Should I Treat My PBT With Copper? (Need Some Help)

[Ninjabeaver]

I don't have a lot of experience with ich, but my yellow tang has gotten white spots that look like ich twice.  Just made sure my parameters were good, and made sure it was eating well, reduce stress and all was well!

[rworegon]

As Kevin stated,12 weeks of copper is not required. Copper is toxic to all marine life forms. It is less toxic to some than others. The ich parasite is similar in biologic structure to shrimp as they are both crustaceans. Copper is more toxic to crustaceans than to marine fishes. Think of it like chemo-therapy for cancer. You are injected with toxic chemicals to kill the cancer cells. The doctors are being that healthy cells can withstand the treatment while the cancer cells can't. Same thing with ich. The qt period after the copper treatment is to give the tank time to clear of the parasite. To give the parasite time to complete it's life cycle.

 

As to the mandarin, they are very resistant to most parasites sure to their very thick slime coat. Just the opposite of tangs. Tangs have a very thin slime coat.

 

Peng, do what you will, but if you do choose copper treatment you definitely do need a copper test kit designed for the type of copper you are using. This is very likely why your previous attempts at treatment have failed and ended in the death of your fish.

[Peng]

As Kevin stated,12 weeks of copper is not required. Copper is toxic to all marine life forms. It is less toxic to some than others. The ich parasite is similar in biologic structure to shrimp as they are both crustaceans. Copper is more toxic to crustaceans than to marine fishes. Think of it like chemo-therapy for cancer. You are injected with toxic chemicals to kill the cancer cells. The doctors are being that healthy cells can withstand the treatment while the cancer cells can't. Same thing with ich. The qt period after the copper treatment is to give the tank time to clear of the parasite. To give the parasite time to complete it's life cycle.

 

As to the mandarin, they are very resistant to most parasites sure to their very thick slime coat. Just the opposite of tangs. Tangs have a very thin slime coat.

 

Peng, do what you will, but if you do choose copper treatment you definitely do need a copper test kit designed for the type of copper you are using. This is very likely why your previous attempts at treatment have failed and ended in the death of your fish.

Thank you! This is very helpful! I just got Seachem test kit and I asked the LFS where I got my PBT about their water and they said that they always have Cupramine in their tanks at therapeutic 0.5 mg/L level. This is a great relief, since I got this PBT from them.

[Peng]

I just saw a person using cupramine to treat his mandarin. And it died pretty quickly... I don't think I'll do that on mine. I read somewhere that copper is very detrimental to mandarin and its coat.

[Jboogy23]

If your mandarin has ich you have a serious problem, they are pretty immune to ich due to their coat. I'm with Arsonmfg on all this. I have a PBT in my tank now, I know he's going to bomb it with ich but he's my only tang at this point. so no stress from other fish if he's eating that's really all you can do. I wouldn't recommend catching him and puttin him in copper, most likely stress him and kill him. As everyone else stated a hard fish to keep just for that reason, I've dropped a powder tang in display no QT and not infect any other fish except himself. The goal is build immunity, copper just prolongs the inevitable.

[pledosophy]

I would think so if we can say that it's life cycle without  a host is 12 weeks then I would think that a truly acceptable term would be 12 weeks to consider a fish 100% parasite free.

 

I honestly believe that all of our fish are hosting parasites and that when they're stressed or sick we see an outbreak. Also we need to remember that what were seeing isn't the actual parasite itself but marks from the parasite doing damage to the fish.

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I'd be interested to see a study done on the life cycle of Ich when treated with copper on a host animal. I don't believe one has been done. 

 

 

 

Sorry I missed this one. 

 

Many studies have been done on parasites life cycle being treated with copper. If you want to read papers on it try adding words like Tuna, Salmon, farmed into your search criteria. You can find hundreds from all over the world. There is a lot of money in it, so it is well researched. 

 

Since fish are food copper has been tested for years on how it bests and most quickly kills parasites. It is how we have come to the advances in copper medications that we have come to. From Simple coppers to chelated to the complex that we use now. The complex copper that we use today is much less destructive to the fish, although it is still a poison. How long it takes to kill a parasite would be altered by the dosage somewhat but the complex copper medications (which is what we should be using now for our fish IMO) seem to all have a two week treatment period. After the two week period, a normal QT to make sure they "good" and then into the tank. 

 

Since copper is a posion, I would not treat for ICH unless there were signs of ICH IMO. Some people do, I even know of some stores that do, but it is not something I would do myself. It would not stop me from buying at a place that does though. 

 

I do think a healthy fish can fight off ICH, but I would not say a healthy fish could fight off any parasite. Most of my disease treatment has been with seahorses and IME there if you wait to long to treat for internal parasites the fish will most likely die. Prophylactic treatment of wild caught seahorses for parasites is par for the course.  With that fish the only discussion is do you wait a week and make sure it is eating, or do you dip them and medicate them on arrival, I'm a fan of the latter. IMO a parasite is different then a bacterial infection, not all parasites can be fought off by the healthiest of hosts. 

 

JMO