Help needed

[mcbdz]

Ok, I'm a little confused. Or maybe I'm just missing something. Got the banner butterfly, kole tang and hippo tang on Dec 13th. All looked good. Did 5 minute FW dip and added to 55gal QT. 14th Noticed 1 spot on hippo which which disappeared that night. 15th. Noticed butterfly with multiple white spots. (I did expect these) copper started. Reached copper level 2.14ppm with hanna checker on 19th. All fish clear but having aggression issues. All eating good. Made a divider for fish. 23rd cut 2.11 with hanna checker. All clear and eating frozen good. Tangs eating nori. Some aggression noted still.
26th notice fish covered in white spots. Have noticed aggression off and on between tangs, butterfly still separated. I know I have to separate the tangs for sure now but cute level just checked and at 1.99ppm. I thought ich would not reattach at this level of copper? Any advice?

 

[Big G]

Can you post a picture of the fish?

White spots can appear on the fish after copper has reached therapeutic levels as the copper only kills the ich/velvet parasites during their "free swimming" stage of life. Parasites already attached are uneffected and will remain on the fish, especially Ich which burrows deeply under the skin. So the white spots are those wounds left "after" those attached parasites have finally dropped off. The number of spots should begin to decrease as the wounds heal and no more parasites will be attaching to your fish.

You could consider giving the fish a 60-90 minute bath in Ruby Reef Rally. It will help prevent bacterial infections from the numerous parasite insertion points and greatly increases survival rates, especially from velvet.

 

[mcbdz]

Can you post a picture of the fish?

White spots can appear on the fish after copper has reached therapeutic levels as the copper only kills the ich/velvet parasites during their "free swimming" stage of life. Parasites already attached are uneffected and will remain on the fish, especially Ich which burrows deeply under the skin. So the white spots are those wounds left "after" those attached parasites have finally dropped off. The number of spots should begin to decrease as the wounds heal and no more parasites will be attaching to your fish.

You could consider giving the fish a 60-90 minute bath in Ruby Reef Rally. It will help prevent bacterial infections from the numerous parasite insertion points and greatly increases survival rates, especially from velvet.

This is day8 of theraputic copper levels. Is it safe to pull them out of that and inti the bath for 60-90 minutes then return them to that high of a level of copper. That is scary to me? cu is 1.99ppm with hanna checker.

Sorry I know there are things in water and difficult to distinguish. Mostly can see on hippo and tail fin of banner in pic.

 

[Big G]

If you do the bath, make sure especially this time of the year to keep the temp constant with the tank temp. And aerate during the bath. RRR is a very mild antibiotic/antiseptic.

An alternative would be to treat the copper tank with antibiotics. Very mild antibiotic would be Kanaplex.

If you see large, filmy whitish areas growing on the fish from the insertion wounds, we like to use the "trifecta" of Kanaplex + Furan2 + Metro, as these cover a very wide variety of infections both internal and external.

Beautiful fish you have there. Best of luck. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!