Hi Alex. The reason why it is not a great idea to due the double copper period is because copper is a poison for the fish so you want to be the most effective while at the same time minimize the fish exposure. Also, do not keep them in sub therapeutic level because that will only mask the effect of existing parasites. Sterilizing the tank it is actually easy (you can check on Humblefish but essentially you can use either vinegar or bleach. However, you will still have the issue of not being able to transfer some rock from your tank to the QT (and the media that was in the QT was also bleached). So, I would probably do the copper treatment stage, remove (completely) the copper from the water and 10 days ahead of moving the fish to the tank bring copper up to 2.5ppm. Why 10 days? Because the feeding (trophont) stage should last between 3 and 7 days, after which it releases from the fish and becomes free swimming, at which stage it can be killed by the copper in the water column. This means that at this stage the fish will be free from any parasites in its body, and the ones that fell off should have been killed by the copper. At this stage you should be OK to transfer the fish. If you want to be Uber paranoid, remove water from your main tank to a bucket, add copper to this water and then drip this to acclimate the fish. The benefit will be that the copper concentration will not lower during the acclimation process.
@@ReefDork No problem. My pleasure mate. You guys have been my “reefing buddies “ for several years so it is only fitting that I can return the favor. (No, I am not a hermit but all my friends and family roll their eyes at the first reefing related sentence that comes out of my mouth 😄)
Great chat about quarantine for fish. I'm glad you are both championing the process! I'm setting up a small fishless coral farm (Sorry Ryan!) in Glasgow for people who want to quarantine coral but don't have the time or space.
All this info can be found on humblefish. 3 months for coral QT does not restart when you add another coral. You just have to monitor which coral started in what date & it only has to do 3 months. The potential tomonts on that coral will release within that 3 months & then die out without fish to eat, it’s impossible for it to become a tomont again. I simply take a photo of the coral when it goes in on my iPhone & put it in my calander with a 3 month alert to which I can then remove & put it into my display.
1:25:49 yes it is me with the acanthophyllias, very easy to keep but expensive which is what puts people off. I got my first from Finest aquatics and subsequent ones off eBay or from tank breakdowns.
A good topic for you to explore at some point would be End Of Life planning as relates to reef tanks, especially with those of us who have larger systems. Many of us are older and all of us will become older, we hope. What will happen to Mike’s, Andrew’s, Sanjay’s, etc tanks when they die?
I have that exact acclimation box. It is pretty flimsy, so be careful with it. It is one of the biggest i could find and the magnets are pretty powerful.
55:16 I dose Lanthanum directly into my skimmer intake and it doesn’t show up on my ICP (when I used to dose into the weir box it did show up on ICP). Only downside I have found is that it does suppress your Alkalinity but thats ok if you plan for it and adjust Alkalinity accordingly
& I just heard you mention doing copper for the last 30 days. Your quarantine only starts when there are no visible spots so if you do your method you will need to make sure there’s no spots when you begin the final 30 days & if there is spots due to being reinfected due to lowering copper levels then you might need to allow a few extra days for any spots to fall off… it would suck if you went through all this & it fails coz you miss these small details
All this info can be found in Hublefish so I’m surprised you have not seen it since you have been doing a lot of hunblefish research. if you turn he temperature up to 28 degrees the fallow period is 45 days. Also if you keep your copper quarantine tank you can do 45 days in copper all the tomonts have been through their life cycle.
