Copperband Butterfly Fuzzy Spots

Holmesese · Feb 9, 2022

Have been wanting to try a Copperband for a while and finally found one that looked decent at the store.

I put him in my high nutrient tank by himself with live rock to pick at and got him feeding heavily on frozen brine shrimp and bloodworms so that he could handle QT. He ate well and on day 7 started to show minor skin irritation and began flashing on the rocks.

with this I went ahead and moved him to QT and ramped up to .5 ppm of cupramine. He has quit feeding and is now flashing much more, skin irritation is slowly getting worse.

is it bacterial and any recommendations on medicating something off feed? Although I initially thought ich, not seeing smaller white spots( some small perfect round white spots appear on camera but are actually bubbles)

should I take out of copper and treat for bacterial? Have sulfaplex, metroplex, and focus on hand. Fish still doing well so if I have the chance to save him it’s now! Thank you!!!

Jay Hemdal · Feb 9, 2022

Holmesese said:
Have been wanting to try a Copperband for a while and finally found one that looked decent at the store.

I put him in my high nutrient tank by himself with live rock to pick at and got him feeding heavily on frozen brine shrimp and bloodworms so that he could handle QT. He ate well and on day 7 started to show minor skin irritation and began flashing on the rocks.

with this I went ahead and moved him to QT and ramped up to .5 ppm of cupramine. He has quit feeding and is now flashing much more, skin irritation is slowly getting worse.

is it bacterial and any recommendations on medicating something off feed? Although I initially thought ich, not seeing smaller white spots( some small perfect round white spots appear on camera but are actually bubbles)

should I take out of copper and treat for bacterial? Have sulfaplex, metroplex, and focus on hand. Fish still doing well so if I have the chance to save him it’s now! Thank you!!!

Hi,

The flashing is more reminiscent of flukes, and copper doesn't control those. However, the big white spot isn't flukes, it's something else.

Are you able to keep the ammonia down in the QT?
How long has it been in the Cupramine?
Have you given it a FW dip?
Are you seeing any rapid breathing?
(If you aren't sure, you could post a short video and I can tell you if it is).

I'm trying to rule out flukes first. You can treat those with either hyposalinity (also good for ich) or with Prazipro.

The big white spot seems eruptive to me - that is, coming up from under the scales and not for the outside in, like an injury or Lymphocystis. It could be something we used to call Icthyophonus hoferi. I'm not sure if that is the correct name, but it is a type of internal fungal infection. I hope it isn't it as there is no treatment.

Jay

Holmesese · Feb 9, 2022

Thanks for the detailed response Jay, it has me stumped.

the white spots were visible before being moved to the QT and have gotten just slightly worse and the flashing has increased substantially.

it has only been in cupramine for 48 hrs and the full dosage for only maybe 10 hrs. So I don’t think ammonia build up should be an issue yet. Day one in cupramine/QT there was definitely heavy breathing, almost looked like some very light spasms/twitching of the caudal fin and overall stressed fish. Really had me worried, but after a while the heavy breathing stopped and it began acting more normal.

I have not treated for flukes/fw dip and have looked it over for any potential signs, but other than a handful of areas the fish looks fine. Since it quit feeding in QT I haven’t tried anything else bc I didn’t want to add undue stress if this was just an injury it was recovering from.

if you look closely on the last pic with the fish facing the camera, you can see much smaller white areas on the second spine of the dorsal fin and a smaller spot on its side.

Holmesese · Feb 9, 2022

I am wondering if I should remove the cupramine for now to reduce stress since there are no obvious signs of external parasites. What do you think about Doing a freshwater dip to test for flukes - if none come off then mixing food with metro and hoping bacterial until I get more data and the spots develop?

will also being attempting to get better pics

Holmesese · Feb 9, 2022

Got a few pics. Rubbed off the one area while I was gone, but the other side is more protrusive now. Maybe I just injured it while moving to Qt and need to calm down!

Jay Hemdal · Feb 10, 2022

Holmesese said:
I am wondering if I should remove the cupramine for now to reduce stress since there are no obvious signs of external parasites. What do you think about Doing a freshwater dip to test for flukes - if none come off then mixing food with metro and hoping bacterial until I get more data and the spots develop?

will also being attempting to get better pics

The Cupramine (unless you overdosed it) is coincidental to all this. The fish hasn't been in copper long enough to handle disease, so you could be seeing symptoms from that. CBB just don't like quarantine tanks, and you do need to check the ammonia, that can climb the fist day.

In the later photos, I can't rule out Lymphocystis - CBB get that so often.

Handling CBB for FW dips is not without its own risks due to capture stress.

One option would be try hyposalinity - that would remove the copper, control ich and control flukes.

Jay

Holmesese · Feb 11, 2022

Update: I have tried to calm myself and stay the present course in cupramine to let it begin working.

I am unsure how to get an accurate ammonia reading w cupramine. I only have an API kit for ammonia and it gives a false reading w cupramine. I pulled a pretty big chunk of filter material from another tank so I wouldn’t expect an issue, but it could be.

the cbb looks a little better today. Amount of time flashing has reduced by 90% and the spots look better. He Even spent a little time eyeing the filter material for food, but I can’t get him to eat again like he was before QT (even hesitant w live white worms). Now it will probably be a game of nerves- how long am I willing to let him go without eating.

Holmesese · Feb 21, 2022

Status update:
Kept the Copperband in Cupramine for two weeks, went ahead doses Prazi as well to try and reduce time in QT. He has not eaten at all the entire two weeks. This was frustrating since he was readily eating a variety of frozen before. he was even turning down live white worms.

with the lack of eating being most concerning, I did a 50% water change and within a few hours he started eating white worms! Which at least gives me hope that it was the meds that were causing the lack of feeding and not the narrow confines of the QT.

so now trying to decide between TTM or dropping salinity as you suggested Jay. The spots are gone on his side- cause unknown but does have a few puffy white spots on pectorals that looks to be lympho. But he is still hanging in there!

ying yang · Feb 21, 2022

Well glad he is eating now as 2 weeks not eating is a long time.hopefully can feed him lots so he gets his energy up again.
So sounds like the medication suppressed his appetite like I read often with some meds.
Can't offer no advice on meds as never done it. ( well over a decade ago tried medicating a freshwater tank,dont think it ended well but didn't know a right lot about fish then pfffft )

Anyway just thought I'd say nice one for getting the cbb eating as they a beautiful fish.i feed all my tank clams or some kind shellfish daily because of my cbb lol and he the most aggressive eater and feeding him with tweezers so make sure he gets the most ^_^

Holmesese · Feb 22, 2022

Thanks for the encouragement! I was really hoping this one would take to clams but thus far have had no luck. But I will keep trying - clams would be much easier than white worms

Holmesese · Mar 9, 2022

Here is the final update- after over 30 days in QT the copperband is doing awesome. I was only able to do a 2 week cupramine treatment as it completely went off feed during that time. I was also able to do Prazi treatment for 7 days.

Picky eater at first, so I began feeding from a dropper and PVC tube with live white worms and Amphipods. Once it was eating live prey steadily from those sources I then began feeding a mix of live with frozen brine/bloodworms. Slowly trained on to those and then moved to mysis and Reef frenzy. By now it eats anything that comes out of the dropper.

it still has lympho issues, but not worried as I will let it run it’s course. I plan to keep it in QT for another 30 days to really fatten it up and make sure nothing crops back up. Thanks Jay for your advice in the process!