Your butterfly may be surviving it but it is affected make no mistake. His gills are being dammaged a little bit more each day.
You should take the fish out into a quarantine tank and treat all of them with hyposalinity and leave the main tank fishless for 8 weeks. voila, no more ick ever. No more worry about stressing the fish... If the fish get stressed, they recover from it very fast and don't get sick.
the ick will never go away on its own, it will always be present, waiting for the right opportunity to strike. It will live on the fish gill in small number and do its cycle. that's why you see it come and go. Unless you really take care of it and do the right thing, it will stay in your tank and you will always have problem. Your choice.
Don't rise the tank temperature. Marine ick cycle is NOT affected by the temperature and raising the temp will only stress your fish more from having less dissolved oxygen. the temperature myth come from the fresh water ick wich cycle is affected by the temperature but not the marine ick.
don,t use copper, it is toxic and can cause organ dammage and kill the fish on the long term. copper is the last resort treatment for velvet, not for ick unless the ick does not respond to hyposalinity.
The longest surviving ick cyst was 79 days, but most common for the longest around 60 days. So 8 weeks is fine. If you ever use cupramine, don't ever use prime or any dechlorinator that can bind with the amine is cupramine, as this will release the copper back into a toxic form.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ScubaSteve
Hey kids, take it somewhere else. I appreciate the discussion and have seen these back-and-forths all over the 'net on this topic. Name calling and harsh words, however, aren't going to fix anything, nor does it really contribute to a thread trying to sort out why a still-living butterfly is being being affected with ich. Dead tang != Living Butterfly.
Sorry, not meaning to hurt feelings here and I appreciate both of you chiming in but I'm getting tired of the usual CanReef ****ing matches. Remember, ask two reefers on what is the best way to do something and you're going to get three answers.
Hug and make up, yo...
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