help with cupramine toxicity.

[ARGYGANG]

i am currently treating my display tank with cupramine and just have a question regarding the toxicity of the stuff and also want to add i am treating for no specific sickness but rather for irradication of ich without having to fallow. so of course when you treat a display tank with rock in it the copper levels rise and drop for the first few days so i am checking twice a day with hanna checker and sometimes it drops down to .45 but i have not seen a bounce up at all so ive been topping it off to get back to .5 for the proper levels. so the issue i am having is the fish that are supposed to handle cupramine at a 1 danger level are all dying such as a picasso trigger a scopas tang and a few other fish like them but the danger level 5 animals such as my moray eel my two wrasses and my bicolor angel are all doing just fine, im not running any uv or anything that would cause this cupramine to become toxic and its beyond me as to why these animals that are supposed to handle it well are dying off rapidly and the ones that are supposed to be extremely sensitive to it are handling it for over a week now and only getting better from there previous state of health. any advice is helpful as to why this could be happening, im having zero ammonia since it is a established display with liverock and 50 lbs of biomedia in the sump, and im monitoring with two seachem alert badges on opposite ends of the tank. and also i must add i am doing this whole treating the display with cupramine because i am detailed logging how much it takes to fight absorption about how long it takes to stop absorbing for my tank size and all that fun stuff so i can then write a very detailed article about my experience doing it for the first time, as many people new to the hobby also debate doing it for multipul reasons. thanks again any advise is helpful.

 

[sfin52]

I'm at 0.6 no ill effects on my fish.
I lost 2 a royal gramma and my kole tang. The royal gramma was old 8yrs. The kole tang had ich worse than I thought.
Absorption is dependent on how much rock and sand.
Black spot foxface
Ornate leapord wrasse
Solar wrasse
Half black angel
2 clown fish
Blue green cromis. All doing fine

 

[Jay Hemdal Verified Community Expert]

i am currently treating my display tank with cupramine and just have a question regarding the toxicity of the stuff and also want to add i am treating for no specific sickness but rather for irradication of ich without having to fallow. so of course when you treat a display tank with rock in it the copper levels rise and drop for the first few days so i am checking twice a day with hanna checker and sometimes it drops down to .45 but i have not seen a bounce up at all so ive been topping it off to get back to .5 for the proper levels. so the issue i am having is the fish that are supposed to handle cupramine at a 1 danger level are all dying such as a picasso trigger a scopas tang and a few other fish like them but the danger level 5 animals such as my moray eel my two wrasses and my bicolor angel are all doing just fine, im not running any uv or anything that would cause this cupramine to become toxic and its beyond me as to why these animals that are supposed to handle it well are dying off rapidly and the ones that are supposed to be extremely sensitive to it are handling it for over a week now and only getting better from there previous state of health. any advice is helpful as to why this could be happening, im having zero ammonia since it is a established display with liverock and 50 lbs of biomedia in the sump, and im monitoring with two seachem alert badges on opposite ends of the tank. and also i must add i am doing this whole treating the display with cupramine because i am detailed logging how much it takes to fight absorption about how long it takes to stop absorbing for my tank size and all that fun stuff so i can then write a very detailed article about my experience doing it for the first time, as many people new to the hobby also debate doing it for multipul reasons. thanks again any advise is helpful.

Are you adding any reducing agents? Formalin, ammonia remover, thiosulfate?

That is counterintuitive that the eel, wrasse and bicolor are all fine and a trigger and tang died. Is the eel still feeding?

I think you need to look elsewhere for the issue. As you may know, it is really common for "copper treatment" to catch the rap for some other issue. This is akin to "cyanide poisoning" and "Mycobacteria" being blamed for any unknown fish loss.

Jay

 

[InactiveAcct]

My advice is to throw the cupramine in the trash and get copper power. Two issues with cupramine are it’s less stable (swings with tank chemistry) and the therapeutic level is small compared to copper power.

For cupramine, we’re talking 0.2 mg/ liter. If your test is off by 0.2, you’re killing fish. You need to be really good at testing to dial it in and test often!

Copper power therapeutic level is 2.5 ppm. If you’re off by 0.2, then you’re only off by <10%. Fish will be fine.

I learned the hard way as well. I started doing QT and the cupramine only served to kill them, was very sad to lose 2 otherwise healthy fish back to back.

 

[ARGYGANG]

Are you adding any reducing agents? Formalin, ammonia remover, thiosulfate?

That is counterintuitive that the eel, wrasse and bicolor are all fine and a trigger and tang died. Is the eel still feeding?

I think you need to look elsewhere for the issue. As you may know, it is really common for "copper treatment" to catch the rap for some other issue. This is akin to "cyanide poisoning" and "Mycobacteria" being blamed for any unknown fish loss.

Jay

thanks for the reply jay, so we are not adding anything to the water besides cupramin and prazipro, i did some research and while its not recommended to run both at the same time from what i read as long as its dosed properly it will be slightly less effective in copper and may cause a bacterial bloom, so to combat that possibility of lost oxygenation in the water i added a large wave maker four sponge filters and two airstones....possibly over kill but better safe than sorry. so unless its the prazipro which i know i dosed correctly for the amount of water in my tank (not how much its supposed to hold how much it actually currently has inside of it) then i am lost here.

 

[Jay Hemdal Verified Community Expert]

thanks for the reply jay, so we are not adding anything to the water besides cupramin and prazipro, i did some research and while its not recommended to run both at the same time from what i read as long as its dosed properly it will be slightly less effective in copper and may cause a bacterial bloom, so to combat that possibility of lost oxygenation in the water i added a large wave maker four sponge filters and two airstones....possibly over kill but better safe than sorry. so unless its the prazipro which i know i dosed correctly for the amount of water in my tank (not how much its supposed to hold how much it actually currently has inside of it) then i am lost here.

And wrasse are often considered sensitive to Prazipro (but I've not seen that myself). I suspect the people who see this didn't aerate properly.

Jay

 

[vetteguy53081]

thanks for the reply jay, so we are not adding anything to the water besides cupramin and prazipro, i did some research and while its not recommended to run both at the same time from what i read as long as its dosed properly it will be slightly less effective in copper and may cause a bacterial bloom, so to combat that possibility of lost oxygenation in the water i added a large wave maker four sponge filters and two airstones....possibly over kill but better safe than sorry. so unless its the prazipro which i know i dosed correctly for the amount of water in my tank (not how much its supposed to hold how much it actually currently has inside of it) then i am lost here.

Work with Jay on this as he has you on the path. Do add oxygen as Prazi reduces oxygen slightly - using an air stone will help

 

[ARGYGANG]

And wrasse are often considered sensitive to Prazipro (but I've not seen that myself). I suspect the people who see this didn't aerate properly.

Jay

That’s what I’m saying it makes absolutely no sense at all why these fish that are not being affected but a perfectly healthy scopes tang and a perfectly healthy virgate rabbit fish and my trigger all three died so so suddenly, I’m pretty much marking it off as the flukes killed them when they spasmed from the prazi even though that’s rare I’ve checked everything three times over even checked for stray voltage in my tank asked my partner if she added anything to the tank and she confirmed I am the only person adding or taking from the tank. I’m really not sure, I’ll update if I figure anything out but as of right now I’ve checked everything I can think of and nothing is seeming to be off. It’s even more odd that the three that passed were the biggest in the tank, and everything else including a half inch royal gramma basslet is handling this treatment fine.