copper treatment question

[cooltankmate]

i've been treating my 3 tangs with coppersafe for 1 week. it looks like the ich are coming back on the blue tang. but only the blue tang tho. other 2 tangs are fine. so, is it normal that ich will appear again during the 4 weeks treatment? if not, is that mean coppersafe is not working? if it's not like that, i'll change to cupramine instead

[Hattie B]

The life cycle of the parasite is that it feeds falls off, breeds and then reinfects the fish.

its likly that you will see the fish with some white spots after as week because they have been reinfected. If it goes on and on, then yes look at your meds but within a couple weeks you should see all of them getting better.

It must be working if the other 2 tangs are showing now signs so thats positive.

Just remember after treatment stops and the fish are healthy that you need to 'start the QT time' meaning that once you see the spots disappear you need to wait ~ 4-6 weeks before putting them into your display... That way just in case there are any parasites left you will catch them before adding them to your display.

[joemin51]

Hi cooltankmate, we have same problem, I just posted a new tread ...and we're all using "coppersafe".. is it because of the medication we used??? hope for some expert to give us a answer!!

[inspiredaqua]

try hyposalinity, especially if you dont have corals. I used copper safe and formalin. Worked like a charm for me. You definately want to wait 40 days. Make sure that you do proper water changes after the use of formalin, must make sure you remove carbon filtration as well or that may cause the treatments to fail.

[vette68]

I have 4 tangs (well all of my fish) in a 30 gallon hospital tank now treating with Coppersafe. The Ick was gone within about a week. The Coppersafe will kill the free swimming form of the Ick. So, if you dosed the tank properly, it's practically impossible to get re-infected with Ick once all of the initial spots are gone. What started showing up about 2 weeks after that were white spots on my morph tang. These weren't Ick spots, but a fungus infection. Last week I started treating with Maracyn and now all spots are gone. Look closely at the spots you are seeing. I'll bet they're bigger and puffier looking than the original Ick spots you saw in the beginning. That's one problem with Coppersafe is that it's use can cause secondary fungal infections, and it seems that the morph tangs are particularly succeptible to this.