nourishment. It also may explain the ongoing scratching your angel is showing, despite using Cupramine (from what I understand, Cupramine will not successfully treat flukes, although it does wonders against Ich).

As for your clownfish, what you describe does not sound like flukes to me. Flukes are tiny, almost translucent in colour, and very hard to ID visually on the fish. If the fish is not flashing or breathing heavily, then I'm even less inclined to suspect flukes. It's hard to see from the pic, but is it possible that a parasitic isopod has attached itself there? If that's the case, a freshwater dip should do the job there.

Hope this helps.

 

[JTrigger]

Wow, sorry, that's my mistake. Obviously I wasn't focused when I started this thread, but it's a regal "tang" ))

The tang looks great, very lively, breathing completely normally, eating like food's going out of style, but just has this one, small, rusty/red, circular lesion on it's side...

The clown today no longer has this white lesion... and he too looks fine, eating well, breathing well, swimming all over the place...

 

[JTrigger]

LFS thought this might be symptom of treatment-related irritation. Really? Hmmm...

 

[Enceladus]

It's good to hear both fish are doing well. It sounds like you just need to ride out the rest of the quarantine period and play it as it comes.

Is the tang still scratching occasionally? Since it's a tang and not an angelfish, I may have an answer to that one. A lot of tangs I've dealt with in the past seem to enjoy occasionally rubbing themselves against certain surfaces. It's not a sudden flashing, in an attempt to get something off their bodies, but more a casual rub because they like the feel of what they're doing, and a part of normal tang behaviour for many species (my mimic tang loved to do this during his own QT period - and it had me worried like crazy when I first saw it). If your tang is doing this very occasionally, and not scratching and flashing against rockwork every time you look at it, it may not be anything to worry about.

Hope this helps.

 

[JTrigger]

Tang's still looking good. Incidentally, I did a 50% water change to lower the copper after hearing about my LFS owner thinking it was just irritation from the copper. Might make sense since the ich was concentrated in that region on his body and after it went away he was still scratching and may have sloughed off some skin/scales? It basically looked like a red-ish cigarette burn and today it looks a little smaller in size and less red FWIW. I appreciate all of the input, but am now hesitant about bringing the Cu level back up to 0.5.

 

[Enceladus]

Yeah, one of the things that makes copper treatment hard on fish is the fact that it suppresses their immune system. That then leaves them wide open to secondary infections if/when you have treated the original parasite infestation. Copper can also suppress bacteria populations, which can be problematic to tangs in particular, as they have bacterial colonies in their stomach that help to break down the algae they love so much. In your tang's case, provided that he is continuing to eat and not getting skinnier as time goes on, he should be fine.

Given the above concerns, it's no wonder why many in the hobby decide to stop using copper before it has been given enough time to finish the job. It can be fairly brutal, after all. In the case of Ich, it will disappear from a fish after a few days to a week on its own, as part of its normal life cycle - only to come back in greater numbers and overwhelm the fish in the end. Copper will only kill Ich during it's free-swimming stage; from the moment they hatch from their egg-like cysts to the moment they latch onto a fish.

I'd definitely recommend you keep the copper treatment going through it's full course (Seachem recommend 3 weeks for cupramine, I believe) and keep the QT as clean as possible as this goes on. The last thing you want is for the Ich to return and force you into another round of treatment. Any red sores should heal quite quickly once treatment ends. If it looks like the fish is not handling the copper very well, then you may want to consider removing the copper from the water and trying hyposalinity instead, if Ich is still a problem - just don't try both treatments simultaneously as this may prove too much for the fish to handle.

 

[JTrigger]

Perfect. Yep, the tang's actually getting fatter he's eating so much in QT. Ammonia on badge has remained yellow or 0ppm and I still do routine WCs. He's very lively. Do you think I need to keep the Cu level at 0.5 or can he do OK with 0.25-3? Just curious... otherwise, I'll start ramping up the level again today after I get home from work. I started this QT after I had initially lost a tankful of fish from the get go due to 1 clown having ich and passing it on to each fish one by one... so now I'm on the empiric/prophylactic Cupramine side of the equation after watching those poor guys die!

JT

 

[Enceladus]

If I was in this position, I would maintain 0.5ppm for the remainder, and see it through. If he starts developing any new secondary infections, or his health starts to deteriorate somewhere down the line, you'll have to decide whether to keep going and risk the fish not enduring the full treatment period, or abort it early and gamble that the Cupramine has already wiped out the Ich.

It could go either way, and if you have to keep grappling between Ich and secondary infections over many weeks (or even months) then it will weaken the Tang considerably and reduce the odds of his survival. In your position, I'd want to eradicate the Ich for sure, and then work on letting the Tang recover back to full health before going into the display tank.

Best of luck to you.

 

[JTrigger]

Well

Well

Let's say this experiment was a failure as after I apparently lowered the Cu level, the poor guy/gal broke out in ich again tonight... although I'm redosing with Cupramine as I write this... ugh!

 

[RBU1]

was that 3 weeks at .5?