Achilles Hybrid in QT

RBU1

RBU1

Moving on Up
OK fish disease people I would like some opinions please. I have had the Achilles Hybrid in QT for a little over 2 weeks. He is eating seaweed only and looks clean. The past fish in QT were also doing great until I added my Cupramine treatment. It seemed like within 2 days of adding cupramine my fish were dead. I am not blaming the Cupramine at all just not sure what could be going wrong. The fish this happened to were a black tang and goldflake angel. I DONT WANT A REPEAT.....

So I am thinking about ust leaving the Achilles Hybrid in QT for a while without any kind of treatment. He is in a 30 long with a 9 watt UV running. I have been doing 2 15 gallon water changes per week.

What are your thoughts? About a long QT (6-8 weeks) with no treatment?
 
That's actually a great idea. Its my understanding that those fish don't do very well with medications anyway. So instead of treating it with such you may want to spend some time trying to get it to eat flakes and frozen foods. Good luck.
 
What did you dose the cupramine to? What test kit did you use to verify? Did you use any sort of water conditioner like Amquel or Prime? I like sticking to the old gold standard ionic copper, it's easy to dose and test, and you can use products like Prime to address water quality issues.

Aside from that, keeping the Hybrid in QT for 6-8 weeks isn't going to be a problem at all, especially in a 30L, that tank is plenty big enough to support it for a little while. By the time it's ready for the display, it will be used to your feeding and husbandry practices which just makes survival in the display that much easier. Training it to eat your food in QT is so much easier then training it in the display, I would bet that when you do put it in the display it will start eating right away without the token hide for a few days thing normally associated with putting a new fish in.
 
I dosed the cupramine to .5 using Seachems kit and a salifert kit. I increased the dose slower then instructed to play it safe also....But that did not work either. I am not sure what my issue was. I was using a large w/d filter filled with bioball as my filtration on the 30 along with an emperor 400 hang on. this time I am only uising the emperor hang on a powerhead, airstone and heater. More of a simple approach. I am gun shy on the cupramine and would rather just extend the QT period and see what happens. I wish someone would come up with a treatment that is not so harsh on the fish and is easy to do.......
 
I personally don't like using copper with tangs - bad results except once. I really like hyposalinity treatments if you're worried about cryptocaryon. If you were really careful with your main display and doubt cryptocaryon exists in it, then I would definitely treat your tang. If your main display contains fish that weren't treated before introduction for crypt, then treating your tang isn't very useful since he may get the parasite in the main tank. I'd still treat with PraziPro for internal parasites - pretty safe treatment.
 
MechEng99 said:
I personally don't like using copper with tangs - bad results except once. I really like hyposalinity treatments if you're worried about cryptocaryon. If you were really careful with your main display and doubt cryptocaryon exists in it, then I would definitely treat your tang. If your main display contains fish that weren't treated before introduction for crypt, then treating your tang isn't very useful since he may get the parasite in the main tank. I'd still treat with PraziPro for internal parasites - pretty safe treatment.
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Sounds like a good plan and rationale.

8 weeks does sound like a long time in QT for an Achilles though. I'm sure you've read the primer where people are essentially equating QT to death for Achilles. I don't agree with that but if you get the feeling the fish is stressed at any point it might be a good idea to move him over (especially if he is still looking clean and in good health).
 
Jacob D said:
Sounds like a good plan and rationale.

8 weeks does sound like a long time in QT for an Achilles though. I'm sure you've read the primer where people are essentially equating QT to death for Achilles. I don't agree with that but if you get the feeling the fish is stressed at any point it might be a good idea to move him over (especially if he is still looking clean and in good health).
Click to expand...

Well my thought is the Achilles Hybrid is probably a little hardier....Just because of the Gold Rim aspect...

What are some signs of stress to look for? Right now he seems fine. I just can't get him to eat anything but Seaweed....... yet.....
 
heya i have treated many fish with seachems cupramine, and this is certainly my favoured copper treatment. from personal experience i would say that staggering the dosing along with very regular testing is important. all fish have varying levels of tolerance to these medications. also would like to mention that 0.5mg sounds a bit high, some fish will tolerate it this high but others can be killed by it. dont think dose needs to be higher than 0.3 max. again this is just my personal experience.

cheers

james
 
Keep it eating seaweed, that is the best thing for it. With the exception of the Hippo, tangs are almost 100% herbivorous.
 
as above, keep it eating seaweed, better than eating nothing. :)

there are endless foods you could try though other than brine and mysis. i literally have half a freezer draw full of variety of frozen foods as well as dried foods.

id start by trying some flake foods (or any flake foods) and see how you get on with that. find tangs do like that sort of thing.

try any kind of frozen food, pick up a selection and see how you get on with them.

is he gorging himself on the seaweed or just nibbling? may not be enough to substain him if he is only pecking at it, so always worth while trying other things.

hope he does well for you.

james :)
 
Keep it eating seaweed! Offer a few varieties...red/green/brown...and fresh if you can get it...and offer it on a clip as much as possible. My tang (the rescue HLLE tang) only ate seaweed for quite a while. I thought he was eating pellets at one point, but no, they were just all going behind a rock (took him about a month to switch back to pellets the previous owner had him on - Formula 2). If you'd like to wean your tang to some other foods, try soaking them and some shredded dried algae in Selcon/VitaChem. The tang will probably only eat the algae first, but will come to associate the smell/taste of Selcon with algae...then will possibly accept whatever food you are weaning him on (without the algae). IME, tangs seem to have a knowledge of their own bodies - they'll only take seaweed when they're stressed but will switch to a variety of foods when they're happy. Not saying that's your case, but it's what I've dealt with.

I worry about you keeping your tang in a QT tank for so long without treating. A long QT in a less-than-large tank could mean enough stress over time that the tang will actually develop something.
 
It will be 3 weeks tomorrow. He eats all kinds of seaweed. I have some purple I chop up and soak in garlic guard that he goes crazy for. He did develop a spot and cloudiness on his eye on Sunday that I treated with PraziPro and it is perfect now. Not sure if I should continue the QT or get him in the main tank. I was told by a friend if I am not treating with copper I should leave him in QT for at least 8 weeks.....Im torn. I want the fish to do good but don't want to introduce anything to my main tank.....
 
RBU1 said:
It will be 3 weeks tomorrow. He eats all kinds of seaweed. I have some purple I chop up and soak in garlic guard that he goes crazy for. He did develop a spot and cloudiness on his eye on Sunday that I treated with PraziPro and it is perfect now. Not sure if I should continue the QT or get him in the main tank. I was told by a friend if I am not treating with copper I should leave him in QT for at least 8 weeks.....Im torn. I want the fish to do good but don't want to introduce anything to my main tank.....
Click to expand...

Do a 100% water change and rinse your filter media in SW. Adjust the temp to 80F. Measure the copper concentration, and re-dose the tank with ionic copper to a concentration of 0.3 ppm. Maintain that concentration for 14-21 days.

After that, you safely say that there is nothing left to bring to your display, and you can start acclimating that beauty.

Ionic copper is the best, and it's just as easy on the fish as any other treatment, provided you don't overdose....

With the amount of money and time you have put into your fish list, I wouldn't chance waiting for something else to happen in QT, I would just do another treatment and be sure.
 
Chris27 said:
Do a 100% water change and rinse your filter media in SW. Adjust the temp to 80F. Measure the copper concentration, and re-dose the tank with ionic copper to a concentration of 0.3 ppm. Maintain that concentration for 14-21 days.

After that, you safely say that there is nothing left to bring to your display, and you can start acclimating that beauty.

Ionic copper is the best, and it's just as easy on the fish as any other treatment, provided you don't overdose....

With the amount of money and time you have put into your fish list, I wouldn't chance waiting for something else to happen in QT, I would just do another treatment and be sure.
Click to expand...

I have not done any treatment on this fish other then PraziPro. I can't do a 100% water change but I can do 50% to 75% roughly. Copper scares me I have had bad luck with it recently. What type of copper do you use and what kit do you use to test it? I have a coulple bottles of Seacure laying around that are real old. I don't think that stuff goes bad and I think Seacure is the type of copper you are talking about.
 
RBU1 said:
It will be 3 weeks tomorrow. He eats all kinds of seaweed. I have some purple I chop up and soak in garlic guard that he goes crazy for. He did develop a spot and cloudiness on his eye on Sunday that I treated with PraziPro and it is perfect now. Not sure if I should continue the QT or get him in the main tank. I was told by a friend if I am not treating with copper I should leave him in QT for at least 8 weeks.....Im torn. I want the fish to do good but don't want to introduce anything to my main tank.....
Click to expand...

8 weeks is sort of the "playing it safe" time frame to use if you're not treating but monitoring for ich. In 8 weeks it should go through the lifecycle a couple of times so there's a decent chance you will see the visual indicators. IME it usually doesn't take that long to see the signs if ich is present, more like 4 to 5 weeks... but it can always vary.

If you do copper the fish, 4 weeks should be absolute minimum if you want to ensure no ich... 5-6 weeks would be a safer bet.

Also, Hypo is a good alternative to copper.

Keep us posted...
 
Well I leaning towards doing nothing and leaving him in QT for another 3 weeks. That would make it 6 weeks in QT.....
 
Chris27 said:
Ionic copper is the best, and it's just as easy on the fish as any other treatment, provided you don't overdose....
Click to expand...

Why would you say Ionic is the best? Chelated and Complex copper are better choices with Complex being the best.

RBUI: All my fish have gone through Cupramine and I've never had an issues. But if you for some reason have had issues with Cupramine I can see your hesitation of not treating it and if he is doing well and shows no signs then just keep doing what you are.
 
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