Maracyn safety question

[trgirl]

Is Maracyn safe for copper sensitive fish? I have a banded cat shark and he is intolerant of copper. My trigger has popeye and I hear Maracyn will cure it. Also, does Maracyn cure things such as Ich? The box says it cures "secondary infections" and I didn't know if Ich fell into that category. Thank you so very much!

 

[gobylover]

Maracyn is an antibiotic and does not contain copper.Ick does not fall into a secondary infection.It will cure the eyes.It is used for bacterial infections.Using maracyn and maracyn 2 together is often recommended.BUT,are you also treating for ick?What do you have in your tank?Maracyn or other antibotics are not good if you have inverts or live rock.

 

[trgirl]

I do have live rock in the tank. It is a 150 that is home to a picasso,niger trigger,snowflake eel and banded cat shark. The niger is the fellow with the popeye. The ick is present on a yellow tang in my other 30 gallon tank. There is also live rock in that tank.

 

[gobylover]

As for the popeye,you can use maracyn with live rock but you can kiss all your nice colors goodbye.As for the ick on your tang,been there!!Since you can't use any copper with live rock,this could get rocky.You will get different answers to how to treat it from everyone.I like greenex myself for help in preventing disease.I use about once a week.But when I HAD ick,I used a medicine called oomed.There are a lot of different ones people here had mentioned to use,but I couldn't find them around here.So I simply went to the lfs and asked for a reef safe treatment.It worked great.But if you do that,make sure that store is reliable as some don't know what they are talking about.If you plan to use maracyn,let me know because there are a few things you should do if you treat with it.

 

[jimi]

As mentioned maracyn is an antibiotic. If you use it in your main tank losing colorful algae may be the least of your worries after it kills you nitrifying bacteria. Popeye can clear up on its own in clean water and triggers are pretty tough so a few water changes might be something to consider. As for the tang is it the only fish in the tank?

 

[trgirl]

Yes, the tang is the only fish in that tank. I put him there because I thought that life amongst the triggers would be a little uneasy for him. I thought that may have been what brought this ich on. He seemed a little nervous....then again, he always seems a little nervous!

 

[beth]

Yes, actually, you need 2 separate hospital tanks, as one fish has bacterial infection and the other has ick....you don't want to put the 2 together, cause then you're exposing the 2 fish [each coming from different tanks] to diseases.
I wouldn't destroy your LR by adding antibotics. Setup 2 10gal hospital tanks---it really would not cost that much.