vette68
Member
About 2 months ago, I tore apart my reef, caught all my fish and put them in a 40 gallon rubbermaid hospital tank. The tangs came down with a mild case of ich, and I wanted it gone from my tank. So, I treated the fish with cupramine for 6 weeks and let the main display tank remain semi-fishless for a while. Well, 2 weeks ago I put all the fish back in the main tank, and I can say that I have not seen one ich spot since their return. But I do have a couple observations...
First, within about a week of putting my purple tang in the cupramine, it developed a case of HLLE, which it never had before. I just associated it with stress and figured it would go away. Well, the whole 6 weeks it was in the hospital tank, the HLLE stayed. Within about a week of putting the tang back into the main tank, the HLLE is gone. So, there must be something in the copper that caused this. Nothing too major, but just an observation.
The other problem I had was with a mandarin. There was no way I could have put this fish into the hospital tank for 6 weeks. It would have starved to death, or would have not tolerated the copper. So, I made the decision to leave the mandarin in the display tank by himself. I've heard that they are resistant to ich, so figured I'd give it a shot. Well, it seems the gamble paid off. The whole tank appears to be free of ich, despite leaving a potential host in the tank during the quarrantine.
This is now the second time I've been able to successfully eradicate ich from my system. And to those who think ich is just a part of life in a reef tank, not so. It can be eradicated completely, and should be as a part of responsible reef keeping.
Anyhow, just a couple observations on some topics that don't seem to get much discussion, and an answer to the mandarin question that nobody seemed to know 2 months ago....
Bill.
First, within about a week of putting my purple tang in the cupramine, it developed a case of HLLE, which it never had before. I just associated it with stress and figured it would go away. Well, the whole 6 weeks it was in the hospital tank, the HLLE stayed. Within about a week of putting the tang back into the main tank, the HLLE is gone. So, there must be something in the copper that caused this. Nothing too major, but just an observation.
The other problem I had was with a mandarin. There was no way I could have put this fish into the hospital tank for 6 weeks. It would have starved to death, or would have not tolerated the copper. So, I made the decision to leave the mandarin in the display tank by himself. I've heard that they are resistant to ich, so figured I'd give it a shot. Well, it seems the gamble paid off. The whole tank appears to be free of ich, despite leaving a potential host in the tank during the quarrantine.
This is now the second time I've been able to successfully eradicate ich from my system. And to those who think ich is just a part of life in a reef tank, not so. It can be eradicated completely, and should be as a part of responsible reef keeping.
Anyhow, just a couple observations on some topics that don't seem to get much discussion, and an answer to the mandarin question that nobody seemed to know 2 months ago....
Bill.
