If it is Marine Velvet... *Updated*

[fishoholic]

Originally Posted by apex82

I am in the same boat and lost 10 fish in a week already... Once they stopped eating they died the next day. However three died in quarantine from what I think was a chemical reaction when using dechlorinator in water with a copper treatment. I didnt know of this as there are no warnings on copper product or the dechlorinator. If you are using tap water, just let the water sit for 24 hours to leach out the chlorine(wont get rid of chloramines however if your area has them in the water). I say get em out asap, its just not worth losing new additions to the tank. I cant believe I have to go 2 months without a single fish in the tank.... crazy

I don't know about regular dechlorinator but you can use Prime and tap water with copper treatment no problem. The main issue I had in QT was doing massive water changes to keep the amonia from spiking. I had set up a 110g QT when I treated all my fish and I did 50g water changes every other day. Went though massive amounts of prime and salt but I didn't have and spikes in my water perameters.

[apex82]

what.... You used prime and coppersafe? cupramine? Everywhere I have read is that it reduces copper 2 to lethal copper 1. You mixed prime and tapwater and added to copper treated tank within 10 minutes and you never had any issues?

I definately think it was the prime + coppersafe combo that killed my fish in quarantine, as some of them were more of the healthy specimens. I dont know for sure but I probably overdosed prime and since it was rapid set up there was no ammonia to reduce so it reduced the copper to 1 killing my fish overnight... Maybe if you only add the exact amount or a bit less it might be fine? I definitely will never do it again, to risky.

Here is the link for the response from seachem.
http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1373316

Here is a Q/A taken from seachem website... This stuff should be stickied imo!

Q: I've been dosing with Cupramine™ and then I added Product X and everything died. What happened? A: If Product X is a reducing agent such as ParaGuard™ (or other aldehyde based medications), or if you overdose with a dechlorinator, such as Prime® then the Cu+2 will be reduced to Cu+. Cu+ is 10 times more toxic than Cu+2.


Okay....I am going to attempt to clear up the confusion. I would like to first point out the fact that we are the only manufacturer that gets on these forums and attempts to help people understand these issues better. So, hopefully hobbyists can appreciate that and realize how unique it really is.
The real reason we tell people not to use reducing agents with copper is for liability reasons. THERE IS POTENTIAL FOR REDUCING AGENTS TO REDUCE CU+2 TO Cu+1 WHICH IS 10X MORE TOXIC TO FISH. Does this necessarily mean it is going to happen? The answer is no. Of course, we would like to cover ourselves and protect hobbyists from this possibility so we tell people not to do it when they ask. Under certain circumstances, this could happen. It, however, is dependent upon a number of factors. A reducing agent will reduce whatever is available for it to reduce. So, if you put a reducing agent in your water to reduce ammonia, but there is no ammonia, it will find something else to reduce (such as oxygen or copper). Since most water conditioners on the market are reducing agents, they all have this potential. Many people like to overdose with water conditioners (especially Prime) and this can increase the chances of the copper being reduced to a more toxic form. The reason we, and all other manufacturers, do not put this on the label is because it is an extremely rare event that may not even happen. If we were to put on the bottle "do not use Prime with this product", then that says to the average consumer that everything else is okay to use with it (which is clearly not the case). Now consider the other option: If we were to list all of the other reducing agents out there that should not be used with Cupramine, we would have a label that was a mile long. Not to mention that fact that this would require us to know exactly what other products have in them. Not exactly the easiest thing to do. So, what we do instead is encourage people to ask questions before medicating and make ourselves (as I hope you can see) readily available to you so that you can get those questions answered in a timely manner. Just like Pescadero has done, all hobbyists should research and ask appropriate questions before starting any treatment.

[fishoholic]

Hummm did not know that. I used prime (lots of it) when I treated my fish with cupramine, as far as I know it did not cause any issues, I did check copper levels every day with a test kit and they all read at the level they were supposed to be at. I had a lot of bubbliers running at the time, maybe that helped

[daniella3d]

Interesting. When you use Prime with cupramine it is said to bind with the amines in Cupramine and release the copper back into a toxic form. I guess you were lucky that it did not cause any harm to your fish then.

Originally Posted by fishoholic

Hummm did not know that. I used prime (lots of it) when I treated my fish with cupramine, as far as I know it did not cause any issues, I did check copper levels every day with a test kit and they all read at the level they were supposed to be at. I had a lot of bubbliers running at the time, maybe that helped