Velvet in DT

Oh no! Sick fish?! Come here and see if someone can help!
Forum rules
Read this before posting!!

Since this board has been up, we have found there are several questions that routinely get asked in order to help diagnose problems. If you can have that information to begin with in your post, we'll be able to help right away (if we can!) without having to wait for you to post the info we need.

1) Your water parameters - pH, Ammonia, Nitrite, Nitrates and salinity (if appropriate). This is by far the most important information you can provide! Do not answer this with "Fine" "Perfect" "ok", that tells us nothing. We need hard numbers.

2) Tank size and a list of ALL inhabitants. Include algae eaters, plecos, everything. We need to know what you have and how big the tank is.

3) Feeding, water change schedule and a list of all products you are using or have added to the tank (examples: Cycle, Amquel, salt, etc)

4) What changes you've made in the tank in the last week or so. Sometimes its the little things that make all the difference.

5) How long the aquarium has been set up, and how did you cycle it? If you don't know what cycling is read this: Fishless Cycling Article and familiarize yourself with all the information. Yes. All of it.

We want to help, and providing this information will go a LONG way to getting a diagnosis and hopeful cure that much faster.

While you wait for assistance:
One of the easiest and best ways to help your fish feel better is clean water! If you are already on a regular water change schedule (50% weekly is recommended) a good step to making your fish more comfortable while waiting for diagnosis/suggestions is to do a large water change immediately. Feel free to repeat daily or as often as you can, clean water is always a good thing! Use of Amquel or Prime as a dechlor may help with any ammonia or nitrite issues, and is highly recommended.

Note - if you do not normally do large water changes, doing a sudden, large water change could shock your fish by suddenly changing their established water chemistry. Clean water is still your first goal, so in this case, do several smaller (10%) water changes over the next day or two before starting any large ones.
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Gd13
Puffer Fry
Posts: 1
Joined: Sun Apr 11, 2021 10:11 am
Location (country): United States

Velvet in DT

Post by Gd13 »

Hello. New here. Read alot but is my first post.



Some background on my complicated situation...



100 gallon FOWLR tank

1.23 Salinitiy

Ammonia 0

Nitrites 0

Nitrates 5

Temp 78

Been running for about 9 months

Cycled with fish

Tankmates....

4 inch Dog face puffer

2 bengaii cardinals

1 lawnmower blenny

1 yellow watchman gobie

1 royal gramma



I thought I had ich in the tank as dfp had some spots on his fins. Within 2 days realized it was velvet. He was covered in white. Looked awful. Nobody else looked sick.

No idea how it got there. The DFP was the last addition to the tank and that was over 3 months ago.


I did not have a QT, so I dosed with copperpower in the DT. Got up to 2.0 in two days and kept it there with very little change. Never got below 1.75 or higher than 2.10.



In the meantime, I set up 2 QT tanks.



After 10 days of Copperpower and a few freshwater dips, DFP looked much better. I placed him in sterile qt, alone. It's been 8 days and he is thriving again. Eating like a pig and looks and acts like himself again.



I placed cardinals and gramma in a different QT after 10 days. They all look great and are eating but, again, never looked sick.



I was unable to remove blenny and Gobi. They remain in the DT at 2.0 copperpower.



I realize none of this was done to the standards of what needed to be done. I've learned alot and was just unprepared. That said, I am where I am with alot more knowledge going forward.



The question...where do I go now with the DT?



Will 30 days of copperpower in the DT kill the velvet so I can do water changes, run carbon, etc to get the copper out and put the fish back in the DT?



Or does anyone suggest something different considering the tank was never fallow because the blenny and gobie are still in there? They never showed any sickness by the way.



Any thoughts or suggestions would be helpful. Thanks so much
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