I guess if the fish don't look stressed, eat like little piglets, and are very active, it should be fine to assume they are not too stressed? I did half does of paragard and they don't seem affected one bit. So should I keep on with it? at least until the white dots disapear? The white dots are now much bigger, as if they had burst and have left large pimple of mucus, so not sure what to think of this. The poor fish look bad but act great and eat well. I feed them 6 to 8 times per day and they eat with gusto each time.

When I had the Ich and possibly Marine Velvet infestation I QT'ed all the fish in a 180g tank and treated with cupramine according to the bottle instructions. After I read this article I treated with hyposalinity as well. It worked very well for me although I went through tons of salt with all the water changes to keep the ammonia down. I left the fish in QT for 8 weeks and never lost a single fish in QT.

that's awfull. I hope I never have velvet in my tank.

the worse thing is when treating with cupramine, you cannot use an ammonia lock like Prime as it bind with the amine in cupramine and release the toxic copper and kill all fish.

So actualy no way to control ammonia beside water change. nasty. I have ordered Cupramine just in case something like that pop up but I will keep treating with paragard until the white spots completely disapear. My hyposalinity is at 1.010 now, 13ppt.

I read that it is dangerous to combine copper treatment and hypo because copper is more toxic in freshwater, but your experience show otherwise. Did you actualy treat with copper while in hyposalinity and was it at 1.010 or did you first do a copper treatment at normal salinity and then treated with hypo?

No I didn't start hypo until after the Cupramine treatment was finished. If I remember correctly the Cupramine treatment lasted 2 weeks. I waited a few days after and then started hypo.

Interesting. Since copper is much more efficient and potent than hypo, was it really necessary to treat with hypo after a 2 weeks treatment of cupramine?

Thanks for the article Lance, I will read it later, no time now. I'm not sure what the article is really about, but imo hyposalinity is a good replacement for medications. If you can treat without medication, then why not?

I don't understand why people use copper to treat fish. It causes more damage than good, especially when there are much healthier alternatives that work just as well. Imo, if you're going to treat them with copper, why not give em a shot of cyanide while you're at it? :neutral:

Good call. I try to get all new comers with Prazi...makes a big difference for some of them.

Well probably because hyposalinity only work for ich, nothing else. It does nothing for velvet. Also I have read of resistant strain of ich and for those only copper will work.

Sometime copper is the only way to save fish but I would use it as a last resort and if in case of velvet. Velvet kill so fast that even copper need to be started early in the disease.

You can't treat marine velvet with hyposalinity, but you can treat MV by doing repeated freshwater dips. I have been successful with this method. It does take quite a bit of work though because the infected fish has to be placed into a "sterilized" QT afterward. I always use display tank water in a QT, of course that doesn't work if the infected fish was already in the display! Sterilized meaning a QT that isn't infected with MV or a thorough disinfecting of the QT so as not to reintroduce the fish to the parasitic dinoflagellate. Yes, MV is an algae.

Here is a great article on Marine Velvet including a description of how to use freshwater dips for treatment:
http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-0...ture/index.php

I have treated my achilles and my 2 potters with cupramine and all 3 are still alive to tell the tale.....
I tried using freshwater treatments to treat MV on my achilles but after less then 90sec in the fresh water I thought I killed him and just couldn't go through it again

I only use hyposalinity on new fish if they have no signs of parasites, if I see anything suspicious I go straight to cupramine treatments


*Edit*But then I've become rather anal about keeping ich out of my display, my achilles has never had any ich since quarantine and I plan to keep him that way

Hehehe, freshwater dips don't look nice because the buoyancy of saltwater is different than freshwater so they get all messed up. It does look like you`re killing them.

I refuse to use copper these days. Ten years ago when I didn`t know there were better ways or that copper can be so harmful I used it for Ich. Since then I have never had to resort to using copper since other treatments have always worked for me.