Ick - copper or hypo tx?

[bombay_duc]

What's the general consensus. Copper tx or hyposalinity tx? I'm about to set up a hospital tank and if I can avoid contaminating the tank with copper that would be a bonus.
I have a tankful of ick invested fish, all starting with a blue tang. Not his fault though.

 

[bombay_duc]

I'll get us started. Right now after doing a lot of research on the two treatments, I'm favoring the copper treatment (even though it means a dedicated tank) because it seems that less can go wrong with the treatment. If the pH, alkalinity and hyposalinity are not done right, the fish may be overstressed. Also, I don't have a refractometer and am using a plastic salinity tester. On the other hand, one day I want to have a >1000g tank and will need one at that time ........

 

[alyssia]

I have successfully treated ich with copper, but you have to be careful with it because some fish are very sensitive to it.

 

[mbrennan]

My vote is for hyposalinity ... if you are prepared for it. Must have: Refractometer, cycled quarantine/hospital tank. Never was able to reduce or eliminate the side effects of copper treatments. Last time I tried hyposalinity in my main tank ... what a pain. Thought it would be better to remove my inverts to a quarantine tank and lower the salinity of the display tank. Thought corraling the inverts would be easier ... was I wrong! Not only that, to lower salinity on 130+ gallons from 1.026 to 1.009 takes about 100 gallons of RO/DI water. With (4) 7 gallon jugs that is 6+ trips to the local RO/DI dispensing machine. Really wish I had done it the other way round.

 

[lion_crazz]

I would definitely say hyposalinity. Many fish, including tangs, butterflies, angels, and puffers will not tolerate copper well.

 

[sleasia]

I have always gone with hyposalinity.

 

[unleashed]

i have tried the hypo treatment in the past but alot of my fish (eels) cannot be treated with hypo or fw dips even .i have hwever had very good luck with the use of coppersafe even in my eels and puffers in the tank(non reef of course).hypo only works for ich not other forms of paresites so personally i prefer coppersafe as a treatment for newcommers

 

[bombay_duc]

Originally Posted by unleashed
i have tried the hypo treatment in the past but alot of my fish (eels) cannot be treated with hypo or fw dips even .i have hwever had very good luck with the use of coppersafe even in my eels and puffers in the tank(non reef of course).hypo only works for ich not other forms of paresites so personally i prefer coppersafe as a treatment for newcommers

Unleashed makes a good point. In future, ALL NEW fish get quarantined. The question is do I use copper or hypo to quarantine new fish.?

 

[sleasia]

I think as long as you do not see anything on your fish when you get them you can probably go with hypo during qt. This is what i have done on all my fish, except my last one, a hippo tang. I decided to qt with "observation" and no hypo. After two weeks the fish was begining to stress out in a small tank and I put him in the main tank...He was fine until a week later, and developed ich. so now he's back in qt with hypo and doing fine so far. all the ich is gone, but he has another week or two to go . After all copper can tox the fish, so why use it unless you have a real reason too, like you actually see evidence of some parasites on the new fish.