ich outbreak need advice

[Tallulah18]

I recently had a double saddle butterfly fish that i first noticed the ich on and quickly spread to other fish within 2 days, I went to my fish guy and he gave me copper to put in the tank but unfortunately a bunch of fish had already died prior to treatment. Since the treatment the surviving fish seem happy and healthy again. How do I know the ICH is completely gone, so I can add fish back in one day? I am a newbie and learning lots of new things as i go

 

[helphelp]

Hi Tallulah18, I'm battling with ich as well. Depending on the copper product, I would follow suggestions from the manufacturer. On the bottle of Cupramine it is written to keep fish in 0.5 mg/mL of Cu2+ for two weeks. I understand that after that you remove copper from the system (water change/carbon) you need to keep fish under the observation for a few weeks. Remember that you have to remove all the fish from the main display and leave it fishless (fallow period) for suggested 8-12 weeks, depending where you get the advice from. I think, that even if you take things slowly and increase Cu concentration from 0 to 0.5 mg/mL over 1 week, 2 weeks treatment, 1 week for Cu removal, it gives you another 4-8 weeks for observation before you can add fish back to the main display. During that time you should look for any strange symptoms.