Cupramine in a fishless tank?

[iamborg]

Hi,
All my fishes died because of ICK.

Now, I do not have any fish in the tank, no corals too. one hermit left.
Can I still add cupramine to the tank to kill the ICK or
ICK will died by itself if there are no fish?

Can I reduce the salinity, increase the temp and add cupramine at
the same time on a fishless tank?

I want to speed up the process because I want to add fish again.

thanks.

 

[Tastee]

I don't believe there is a quick option here. As I understand it Cu will only kill free swimming Ick and the other parasites won't be affected. You then have two problems - need to wait for the non-free swimming parasites to hatch and die and need to remove the Cu from your rock etc. The latter could be done with Poly Filter or Cuprisorb, but due to the former you still need to wait until all the Ick parasites are dead, so there is no point in adding the Cu. You may as well just wait it out.

The other option is to break the tank down, sterilise everything and start afresh - new cycle etc. Even though you don't have any fish or corals at the moment you still have lots of micro-fauna in the tank, possibly worms and sponges etc and breaking it down would kill all that.

Sorry but you are best being patient and waiting it out. 76 days appears the gold standard, but 40 days may be sufficient. Hopefully others with more experience than I have will chime in.

Good luck!


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[dkeller_nc]

Agreed - do notadd copper to a tank in which you intend to keep corals or other inverts in the future.

Inverts are extraordinarily sensitive to copper, and copper in any form will react with organics to form complexes that will then adsorb to your rock, sand, or anything else in the tank. The tank itself and the silicone/plastic plumbing will be OK so long as it's taken apart and thoroughly washed with detergent, but the rock and sand will be permanently compromised.

I'd suggest using the time to learn about quarantine in general, and tank transfer and/or hyposalinity treatment to avoid a repeat. You can then acquire the equipment you need, and get a couple of fish. Since the fish will need to be quarantined for a minimum of 3 weeks to ensure that they're not disease carriers, you can get them ahead of the end of the fallow period for your reef, just make sure that you don't transfer anything from your reef to your quarantine tank that hasn't been cleaned thoroughly, including equipment like nets, algae magnets and even your hands.

 

[tkeracer619]

Just wait it out. I'd raise the temps into the low 80s and let it go for 73 or so days.