Flame Angel and Cupramine

oatyfruitybar

oatyfruitybar

Goby
#1
#1
Recently bought a Flame Angelfish which had a little ich, so I decided to quarantine and treat with Cupramine. It is my understanding that Flames are quite sensitive to it, so I cut the dosage in half. It's been 5 days on the treatment with no problems, but I came home tonight and the fish was swimming upside down and breathing very hard.

I immediately started dripping regular aquarium water with the intent to completely remove the Cupramine over the course of an hour or so. Is there anything else I can do to help this fish recover? Is recovery even possible? If you have any thoughts, please let me know ASAP
 
ShelbyJK500

ShelbyJK500

Dolphin
M.A.S.C Club Member
#2
#2
I can tell you I had a flame angel in QT that got a severe case of ich, was covered. Came home one night and he was laying on the bottom of the tank almost completely white. I figured he was already dead, but he was breathing. I immediately started dosing cupramine to normal strength. The next afternoon when I went to check on what I thought would be a dead fish....he was swimming around normally and had all his color back.

So I would suggest getting your copper level to the recommended dosage. You have to be in the "kill zone" of copper levels to kill off the ich. If you just do a half dose, you're really not killing anything. So, on a positive note, recovery is possible. Sorry I saw your thread late. :(
 
oatyfruitybar

oatyfruitybar

Goby
#4
#4
I'm sorry if I wasn't clear - I don't think that it's Ich that's bothering the fish. It's sides are white, but not spotty white like they would be with the parasite.It almost looks like it's color has drained away. It was doing wonderfully in quarantine and the spots were almost gone. It was my intention to remove it from quarantine yesterday because it seemed to be doing so much better. All of this makes me think that it is the copper bothering it, not the parasite, and I was wondering if there is anything I can do to combat the effects of Cupramine overdose?
 
ReefCheif

ReefCheif

Reef Shark
M.A.S.C Club Member
Platinum Sponsor
#5
#5
The copper is likely bothering the fish as well as the ich but becuase your not dosing enough to kill the parasite entirley, but dosing enough to be poisoning the fish/ By dosing half, you have exposed the fish to the copper but have not added enough peds to affectivly kill the parasite, and by keeping him in QT with only half dosings your likely prolonging the exposure of the copper and its having limited affects.

I have not dealt to much with ich in saltwater, but dealt with it plenty when I was breeding freshwater cichlids. I did have a tang I rescued that had a bad case of ich, I put him in a QT tank with temp at 82 and added absolutly no chemicals. He was good to go in 5 days. In my experience with freshwater ich the parasite can only be killed once it becomes "free swimming". Your actually not killing the parasite when its infecting the fish, but killing it as it reproduces and releases into the water, the best method for this is temp. The parasite thrives in cooler water temps up to about 80, anything above that it can no longer reproduce or thrive and just dies off. As I said, this is my experience with freshwater and I have only tried it once in saltwater, it worked, but may have been luck.
 
oatyfruitybar

oatyfruitybar

Goby
#6
#6
Thank you all for the advice, but the fish ended up dying.
 
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