13g...
you are the one who has the QT regimen. I should have gone back and looked at your post on my qt tank set up thread. I have all of these products and haven’t used one of them.
+1 to Zap. We all have answered (and I’ve certainly asked) the same questions that have been on this forum since the beginning. It’s really nice to get a personalized response rather than get some snotty reply of “use the search function and sift through the garbage”. This is a really great group of folks.
I run a 10G so pretty close. I just got done with the accelerated QT - a Copperband Butterfly from The Fish Store. I only went to 1.75ppm on the copper for 6 days, then over to a bucket, and back into the cleaned QT with prazi for one day. He’s in the DT and has eaten every single aiptasia in the tank that I could find, with the lone exception of the one that’s the size of quarter. He’s swimming into the xenia colony still looking for more... crazy!
Day 1, I floated the bag in the QT tank. Salinity was just about the same (1.025 in the bag, 1.024 in the tank) so I just dropped him right in. It was pre-dosed with a capful of BioSpira, one scoop of Metro, and just over 1ppm of Copper Power, which is about 5mL for my 9 gallons of water. He never hid in the PVC, just kind of looked around. After about an hour, I fed him a couple tiny bits of frozen scallops, and he ate right away.
Day 2, raised copper to ~1.5ppm, dosing 0.5mL at a time in 4 doses. This is now technically therapeutic, but the experts on R2R recommend running up to 2ppm to be on the “safe” side. Use the Hanna Copper checker to verify. Continued feeding him sporadically, mixed it up with different offerings and he took just about all of it.
Day 3, raised copper to 1.75ppm (actually 1.82 on the Hanna). This is where I left it for the next 4 days. I also dosed a capful of Prime to neutralize Ammonia. Dosed one more scoop of Metro, and one more on Day 5.
Day 4-7: fed, dosed one capful of Prime on Day 6. Ammonia badge never signaled, so I assume all was good in the hood.
At the end of Day 7, I net transferred him into a half-full bucket (~2 gallons) of newly mixed saltwater with an airstone. I emptied the QT and cleaned it all with vinegar solution, rinsed well, and refilled with 5 gallons of fresh saltwater. Did a water change on my DT (my standard WC is 4 gallons), and dumped the “dirty” water into the QT with the fresh saltwater. Net transferred him back to the QT and dosed Prazi.
Day 8, net transfer into the DT. He wasn’t even shy, just swam right up to the other fish like “sup my dudes” and started eating aiptasia within a couple hours. I lucked out with an insane result, definitely not typical.
However, I’m likely going to continue running at ~1.75ppm in the future unless I see fish with disease in adjacent tanks at the LFS.
Now, for your specific case, a few ideas if it were me doing this all over:
1. Rit @ AA told me he runs Prazi in his fish tanks. You may want to just give them a freshwater dip and see if anything comes out. It looks like little dandruff... flukes. Flakes. If nothing they’re probably fine on the deworming. I don’t think it hurts to run Prazi at the end again... but they probably don’t need it unless you see stringy poop or the freshwater dip results in some falling out of the fish. Prazi did suppress some fishes appetites in my limited experience, so take care on that step.
2. Ocellaris clowns are pretty dang hardy, I’m sure you remember. Mine had zero ill effects that I could tell from running Copper Power up to 2.1ppm. They still ate fine, swam around like little nuts, and are thriving in the DT now.
I have less concern that clowns are “carriers” but being that you want to be on the safe side, I’d say run the copper and metro and get em cleanly introduced into the DT after 30 days in copper, and 14+ in untreated saltwater. That will also ensure your DT is fallow for a good period, likely eliminating any nasty critters in case you introduce any liverock from a LFS or another member.
3. If you’re cycling your DT simultaneously, do not follow what I did with the water change (not yet, anyway). I’m fairly confident my tank is ich/velvet free from my fallow period, so I’m willing to take the risk of using that water in my QT.
Good luck!
