Dosing copper question

TikiBird · Feb 5, 2017

I apologize if this has been asked a million times before, but I must have missed it!

I'm dosing seachem cupramine to treat for ich in my hospital tank. I did the first dose 48 hours ago, so I just tested with the seachem copper test kit. It was about in between 0.3-0.4 (kind of hard for me to match the color exactly). I just added some cupramine to the water to raise it a bit more.

Do I need to test every 48 hours and add more cupramine again if it dips below 0.3? And continue to do this for the rest of the 30 days?

@Humblefish and @melypr1985 (or anyone else too!), would love your help.

melypr1985 · Feb 5, 2017

If you have any plastic, live rock or live sand in the QT you'll want to continue to test regularly since those things can absorb the copper in the water bringing the level down a bit. It can also leach it back out causing the levels to raise a bit. Neither of these things are good since going down can bring it below therapeutic range and raising it up can cause it to become toxic to some of the fish.

If there are no materials that will absorb copper, then once you reach therapeutic range, it should stay there unless you do a water change. With a water change, though you should dose the new water before adding it to the QT so the levels never change. Testing after the water change is ideal to be sure it didn't drop.

TikiBird · Feb 6, 2017

melypr1985 said:
If you have any plastic, live rock or live sand in the QT you'll want to continue to test regularly since those things can absorb the copper in the water bringing the level down a bit. It can also leach it back out causing the levels to raise a bit. Neither of these things are good since going down can bring it below therapeutic range and raising it up can cause it to become toxic to some of the fish.

If there are no materials that will absorb copper, then once you reach therapeutic range, it should stay there unless you do a water change. With a water change, though you should dose the new water before adding it to the QT so the levels never change. Testing after the water change is ideal to be sure it didn't drop.

This is perfect! Exactly what I was wondering about. Thank you so very much, @melypr1985!