I wanted to get some advice/feedback after attempting to QT a copperband that died last night. I want to see what I could do different the next time. I purchased the fish about a month ago and he immediately went into QT with a 6 line wrasse. The tank is a 10 gallon with a HOB filter. Only other thing in the tank was a piece of PVC for hiding, heater, and an ammonia alert badge. I tried various foods and found that he would pick at some frozen but really went after live black worms. I fed him several times a day. Around 12 days into QT, the wrasse had a white spot on his head and I have heard that copperbands typically bring something in. So I decided to start treating with copper. I used copper power and was going to add .25 per day until I got to 2.0. When I got to .50, I went in one morning and the six line had died and the copperband was not moving much and not eating. I immediately setup another 10 gallon QT with new water and transferred the fish to the new tank. After a few days, it resumed eating the live black worms, but not eat like it did previously. I noticed that it was twitching his head a lot and darting around the tank. Also, he was breathing rapidly. I then decided that I needed to treat for parasites, so I put a dose of API General Cure into the tank. He seemed fine after 48 hours, so I added the second dose. I went in this morning to check on him and he had died. With that said, any recommendations on what I could have done differently? Thanks!
Sorry to hear. There were multiple possible issues here (It's complicated, I know).
First, copperbands have a very high mortality rate during quarantine. Some are collected with cyanide and many of those will die no matter what you do. Then, some just do not adapt well to aquarium foods. Finally, they are as prone to diseases as any other fish are.
Second, it is always wrong to ramp up coppersafe or copper power slowly. This is old, incorrect advice based on ionic copper products, these are different. Going slowly allows diseases to take hold.
Third, holding fish for 12 days without a proactive treatment also allows diseases to get started, then they are much more difficult to cure. Always start copper within 3 days of the fish arriving, or even sooner if the fish have adapted to the tank well.
The secondary symptoms seem like flukes, but the initial problem was probably protozoan - if you took the fish out of copper and treated for flukes, that leaves the fish exposed to the original protozoan infection
The 10 gallon QT is a bit small - you can use it, but you must ensure there is adequate biological filtration to keep the ammonia at zero. What I do is leave a good sponge filter operating in my DT's sump, or otherwise have bio media (non-calcium based) that I can move over when starting up the QT.
My standard quarantine process is at this link:
2024 Quarantine Procedures Jay Hemdal David Scarborough Protozoans (Cryptocaryon/ich, Amyloodinium/velvet) and Metazoan trematodes/flukes are by far the most common parasites found on newly acquired fish. A carefully managed, proactive quarantine process can effectively eliminate these...
www.reef2reef.com
Jay
