So I have a planted 20g tetra tank with neons, glolight, and black tetras.
It's was a great tank until I got a piece of planted driftwood and ich broke out. I tried all the "natural" cures, which stressed my fish and I lost some. I even tried (without success) a couple different treatments using malachite green and formalin but those didn't help either.
I finally tried seachem cupramine. I got that, a copper testing kit, and cuprasorb to remove after treatment. I was ready.
It seemed to soothe the fish right away. Within a couple days the visible spots were gone. After almost a week I started the removal process.
Well I was left with less tetras and decided I could use a few more. I decided on 5 black neons and 3 baby glolights because I had 2 mature ones and thought they needed friends of their own kind (they were displaying mating behavior but I think they were the same sex)
This is were chaos began. For reasons unknown my two mature glos were gasping at the top with red throats in distress. Everyone else was fine, my parameters were great, no ammonia or nitrites, very little nitrates, there doesn't seem to be enough fish for the plants, nitrates don't accumulate, I suppliment with occasional ferts.
All I had on hand was fun and body cure which is supposed to treat gill disease, I tried it but the next day one glo died, the other was improved. I was worried about flukes, did a water change and used prazipro. Everything seemed to return to normal except what looked like ich spots (all my local fish stores struggle with it to varying degrees).
After a few weeks of tetra bliss I still noticed spots and decided since there are no shrimp or special snails to do another treatment.
The fish again, act like they've been given a tonic. They are all relaxed, not stressed, eating well. . . The tank looks even clearer than usual. In 5 days to a week I will start the removal process.
The reason I'm posting this is because when you have a fish illness it seems like most of the suggestions are to to anything but use medication, especially copper. The copper in cupramine stays in solution and isn't supposed to bind to substrate, it never affected my pest snails. I use the lowest perceivable dose and test daily. My little guys were noticably stressed with heat and salt, they are happy while being treated with cupramine.
I only have these problems when I get new fish. I don't know if there were flukes or not but something was wrong with the glos and prazi is supposed to be mild and safe. I didn't want another ich plague so decided it best to treat early. I removed the few shrimp I had in there (further evidence that the first treatment didn't contaminate my substrate)
It seems to be working, my new glo tetras we're pretty tiny, one was missing half it's dorsal fin. They are all growing and the fin is healing.
Ironically if I would have known the one mature glo was going to die I wouldn't have bothered getting more. I still wish I knew for sure what they had, it came on quick, literally overnight. Now it's as if it never happened.
Oh well, hopefully after this the tank will be stable until the next time.
It's was a great tank until I got a piece of planted driftwood and ich broke out. I tried all the "natural" cures, which stressed my fish and I lost some. I even tried (without success) a couple different treatments using malachite green and formalin but those didn't help either.
I finally tried seachem cupramine. I got that, a copper testing kit, and cuprasorb to remove after treatment. I was ready.
It seemed to soothe the fish right away. Within a couple days the visible spots were gone. After almost a week I started the removal process.
Well I was left with less tetras and decided I could use a few more. I decided on 5 black neons and 3 baby glolights because I had 2 mature ones and thought they needed friends of their own kind (they were displaying mating behavior but I think they were the same sex)
This is were chaos began. For reasons unknown my two mature glos were gasping at the top with red throats in distress. Everyone else was fine, my parameters were great, no ammonia or nitrites, very little nitrates, there doesn't seem to be enough fish for the plants, nitrates don't accumulate, I suppliment with occasional ferts.
All I had on hand was fun and body cure which is supposed to treat gill disease, I tried it but the next day one glo died, the other was improved. I was worried about flukes, did a water change and used prazipro. Everything seemed to return to normal except what looked like ich spots (all my local fish stores struggle with it to varying degrees).
After a few weeks of tetra bliss I still noticed spots and decided since there are no shrimp or special snails to do another treatment.
The fish again, act like they've been given a tonic. They are all relaxed, not stressed, eating well. . . The tank looks even clearer than usual. In 5 days to a week I will start the removal process.
The reason I'm posting this is because when you have a fish illness it seems like most of the suggestions are to to anything but use medication, especially copper. The copper in cupramine stays in solution and isn't supposed to bind to substrate, it never affected my pest snails. I use the lowest perceivable dose and test daily. My little guys were noticably stressed with heat and salt, they are happy while being treated with cupramine.
I only have these problems when I get new fish. I don't know if there were flukes or not but something was wrong with the glos and prazi is supposed to be mild and safe. I didn't want another ich plague so decided it best to treat early. I removed the few shrimp I had in there (further evidence that the first treatment didn't contaminate my substrate)
It seems to be working, my new glo tetras we're pretty tiny, one was missing half it's dorsal fin. They are all growing and the fin is healing.
Ironically if I would have known the one mature glo was going to die I wouldn't have bothered getting more. I still wish I knew for sure what they had, it came on quick, literally overnight. Now it's as if it never happened.
Oh well, hopefully after this the tank will be stable until the next time.
