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very informative thread indeed. i would just like to describe my experience with copper. first of all i had lots of new fish infected due to the fact that there is only one lfs that gets marine fish here and they only get fish once every 1-2 months and all the fish they get are sold out in 2-3 days. i used to treat all fish with copper in a Q tank. my first problem was with Q tank stability it seemed as if copper in repetitive doses affected my bacteria. (My q tank runs continuously with 1 wet dry milleneum filter and another aquaclear and a DIY skimmer which i turn off while trating) my true problem and this is one that i cannot truly blame the copper for however i feel it is the cause and its fish blindness. the most evident occurence was with a pigmy angel it was in the q tank with a clown and both were in there for treatment of ich and after the 2nd dose of copper i noticed my angel went blind ans started bumping into things a water change and stopping the copper and the angel regained its vision. also 2 firefish in the Q tank when i was keeping the tank fishless and the Q tank had residual traces of copper from a recent treatment and both firefish went blind. last one my hyppo tang which i've had since around 1 yr and who had been quarantined and treated mostly with copper went blind for no apparent reason he lived for around 6 months in the Q tank and i used to take him out to a bowl and put food for him to find and a while before he died he started to learn the areas of the Q tnak with no flow and he used to go to the right spot whenever he smelled food. i never put him back to the main tank and he remained in the q tank which had residual copper.
i can't say fo sure that copper was the cause however after stopping using copper and going with hyposalinity i had great results and i never had any of those unexplained blindness.
also one thing i should mention is that it is relatively difficult especially for newcommers to this hobby to monitor copper effectively and monitoring salinity is more easy eventhough you have to pay attention to ph levels, i did many hyposalinity treatments and never did i end with a ph variation. and even without a refaractometer i had good results (not saying that a refractometer is not necessary but i can't find one here and no company would ship till here)
i'll end by saying that the best treatment is prevention and i really believe that a healthy tank with good water conditions, high quality feedings... is the best cure and many fish who show one spot or a few spots of ich sometimes get cured by themselves. also LFS should be resposible enough to stop selling unquarantined fish. i got 9 bicolour angels and all of them died form ich and i was advised to stop trying this beautiful fish because of its low survival rate. so i did till one day where one bicolour reamined at the lfs for a month so i took it and now it is thriving in my tank and never showed any sign of disease.
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