treating dogface puffer & red corris for ick?

[silence88]

ive had a 3" adult red corris wrasse for five weeks in a 20g QT(not realy a true QT it has lots of LR, sand macro algea and choclate chip star)well my 75g was finaly ready and i bought a small 2.5" dogface, i planned on moveing the wrasse and star to the 75 and putting the puffer in the 20g for QT, but when i had the bag floating in the 20g he bit threw it and got out along with the LFS water in the bag, now there both in there and the dogface has ick and cloudy eyes, the wrasse looks fine but i thought i should put them in a larger tank and lower the SG and mabie use copper meds, but the wrasse needs sand and i thought you cant use copper with sand? is copper even a good idea with scaless fish? would upping the temp to 86 or so be a good idea? and most important is i dont have a spong filter or anything just live rock but if i use copper in the QT with rock it will kill it but will hypo kill it as well or just run a bare tank and do WCs? i thought haveing a QT with rock ect would be good for the fish i gess bare is better

 

[silence88]

sorry can someone move this to the fish disease forum

 

[JustinReef]

No copper with the puffer. Its way too hard on their internal organs. People do it sometimes and the fish make it through but who knows what kind of internal damage is done. Scaless fish should never be treated with copper.

Hypo for 6 weeks is your best bet. A sponge filter would be a very good idea too.

Good luck!

 

[billsreef]

[moved]

Either copper or hypo will kill off any life in the rock other than bacteria. As a result, it's always best to treat in a seperate QT that uses inert objects (plastic) for providing cover to the fish. If you go with copper, Sea Chem's Cupramine is the best IME and is tolerated by even copper sensitive species like puffers. Hyposalinity is my preffered method, but requires a very accurate lab grade hydrometer, a refractometer or calibrated conductivity meter.

 

[silence88]

thanks for your help, i dont have a refractometer as i cant see well enought to use it, if i use cupramine do i need a copper test kit as well? and is there a problem doseing cupramine with sand? i dont realy care if the rock life gets killed by copper if it will help with the filtration, sence i dont think an un seeded spong filter will do anything, is the wrasse copper sensitive as well? hes showing no signs and is still healthy as ever

 

[billsreef]

It's advisable to use a test kit with copper Anything calcium based, sand and rock and such, will pull some copper out of solution. That's part of the reason for testing and adjusting the dosage daily. For future salinity checking, you might want to check into the pinpoint conductivity meters. They have nice big and easy to read displays.

 

[Pufferpunk]

It's best to keep the main tank fallow for 8 weeks instead of 6, if it has been infected.

 

[silence88]

well i whent to the LFS today and they dont have cupramine, so i will try someware eles tommorow, iam asumming salifert copper test kit is the one to use but are there any others? i was thinking of other ways of treating him, would putting him in a 10g bare tank for a day then giveing him a FW dip and either disenfect the tank or switch tanks and do it every day or two for like week so that ick cant complete its life cycle?

 

[billsreef]

With the cupramine, it's best to use Sea Chem's test kit. What makes it safe with copper sensitive species also means it doesn't test accurately with all brands of test kits.

 

[WuHT]

The problem is the coris is a burrower.. .so some sort of substrate is required... so in your case Hypo > copper.

If you dont have any seeded filters, ask around lol .. dont over-rely on chemical ammonia-binders

 

[silence88]

well thing just got worse, i herd a strange sound comeing from the tank and when i whent and looked the puffer was blown up the size of a baseball and stuck to the intake of the 400gh power head, he has a nasty round scar now with skin peeling off but i cant get a good look as hes now hideing in the rocks, i was about to move him to a 10g for hypo should i? and what would be a good med for is sore is melafix anygood?

 

[billsreef]

I've never had very good luck with melafix. For that wound, I would use either Nitrofuran or Maracyn 2 (SW version). Either one can be used in conjunction with either copper or hypo treatments.