New reefer, sick tang in quarantine

[Concept9]

Hi everyone, I'd like to introduce myself here and thanks for reading my post. I'm new to reefing, and this is my first time reaching out for advice.
The main question I have is in regards to my scopas tang in my hospital /quarantine tank.
Immediately after I purchased the fish, I noticed it had 1 foggy eye. This eye began to swell up so I began tri sulfa treatment at 1.5x and 0.013 hypasalinity. The eye came good after a few days but continued treatment for 7 days to be safe.
The whole time it was eating like a machine, mixed diet of sea weed, pellets, frozen brine, algea wafers.
The day I decided it was ready to go into display, it developed ich.
I began copper treatment immediately as per the bottle, started at half strength and increased to full strength over 2 days.
It's showing slight signs of improvement after 4 days but my brand new hanna hr copper reader measured 0.00 2x today.
Should I dose again?!
FYI, I added a small bag of zeolite to tank as recommended by lfs on day 1 of copper treatment.
Also, the copper treatment product I'm using is called "ultimate aquatics parasite remover".
The qt tank (30L) has had 9 pipette drops in total.
Am I way under? Could my hanna be faulty?
Thank you so much in advance, I look forward to your experience and advice guys.

 

[Concept9]

 

[Jay Hemdal Verified Community Expert]

Welcome to Reef2Reef!

That is a copper sulfate/citric acid product, full dose for that is 0.20 ppm and your test kit won’t register that low. Can you get copper power, Cupramine or coppersafe? If not, you are going to need to get a low range copper test. The product you have has fallen out of favor over the years as it is more toxic than other copper products - works great though.
Jay

 

[Concept9]

Hi Jay, thank you kindly for the reply! I really do appreciate it. I was sold this product and told to run it it 0.3, starting at half dose (4 drops in my aquastyle 380) and added another 5 drops 3 days later.
There's been a noticeable improvement but the scopas is still far from fully recovered.
I'm also lost as to why I'm getting 0.00 reading on the hanna hr.
Has it got anything to do with the zeolite?
Would really appreciate some insight if you know why or why not.
I'm completely open to trying another product if necessary but would rather work with what I have as if at all possible.
Its a challenge to quickly source meds here atm (Sydney lockdown) and hoping to release the fish from this tiny tank ASAP. Thanks again for your advice!

 

[Jay Hemdal Verified Community Expert]

Hi Jay, thank you kindly for the reply! I really do appreciate it. I was sold this product and told to run it it 0.3, starting at half dose (4 drops in my aquastyle 380) and added another 5 drops 3 days later.
There's been a noticeable improvement but the scopas is still far from fully recovered.
I'm also lost as to why I'm getting 0.00 reading on the hanna hr.
Has it got anything to do with the zeolite?
Would really appreciate some insight if you know why or why not.
I'm completely open to trying another product if necessary but would rather work with what I have as if at all possible.
Its a challenge to quickly source meds here atm (Sydney lockdown) and hoping to release the fish from this tiny tank ASAP. Thanks again for your advice!

The high range Hanna test uses the bichinchoninate test method. For ionic copper like this, you need the LR meter (that probably uses the porphyrin method). The Hanna test is only + or - 0.05 ppm accuracy, which means that it can swing as much as 0.1 ppm. Since the treatment level is 0.20, you could be at a half dose and the meter could possibly read zero. I never dosed ionic copper higher than 0.25 ppm, so 0.3 seems too high to me, but maybe?

One way to really test the meter would be to mix up five gallons of seawater, give it a full dose of copper, mix for an hour and then test it with your Hanna.

I cannot remember if zeolite removes copper or not, but it may.

Any calcareous material in the tank (sand, crushed coral or coral rock) will quickly bind with this type of copper, removing it from solution.

Jay

 

[Concept9]

Very informative! Thanks so much. I will continue to ring around and try to source a different copper treatment product. Do you think a very large water change prior to starting treatment with alternative product will be fine? Or should I dose the new product lower in case there is residual?

 

[Concept9]

I just tested a 1L sample from the display, adding 2 drops to it. The hanna is spot on, got a reading of 2.00. I have added another 3 drops to the quarantine tank and will test again this afternoon. If I don't get a reading of at least .05/. 1 I'll move onto a different treatment product over the weekend.
Thank you again, and I'll share my results soon.

 

[Jay Hemdal Verified Community Expert]

I just tested a 1L sample from the display, adding 2 drops to it. The hanna is spot on, got a reading of 2.00. I have added another 3 drops to the quarantine tank and will test again this afternoon. If I don't get a reading of at least .05/. 1 I'll move onto a different treatment product over the weekend.
Thank you again, and I'll share my results soon.

Ok, sounds good. If you do switch to another copper, you should do a large water change first.
Jay

 

[Concept9]

I ran the test again this morning and got a reading of 0.09. The Scopas is showing increased improvement tonight. The quarantine tank is probably due for a water change, so I might do that tomorrow and add some more copper to read slightly more than 0.09. What are your thoughts? Also, amonia is still very low but I haven't changed water in exactly 1 week and was thinking of doing so to freshen it up and also slowly raise the salinity.

 

[Jay Hemdal Verified Community Expert]

I ran the test again this morning and got a reading of 0.09. The Scopas is showing increased improvement tonight. The quarantine tank is probably due for a water change, so I might do that tomorrow and add some more copper to read slightly more than 0.09. What are your thoughts? Also, amonia is still very low but I haven't changed water in exactly 1 week and was thinking of doing so to freshen it up and also slowly raise the salinity.

I'm still not sure exactly what is going on here, nor the level that is appropriate for the copper you are using. Zeolite *can* remove copper, but not very well in marine systems.

0.09 is still below the 0.20 typical full dose for ionic copper / citric acid formulations.

Jay