With Seachem Cupramine, you will be able to treat Ich and Velvet in both freshwater and saltwater tanks. With that said, angels, lionfish, loaches, mandarins, pipefish, puffers, rays, seahorses, sharks and scale-less fish may not respond well do the normal recommended dosage.
To find how you can carefully treat sensitive fish with Cupramine, you can take a look at this tutorial from Aquarium Blueprints.
1. Before you start, make sure you turn off your ozone and/or UV sterilizer if you have these equipment running in your tank. You also need to remove any activated carbon and/or other carbon-absorbing chemical media from your filter.
2. Furthermore, we recommend doing a water change before you start dosing. Otherwise, you won’t be able to do another one for the next 16 days.
If you are adding tap water into your tank, then you need to avoid using a water conditioner that contains a reducing agent. Otherwise, the copper will be converted into a more toxic form.
3. After doing a water change, you can start dosing Cupramine.
For sensitive fish, you should add half the normal dosage.
When it comes to freshwater tanks, you need to dose 0.25 mL of Cupramine for every 10.5 gallons or 40 liters of tank water.
As for saltwater tanks, you need to dose 0.5 mL of Cupramine for every 10.5 gallons or 40 liters of tank water.
4. After the initial dose, you need to wait two days.
5. After at least 48 hours have passed, you need to dose your fish tank a second time by using the same dosage amount as Step #3.
6. After the second dosage, we recommend observing your sensitive fish to look for any signs of stress, which may include head twitching, body twitching, darting and/gasping for air.
If your sensitive fish seem distressed, then we recommend doing a water change as soon as possible to dilute the Cupramine solution.
You can also test the copper level in you aquarium by using a testing kit. For sensitive fish, the concentration should be 0.125 mg per liter for a freshwater tank and 0.25 mg per liter for a saltwater tank.
7. Once you got the right concentration of copper, you need to wait 14 days for Cupramine to completely eradicate the Ich and/or Velvet from your tank water.
8. After 14 days have passed, you have to remove the copper from your tank water.
In order to do so, we recommend adding activated carbon or the Seachem Cuprisorb to your filter as these will absorb the medication. Out of these options, Cuprisorb should be more effective. If you are interested, you can purchase the chemical filter media on Amazon with this link. (#CommissionsEarned)
You can also change the tank water to help dilute the copper concentration.
