So confused..ich or not??? Help

[daniella3d]

I think they were probably too far gone already. Cupramine is one of the safest copper treatment around as lons as there is no water treatment (dechlorinator like Prime) added to the water.

Your clowns probably had their gills very much dammaged already and the stress of moving plus maybe a lower level of oxygen in the QT may have done the rest.


Since you are going through all this trouble, I would leave the main tank empty of fish for 8 weeks of possible. .25 ammonia is too much, as ammonia is very very toxic at PH above 7 and the higher the PH the faster the ammonia will kill a fish. Higher temperature make that ever worse.

It's too bad that with such level of ammonia you cannot even use an ammonia detoxyfier because it will interfear with the copper treatment. All you can do is to water change and redose the copper. Try also to keep the water temperature a bit lower as ammonia toxicyty is also dependant on the temperature and the higher the temp the more it is dammaging.

for exemple, at 78 F and PH of 8.3, the ammonia will kill a fish or seriously injure it at level of only 0.21 and you already have 0.25 more or less.

Here is a chart for ammonia toxicity: http://dataguru.org/misc/aquarium/AmmoniaTox.html

Do not let your ph rise too much during this treatment for that reason and use a lower temperature, maybe 75F would be better.

Originally Posted by Coralgurl

Everyone else seems ok for now. Checked the copper tonight, it's at .03 so I don't think I overdosed the tank, was probably stress. I noticed the ich on them first and maybe they were worse than I thought. Hope this is the worst of it.