My nightmare has happened. In my 180g display I had a powder blue tang, a yellow flanked fairy wrasse, a Swiss guard basslet, a tail spot goby and two midnight clowns.
The PBT came down with ich so I decided to go full hospital tanks and treatments. I set up 2- 20g tanks with hang on back filters and heaters in my spare room.
I managed to catch all of the fish and placed the wrasse and PBT in the 20 long and the other 4 in the standard 20. Each of the 20g tanks actually hold 16g plus the volume of the HOB filters.
The next day I dosed 5ml coppersafe to each tank and everyone seemed fine. The next day I dosed another 5 ml to each tank, which should have brought me to half dose of copper safe. My wrasse did not take this increase well. I did a 7g water change to try and reduce the copper concentration in the 20 long. Long story long... the wrasse did not recover and died today. I did not test for copper levels yet since as per the instructions I'm still under half dosage.
This is the 3rd day on copper, one fish has died (showed no signs of any disease) and the other 5 are not eating. I'm very nervous as this is my first time using copper or doing a hospital tank and I'm considering abandoning the whole thing. My Gf thinks I'm crazy for going to this extreme for a few fish.
Should I wait for the fish to eat and continue raising the copper levels every few days? By my calculations the 20 long has 6 ml of copper safe in it. Meaning that to dose according to instructions (5ml/4g) the 20 long still needs 14 ml of coppersafe. The standard 20 has 10 ml coppersafe in it so far and needs another 10 ml.
Should I be using the API test kit to test? I was told that the level I am looking for on the API test kit is 1.5mg/L. All accounts say between 1.5-2.mg/L. I'm just being paranoid about the loss of the wrasse and I'm looking for a little bit of validation and any advice.
The PBT came down with ich so I decided to go full hospital tanks and treatments. I set up 2- 20g tanks with hang on back filters and heaters in my spare room.
I managed to catch all of the fish and placed the wrasse and PBT in the 20 long and the other 4 in the standard 20. Each of the 20g tanks actually hold 16g plus the volume of the HOB filters.
The next day I dosed 5ml coppersafe to each tank and everyone seemed fine. The next day I dosed another 5 ml to each tank, which should have brought me to half dose of copper safe. My wrasse did not take this increase well. I did a 7g water change to try and reduce the copper concentration in the 20 long. Long story long... the wrasse did not recover and died today. I did not test for copper levels yet since as per the instructions I'm still under half dosage.
This is the 3rd day on copper, one fish has died (showed no signs of any disease) and the other 5 are not eating. I'm very nervous as this is my first time using copper or doing a hospital tank and I'm considering abandoning the whole thing. My Gf thinks I'm crazy for going to this extreme for a few fish.
Should I wait for the fish to eat and continue raising the copper levels every few days? By my calculations the 20 long has 6 ml of copper safe in it. Meaning that to dose according to instructions (5ml/4g) the 20 long still needs 14 ml of coppersafe. The standard 20 has 10 ml coppersafe in it so far and needs another 10 ml.
Should I be using the API test kit to test? I was told that the level I am looking for on the API test kit is 1.5mg/L. All accounts say between 1.5-2.mg/L. I'm just being paranoid about the loss of the wrasse and I'm looking for a little bit of validation and any advice.
