Kole tang- velvet?

[KJoFan]

Within the past few days I have noticed what appeared to be a fine dusting on my Kole tang. I immediately thought velvet. Yesterday he was doing more hiding than swimming around and was pale. But when he was out he was still grazing the rock.
I made the decision last night to pull him and start copper right away in case it was velvet. He’s up to 1.95 ppm as of a little bit ago.

All other fish in the display are fine so far. They include other easy targets like a hippo tang and yellow tang and foxface rabbit fish.
Best photos I can get for confirmation of diagnosis.

 

[Crabs McJones]

If it is velvet (and does appear to be) you'll need to move all your fish over to qt. It's a ticking time bomb as to when the others break out. But good on you for getting it moved over and in copper asap

 

[KJoFan]

He's not as pathetic as he appears in the photo, he's just trying to hide. He will swim around if he sees fit. Will copper level of 1.95 ppm (just where it ended up) be sufficent? I usually aim for 2.0 and am just shy, but maybe just leave well enough alone on that front?

What a disaster. A 150g tank full of fish, and several of them leopard wrasses.

 

[LAReefer4Life]

Sorry to hear about your troubles! It does appear to be velvet and nice job getting him in QT quickly. 1.95ppm is sufficient but over the next couple days bring it to 2.0ppm. Also how quickly did you raise the copper levels and is still eating? Did you add anything recently to the tank?

You''ll need to run your DT fallow for 6 weeks to eradicate the parasite. Velvet is fast acting so keep that in mind.

 

[KJoFan]

I raised copper fairly quickly (18 hjust because it was appearing to be velvet. So far not eating but is also stressed alone in a bare tank. But I’ll monitor and bump to 2.0.
I’ve dealt with velvet before unfortunately. I’m not sure I have another round of fight in me. And some fish have already been through QT and copper. Do I really want to poison them further? This might just be the hobby exiting event for me. I’m not equipped to qt all my fish.

 

[KJoFan]

I got all fish I plan to keep moved into qt tanks. I only have 3 10g tanks so it’s not ideal and I’ll be lucky to make it through without some casualties. But we’ll give it the old college try.

I kept four fish back that I don’t want to keep, I figured this was a good time to separate them. They will move on very soon and then the clock starts on the fallow period.

I am letting the other two qt tanks settle a bit before starting copper as they aren’t showing signs of illness at this point. After all have gone through a minimum of 14 days at full therapeutic copper I will move everyone into a temporary Rubbermaid trough until the fallow period is over. Again not ideal but I don’t just have a tank lying around to use. I can have a heater, skimmer, and powerheads in the tub and they should get along I hope.
The one tank is probably overpopulated so ammonia will need to be watched initially. Which is also why I’m holding off on copper until I can make sure it’s stable.