Well, for the first time since August 15th (or maybe it was the 18th?) My tank has fish in it. My display tank is now the happy home to a juvenile Australian Harlequin tusk (it still has it's false eye spots), and a very young doliatus rabbitfish. To be honest, if I wasn't going out of town for 5 days tomorrow, I would have probably done a full tank transfer protocol on them, but since I didn't want them to spend 1 second in a copper free tank that could have encysted tomonts waiting to hatch, it was either leave them in full strength copper for a 4th week, or get them out of copper and in to a sterile tank that had no filtration. The tuskfish was starting to lose his appetite, and it looks like he's developing fin rot, so I didn't think the extra week in copper was a good idea.
These two have now been through a three week cupramine treatment at between 0.5 and 0.6ppm, then a tank transfer to a sterile, guaranteed ich free tank for 3 days. The fin rot worries me a little, so I put them both in a paraguard bath for an hour before transferring them to the main tank. Hopefully with perfect water quality and good nutrition the tusk's fins will recover. Everything I know about the biology of crypt tells me that there's no way these fish should be carrying unseen parasites, and my system has been fallow since... late September I think (mid August if you count the days there was no fish in the display, but in the sump, though ich was clearly present in the sump in that time). I've even been neurotic about new invertebrates going in to the display, not a single drop of water from another system has entered mine, and anything with a dead skeleton or shell has been carefully rinsed with fresh water, then brushed with a toothbrush dipped in full strength bleach before being quarantined for at least a week, in which time the water in the 5 gallon QT tank was 100% replaced at least 3 times. All sps colonies and frags have been broken off the rocks or plugs they came on, and re-glued to new, sterile bases before being QT'd for at least a week. If I have any say in the matter, I'm going to have an ich free tank.
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