What the he//

[bottlecapp09]

Hey guys, I am a 55gal saltwater tank that HAD a porcupine puffer (1in) a stars and stripes puffer (3in) a small kole tang and a black widow blenny. My water conditions are perfect nothing out of the ordinary. My heater got unplugged by accident when i was at school.
- My porcupine puffer broke out in a little ick as well as my other puffer. Last wednesday
-I spoke to my LFS and he instructed me to use aquarisol to help the ick. He said to double the dose since it is for fresh water. Thursday
Everything was great and eating well; before the treatment.
The next morning my kole tang was dead so i went in and they told me to do a 20gal water change and that should help. All water conditions are fine. Saturday
- sunday morning i woke up to see my porcupine puffer dead and the black widow blenny. My stars and stripes is eating a little and has a little ick and foggy eyes sometimes.
What should I do???? :(

[ccampbell57]

Ich is only cured through Hyposalinity or Copper. All this other crap that is sold like kick-Ich, Rid-ich, etc is worthless. It is pepper based and basically causes irritation to the tank inhabitants and causes their slime coat to shed.

You need to get some copper in there or buy a good refractometer and get your salinity down to .09 over 48 hours. Keep them in that salinity for 4 weeks after the last sign of ich and you should be good to go.

[bottlecapp09]

I have been doing fresh and salt for a long time, and I wanted to see what they would suggest. I suggested copper then he said "no that will stick to the LR". And now almost everything is dead.

[ccampbell57]

well you cant use copper with Live Rock. In order to use copper you should set up a QT and place it with jsut fish.

[billsreef]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=12016593#post12016593 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by bottlecapp09
-I spoke to my LFS and he instructed me to use aquarisol to help the ick. He said to double the dose since it is for fresh water.

Don't ever listen to him again. Aquarisol is a copper based formulation for Fresh Water use, and fresh water use only. Not only should it not be used in Salt Water (as per the manufacturer), it never should have been double dosed. Following his instructions caused an overdose situation. While copper is indeed one of the two reliable treatments for marine ich, it needs to be carefully dosed as there is a very fine line between correct dosage and over dosing enough to kill the fish.

[jcjstl]

I could be completely wrong but i have always been advised that puffers can not tolerate copper dosing at any levels

[ccampbell57]

JC - that is incorrect. I dosed my Angels, puffer, tangs, and anthias a couple of years back and everyone was fine.

[billsreef]

Copper sensitivity also has a lot to do with the form the copper is in. For instance, Sea Chem's Cupramine is well tolerated even by known copper sensitive species. While plain copper sulfate such as Sea Cure will give copper sensitive species problems even at normal therapeutic doses.

[crazedpuffer]

Alot of your problems could be from having to small a tank. A porc alone needs about 90 gallons, let alone the other 2. Is that just a temporary home until you get something bigger?

[bottlecapp09]

yes its temporary, I was going to get a 120gal tank.

[rlf_racing]

If your tank has live rock and any type of a clean up crew, No Copper! My 4" blue hippo tang had ich pretty bad a couple months ago abd was told by a reputable lfs to use kent marine garlic extreme in the food and in the tank. Sfe for all fish and inverts. It helped out greatly. My blue tang hasn't had ich since.

[JustinReef]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=12021351#post12021351 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by bottlecapp09
yes its temporary, I was going to get a 120gal tank.

Really sorry to hear about your loses. 120G will be no where near big enough for a Stars and Stripes Puffer. If you have seen one full grown, you will know what I mean. They get the size of a football.

My guess is that dosing double the amount of copper killed your fish.

Any scale-less fish do not tolerate copper well, including puffers. This does not mean they always die but the long term effects can be bad. I would suggest hypo salinity to deal with ich. Much safer than copper for any fish. Copper can be overdosed quite easily without proper testing several times a day with a good test kit. Im not a fan of exposing fish to any poison regardless of the amount.

Be careful when LFS employees give you information. Do your own research and make a decision based on all the info you can get. Ich should not kill as many fish in this hobby as it does...its not hard to deal with if you QT new fish, inverts, corals, ect. It is never introduced to your main tank.

Hope you get this all worked out and can get a nice home for your Stars and Stripes...preferably a 220G but a 180G works.

Good luck!

[JustinReef]

This will give you an idea of what an adult S&S puffer should look like:

http://www.oceanfootage.com/oceans/search?screen=search&savesearch=1&keyword_sorter=cat&cat_keyword_sorter=and&keywords=whitespot+puffer&Go=Go

[bottlecapp09]

Thanks guys, since I did dose with that stuff; what should I do about the LR thats in the tank? Should I rinse them in a bucket of fresh water then re-cure everything? How do I get rid of that crap in the tank?