Many will tell you not to do this, I've done it successfully several times. That said, I've never had luck with SPS and perhaps that's a contributing factor. I keep monti caps but anything else I dont do well with. I also don't really try or dose as I should and my nitrates and phosphates run high due to overstocked tanks, perhaps copper isn't the issue. Even the ocean has low amounts of copper present.
Cuprisorb, carbon, and heavy water changes over a two week period (replaced cuprisorb at least twice through that period) will remove culramine well. I don't use other copper products so I don't know about how easy this is with them.
I will say this though that you'll have to dose 3-4 times as much cupramine, testing daily (use seachem or salifert kits only for cupramine) until it is remotely stable due to leaching. It leaches out as easily as it absorbs in to the rock and sand in my experience.
Many here think this is absolute madness but I've done it successfully 4 times or more over my 12 years in the hobby with success, and long term coral health, even clams. I even left a hermit in at double the therapeutic level of cupramine for 2 months and he survived until I found and removed him! Pretty astonishing. Don't try that though.
I would recommend though that you buy a qt tank and look up [HASHTAG]#humblefish[/HASHTAG] 's thread on properly qting and leave the tank fallow.
It really is your best bet. Less risk, less possibility for trouble. The problem you'll run in to whether qt or display is ammonia. Ammonia will jump quickly even in an established tank with live rock and sand. There are debates about whether that is the beneficial bacteria dying or just being shocked. I can tell you that one of my 180 has had heavy doses of cupramine now for 3.5-4 months and supports a grossly overstocked fish list just fine, so it either recovers or adapts.
You'll want the sea chem ammonia badge to test how much ammonia is truly present with any of the options involving copper or cupramine as many of them will render ammonia tests useless and show false positive readings.
Do large water changes any time you see the badge displaying anything other than healthy yellow (the baseline color it showed when you added it to a cycled tank). For my DT I had to do this for 2-3 weeks daily 40 gallon water changes. For qt tanks it will take longer to seed and require just as frequent water changes, up to 75-80% as I do in my 55 qt when they're heavily stocked (as they often are when you take a lot of fish out of your DT to run it fallow and move them to a qt)
So you'll want lots of RODI water, lots of sponge for a HOB filter for bacteria to colonize (I add more to the tank inside near a power head as well), I use araga milk also to increase PH in fresh water changed water, the ammonia badge, cupramine, a power head to break the surface and keep the water oxygenated and/or a bubbler (prefer PH), and either sailfert or sea chem copper test kits. Polyfiber pads wouldn't be a bad idea either to combat ammonia. I also place them somewhat "stuck" to a power head so they get lots of flow.
People struggle with QT but it's often ammonia that kills the fish. Follow these instructions and you'll be fine. Act quickly.
If your fish are already sick (and they are) then you may lose fish anyway, regardless of what you do. It is probably a good idea to do a freshwater dip when they leave your DT and enter the QT to give them some immediate relief while you SLOWLY increase cupramine to .5 PPM (I actually use .7 as my average as it seems more effective, perfectly safe, and prevents against downward swings that give the parasite another round of reproduction during the low swing)
I'll let humblefish help you with the freshwater dip, or do a quick forum search he has lots of great information in the disease forum!
But those who say that qt kill fish generally didn't heed warnings about ammonia (which you'll have trouble with no matter which route you take), and the fish were ill already so stress and the parasite itself has already weakened them. In both cases, qt is blamed rather than poor husbandry, which is almost always the real culprit. Proof to follow.
The worst thing you can do in a bad outbreak is nothing.
I've successfully kept several VERY fragile fish through qt in an immensely overstocked environment. Regal Angels (2), Achilles tangs (2), copperband butterflies, leopard wrasse, moorish idol, and many more.
These two tanks in the video below currently have .6-.7 ppm copper in them as you are looking at these videos. Literally they're in copper water in those videos. They have been for a couple months again after I moronically reinfected my tank by cross contaminating.
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They've been in it for months and are thriving without issue. Soon to go back in a fallow DT after 72 days (as recommended).
Good luck!
