I know this has probably been asked a thousand times, but I cant seem to find a good answer. I have a scissor tail dart fish that developed Ich in qt. My qt tank is not the normal qt tank; I have rock and sand. I just haven't had good luck with using a bare bottom tank with pvc. I know if I treat with copper the rock is going to absorb some of it, but is it possible to effectively treat the tank?
Copper With Live Rock?
- Thread starter sundog101
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melypr1985
totally addicted
It's possible to do this, but you would have to test the copper every day during treatment. You'll need to keep the levels at therapeutic levels and not let it go down below or get too high as the rock absorbs and leaches the copper back out again. But it's possible... just harder.
+1 It's actually harder the first time around, as the "virgin" rock absorbs and then leaches back out all the copper. However, once the rock has been saturated that makes it easier to dose copper the next go around and the next... I still recommend daily testing if you're gonna go this route, however.
I once worked for a guy who QT'd all fish using just an undergravel filter and like 6 inches of crushed coral/dolomite substrate for filtration. We struggled to maintain the Cu level at first, but after a month or two it remained remarkably stable.
jenreefer
Well-Known Member
I have maintained a FWLR 125 with Copper for close to a month. It was a bit tough at first, had to keep adding daily but now has remained stable for last two weeks. I still check levels every few days, but so far so good. I call it my 125G Copper experiment.
