Help!

[hmg]

We have a 45 gal fish only tank with a dogface puffer, some other type of puffer, a Niger Trigger, a bursa trigger, and a udulated Trigger (the triggers are small so they get along ok for now). Two months ago or so we noticed what looked to be ick on our other puffer. We treated the tank with Greenex,our lfs recommended it. It seemed to be taken care of all the othewr fish showed no visible signs,etc. Then a week or so later the dogface was covered with white spots everywhere. The Niger and Bursa's behavior was odd. the Bursa was swimming in spiral-like circles and the Niger was darting and swimming a little faster than usual.But they had no white spots. We then treated the tank with copper as advised by our lfs. We used the coppersafe without carbon for approx. 2 weeks. Our ammo was getting high the fish seemed better so we did a water change and put the carbon back in. And now a week later they are starting to dart around again. Our dogface has no white spots but light blackish spots. We are obviously new to the hobby and we have been relying totally on our lfs for help( obviously we need to find a better lfs for advice). I just recently found out about this website(take it easy on us for using the chemicals, we didn't know better). Hopefully it's not too late to change what we've been doing an do the right thing. I've been reading the message boards.Should we try hyposalinity? We realize this is probably very repetitive but I'm not quite sure what some of our fish have. If anyone can help us it would be so greatly appreciated!!!!

 

[beth]

Sounds like you are treating your fish in your main tank? If so, hopefully, it is a fish-only tank, meaning no inverts, live rock or live sand.
Before recommending a treatment course, please describe in detail your fishes' symptoms, the spots, where they are located, size, are the pimple like? How are your fish doing? Breathing, swimming, eating? Black pin-size spots is usually black spot disease or what is also known as black ick. It looks similiar to ick, but the dots are black. What about the ick you "had""?
Also, you do know that all those aggressive and large fish can not stay in the small tank. Are you planning on getting a larger tank?

 

[hmg]

Since Yesterday someone we know took in our undulated, the bursa and the other puffer, so we only have a 2-3" Niger , a 3" dogface and a 3" Wrasse. We realized we were over populated so hopefully that will help. We weren't planning on upgrading to a larger tank for another year or sur tank is fish only, no inverts or live rock,etc.
The dogface first had whitehead like spots, since we treated the tank they have disappeared. Recently I noticed small flat bumps all over the body of the dogface puffer.The color is actually a charcoal gray.He has been eating, he usually only swims when he is hungry and looking for food then he'll hang out in the lava rock, this is usual behavior for him. I did notice sometimes he breathes heavier than usual.The Niger had a whitish film on his eye awhile ago but it has been cleared up for three weeks or so.He has been eating fine and swimming around like usual but I've noticed once in awhile he swims back and forth up near the front of the tank unusually fast.I believe the other Puffer we got rid of may have had ick. There were just a few granular white spots on one of his fins so we treated the entire tank with the Greenex,in fear of an ick epidemic.As I said we treated them as the lfs told us to and it seemed to have cleared up.We did a water change. Aweek or so after I noticed the white pimple spots on the dogface, they cleared up after we treated the tank with coppersafe.The white spots are gone but left the spots as I described above.I called another fish store yesaterday, different from the other, he had suggested that we were overcrowded, we do another water change, and the spots on the puffer could be scarring???As I said we did get rid of three fish. We have good amount of filtration on our tank: A Magnum HOT, a Whisper filter rated for a 75gal, and a bio-wheel with filter. We have only one powerhead and two airstones in each corner.