You should never treat with coper unless you are 100% sure your fish have velvet. Copper treatment, even cupramine is very poison. Cupramine is relatively safe but if you used any dechlorinator then it will bind with the amine in cupramine and relase the copper into a toxic form.
Never ever use any dechlorinator when using cupramine. If you need to neutralize ammonia then do it with water change.
If you fish don't show sign of velvet, then don't use copper. You can used hyposalinity and that is quite safe but again do it slowly and watch your fish for sign of distress. This should be done with a decent size aquarium and 10 gallons is too small for anything. 20 gallons is much better and more stable. Use a precise refractometer to do this, as a hydrometer is not precise enough.
The only time copper should be used is to treat marine velvet, when there is no doubt that there is marine velvet. Never ever otherwise.
Quote:
Originally Posted by amy
After reading through some of the posts on marine velvet and ick, I decided that I do not want to take any chances with my tank and will be quarantining everything prior to putting it in the display tank. I have a 10 gallon tank, bare bottom with a powerhead, a heater and some PVC for hiding. I got 2 new gobies on Sunday, so I added the copper to the water as per instructions on the bottle and dripped the fish to acclimate them.One of them died yesterday afternoon. I immediately tested all of the water parameters and everything was at 0, except for the copper which was at .4 (where I want it right?)
I woke up this morning to the other goby dead.
They only lasted 2 days. Have I done something wrong? Could it have been stress? I can't imagine they were both sick to begin with.
Any thoughts?
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