Ich scars or something worse?

jsanchez · Feb 25, 2016

Oh sorry I thought he said qt. My main tank is a 40 breeder. And this isn't permanent. None of these fish are even 1/4 full size. They'll thrive in the display tank until my 220 is up and running.
The hippo tang is no larger than a quarter.
The trigger is around 2.5"
And the PB is 2"
The algae scrubber on my display is handling the 1.5 cubes of food I ghost feed it a day to prepare for the larger bioload. Nitrates and PO4 are constantly 0.The scrubber is sized to handle 7 cubes of food a day. If at any point I see the fish are not thriving before my larger tank is set up and ready I understand they'll have to be homed elsewhere.

jsanchez · Feb 25, 2016

I went out and got a second Cooper test kit. My first one must have been bad because this new one is reading at .8ppm. I placed cuprisorb and rox carbon in the filter to remove the cupramine. I also have water mixing right now for a water change tonight. Hopefully no long term damage had occurred from the higher copper levels.

Plyr58 · Feb 25, 2016

Cupramine is ionic copper so use a test kit designed for cupramine such as the Salifert kit. If you use a chelated copper make sure you use a test kit designed for total copper such as the API kit and dose according to the instructions.

jsanchez · Feb 25, 2016

I use seachem multitest copper.

jsanchez · Feb 27, 2016

So I actually had a day off for once. So I spent spent an hour just staring at the fish in qt. The powder blue is definitely getting thinner. She eats like a pig but is losing weight. I don't think I'm far off in assuming she has some type of intestinal parasite. I ran carbon all day and did a 100% water change. After that I dosed a round of prazipro. I'll be keeping an eye on her and see if she starts to thicken up. For now I'm also going to be upping feedings. The algae scrubber should be able to keep NO3 and PO4 low.

Humblefish · Feb 27, 2016

If her condition doesn't improve after two rounds of Prazipro - spaced about a week apart - you might want to try metronidazole next for stubborn intestinal worms.