Copper not working on hippo tang at DOUBLE highest volume recommended after 1 week

[ChargerOnDavins]

Has had ich (ick?) for one week being in more than 1.0 PPT or whatever copper as tested by salifert copper tester. Cupramine is mostly what was used. It was dosed according to instructions. Before that, coppersafe was used for a single dose. Did two water changes, have only used cupramine since.

Fish are in two 29 gallon hospital tanks with PVC piping, a hang on filter with only sponge loaded in (NO carbon), NO skimmer, and one small pump to move the water around. Bubbler in both also. Nitrites and Nitrates at about 3 ppm. Ammonia at 0.

All fish are healthy, except for hippo tang w/ ich, and my magenta dottyback with a fungal infection who is being treated with pimafix (in the same tank). I was told by LFS that both medications will not interact with eachother (and even if they did somehow, I added that YESTERDAY, so this tang still had ich for 6 days in SEVERELY high copper concentrations. I would reduce it but it's obviously not working.

Copper test kit again read nearly 2 PPM yesterday, did LARGE waterchange (65%) now it reads about 1 PPM or PPT I don't know the unit of measurement. I thought target amount was .3-.5

 

[jas8943]

you want to get spectrum thera + A it is the best food/ meds iv ever use i feed my tanks 2 a week with it and my yellow bely blue tang has never had it

 

[Jstdv8]

.5 is the correct amount using cupramine.
Has it been a full week in the reccomended dosage of copper for sure? because the cysts that are in the fish will not be affected by the copper until they drop out, but I think that happens within 3 days if I recall correctly.
Copper does not trat the infected fish, it kills the free swimming ich that is at the other end of the life cycle, before it can get back to the fish to complete the cycle.
So if its the same dots in the same place they just havn't dropped yet. If its all new dots, something is wrong. and perhaps it has to do with mixing the two.

 

[ChargerOnDavins]

at 2.0 ppm, spots would appear, disappear, and re-appear in different areas, indicating that indeed the parasite has not been killed.

 

[LargeAngels]

I only use Seachem's test kit for Cupramine. Put 1ml of Cupramine in 5 gallons of new saltwater and test it with your test kit. It should be 0.5 ppm. I'm guessing that your test kit is not measuring the Cupramine correctly.

 

[Chris27]

Quit dosing copper immediately and do a 100% water change. Retest the water, and dose cupramine per the directions to get the desired concentration. Cupramine isn't too bad on fish when compared to ionic copper, but a concentration of 2.0 is way beyond the recommended safe range unless you're using a strait up chelated copper.

Crypt has a good deal of stages in the lifecycle, and copper only affects the free swimming. If the fish is showing the token white spots, simply increasing the concentration won't get rid of them, but it may kill the fish. You must be patient enough to let the cycle continue.

The typical treatment period is 2-3 weeks with ionic copper, cupramine may take longer given that it's not as effective against the parasite as plain-old ionic copper.

 

[ChargerOnDavins]

Quit dosing copper immediately and do a 100% water change. Retest the water, and dose cupramine per the directions to get the desired concentration. Cupramine isn't too bad on fish when compared to ionic copper, but a concentration of 2.0 is way beyond the recommended safe range unless you're using a strait up chelated copper.

Crypt has a good deal of stages in the lifecycle, and copper only affects the free swimming. If the fish is showing the token white spots, simply increasing the concentration won't get rid of them, but it may kill the fish. You must be patient enough to let the cycle continue.

The typical treatment period is 2-3 weeks with ionic copper, cupramine may take longer given that it's not as effective against the parasite as plain-old ionic copper.

This made the problem tenfold worse. The tang had literally 100s of spots on him when I removed the copper. I bought another test kit (salifert) which was highly spoken of to test for cupramine. The tang nearly died. I freshwater dipped him, and then put it back. Overnight, he became COATED again. I raised the copper back to 1.5 PPM and overnight all spots have gone away.

All inhabitants of the tank appear to be doing PERFECT. All healthy, great color, eating, and acting like themselves.

This is mind-boggling to me. I don't know what is going on, but I am not risking it anymore. A few other fish had spots on them when I had the recommended amount of copper in tank, and they all went away overnight after I increased dose.

In 9 days, they go back to the tank if they stay clear of the parasite. No signs on any fish for 4 days now.