Any other reasons not to dose copper

chase21

New member
I have had my aquarium for a little over a year now and am at my wits end. I have lost dozens of fish to what appears to be ich. Every single 'fancy' fish I've bought has somehow ended up with ich and died- the only fish I've been able to keep alive are 3 damsels and a sixline wrasse. It's now been about 4 months since the others passed, and I decided to get something new- a longnose butterfly. He has been in my tank less than a week and already has this stupid ich all over his fins. I've decided if I ever want to have anything other than damsels I will have to dose copper. I can live without inverts and corals, but my question is this: being that copper is so 'final', are there any other drawbacks that I'm not thinking of? My ultimate goal is to maybe have 2-3 butterflies along with the damsels and I'll be completely satisfied.

My tank is 60 gal, I have 60 lbs live rock and a dsb. Only test that's off is nitrates, they're at about 20-30 ppm as I have no sump skimmer, just a canister filter
Any input whatsoever is greatly appreciated!
 
I would love to be able to do that, unfortunately I'm not set up for a qt.
This may be a silly question but does anyone else out there just dose copper everytime they get new fish instead of qt?
 
being that copper is so 'final', are there any other drawbacks that I'm not thinking of?

Some of the copper will get absorbed by your rock/sand, and then get released back into the water column at various intervals. This makes it difficult to maintain a stable concentration.

This may be a silly question but does anyone else out there just dose copper everytime they get new fish instead of qt?

Back in the day, I would dose copper anytime a fish showed symptoms of ich. This usually happened after adding a new fish (I did not QT back then). I had a crushed coral substrate and utilized dead coral skeletons for "decorations". So while I'm sure copper absorption occurred with that setup, it probably wasn't anywhere near as intense as doing it in a tank with 60 lbs of porous rock and a deep sand bed to boot. :worried2:
 
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a qt doesn't have to be expensive or fancy as seen here. Very simple effective and will save you money and save your future tank mates from the inevitable.
 
There's no way there could a be successful tank packed with healthy fish without a strict regimen of quarantining. Many people learn this the hard way and the amount of fish loss costs way more than a simple 20 gallon quanratine tank setup.
 
There's no way there could a be successful tank packed with healthy fish without a strict regimen of quarantining. Many people learn this the hard way and the amount of fish loss costs way more than a simple 20 gallon quanratine tank setup.

100% agree!
 
I have had my aquarium for a little over a year now and am at my wits end. I have lost dozens of fish to what appears to be ich.

after going through 24+ fish this is the first time you have started to look at what may be going wrong?
 
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