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Mr_Banana_Pants

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I couldn't think of any other title to put. Just thought I would put this out there for any other new reefer dealing with a disease so they don't make the same mistake I did.

There've been plenty of people here who have helped me with treating my fish for velvet and ich outbreak. After treating my fish for 2 weeks with copper in a 10 gallon tank, I decided they needed to be transferred to a 30-gallon tank to give them more room to swim. I finally manage to test for ammonia a week after I started using the 30 gallon tank (I know it was stupid). I panicked because my ammonia came out sky high.

I rushed to treat my tank with nitrifying bacteria, and I dosed with seachem prime to help make the ammonia and nitrite safer for my fish. Luckily started looking online after treating the tank, and found that seachem Prime will actually break down the copper medication from a safe form to a highly poisonous form to the fish. The Forum also stated that most ammonia test kits will give you false readings when treating with seachem's copper.

As quoted from their website:
Ammonia test kits can not distinguish ammonia from the amine based complex present in Cupramine[emoji769] and will therefore give a false high reading for ammonia while using Cupramine[emoji769]. Our Ammonia Alert[emoji769] and MultiTest: Free & Total Ammonia[emoji769] test kit do not suffer from this problem as they utilize a gas exchange technology that can distinguish ammonia from amines.

Again I panicked knowing I possibly killed all of my fish, and started by placing carbon in my filter to remove all the copper, and mixed up enough salt water to do a 50% water change.

Now all I can do is wait and hope that my fish are okay in the morning. I figure in a couple days I'll do another large water change, then start treating with copper again and restart my 30-day treatment.

It's a little long but hopefully somebody will read this and not make the same mistake I did.
 

melypr1985

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Valkyrie

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I'm pretty sure I read in at least one of Humble's stickied posts (treatment options 102, perhaps) that ammonia test kits would be inaccurate and to not use Amquel or Prime. However, I did not know that there was a test kit that I could use that was accurate. I forgot to pick up the badges yesterday and now it'll be Friday before I can get to the store again. Ordered through Amazon and they'll be here Tuesday. PHEW!

While you're at it, @Humblefish , maybe some more information about dosing a tank with the copper to bring up the levels slowly. I think I figured out how it should be done and here's what I plan to do. Correct me if I'm wrong.

The bottle of CopperSafe says to dose 5mL/4gallon. In the 20g tanks that works out to 25mL/20gallon. Humble's instruction says to bring up the Cu level over 3-5 days. So I was going to add 5 mL over the next 5 days. IF the scopas starts to weaken I'll up it to 8mL/day.
 

melypr1985

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The bottle of CopperSafe says to dose 5mL/4gallon. In the 20g tanks that works out to 25mL/20gallon. Humble's instruction says to bring up the Cu level over 3-5 days. So I was going to add 5 mL over the next 5 days. IF the scopas starts to weaken I'll up it to 8mL/day.

Looks good. and great idea about adding that info to the sticky. We'll get on that pretty quick.
 

Brew12

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The bottle of CopperSafe says to dose 5mL/4gallon. In the 20g tanks that works out to 25mL/20gallon. Humble's instruction says to bring up the Cu level over 3-5 days. So I was going to add 5 mL over the next 5 days. IF the scopas starts to weaken I'll up it to 8mL/day.
Your test kit will be critical when using CopperSafe. The recommended dosage will not bring you to a therapeutic level. It will bring you to a low level that they recommend for continuous exposure.

I've dropped the ball on this one since I haven't had a QT set up in a few months. I need to take the time to dose a measured gallon of water with Coppersafe and see what the actual amount is to get it to therapeutic levels. I'm sure many people would find that information useful.
 

Mastering the art of locking and unlocking water pathways: What type of valves do you have on your aquarium plumbing?

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