Help! Ick cure go bad!

[fishing]

I need advice. My sister has a an 85 gallon FOWLR system with 2 inches of live sand. Water properties are fine, 1.025 SG, 0 ammonia and nitrite, 15 ppm of nitrate and 8.3 ph. She has five fish in that tank, a yellow tang, a small queen angel, two clarkii clowns and a yellow tail blue damsel. Well, she lost power for about seven hours four days ago. Now all the fish have ick probably due to temperature fluctuations. Here's where it gets tricky. My sister thought it was safe to add copper directly to the tank since there's no inverts in it and she did so. Now all the fish are still suffering from ick and seemed severly stressed as well. No losses yet. How do we handle it????

 

[dralarms]

Well to start with you need to get the fish in a bare bottom tank, Ie no lr and no sand or cc. Then start treating for ick, either by copper (tangs can't handle this very well so be careful), or lower the sg using a refractometer down to 1.009.

The second thing to do is empty the display, the copper if used "full strength" has probally killed the lr and ls so you have to start over. Unless 3 applies

Three, If you had and inverts they are probally dead (if not then maybe you got lucky), get a copper test kit and start measuring levels, start changing out the water in what might be considered "massive" water changes, I would change out 100% to start with and then do a 10 to 15 % daily, Copper is deadly to most inverts and the stuff that lives on the lr and in the ls.

After a week of water changes I would check the copper levels and if "not detectable" I would go buy a few snails and place them in the tank. This would tell you if your lr and ls is shot. If it is then you would need to go back to option 2, empty the tank, rinse the lr, and ls completly and let dry and start over again.

 

[quarryshark]

Also after the change run carbon, this will help filter out the copper as well.
for sure have her get a QT set up ASAP to treat the fish.
The copper is now staturated in the sand as well. May want to consider replacing.

 

[fishing]

We tore down this whole tank and we're going to start over again. I transfered my sister's fish to a 20 gallon QT tank and seem to recovering. We already replaced the copper laden LS along with the LR. A fish care guy dropped off 55 gallons of ocean water early today. Right now, the tank is recycling again. Hopefully, it shouldn't be long before we can reintroduce the fish into the tank. I'll keep testing the water for ammonia and nitrites until both are undetectable. She sure learned, the hard way, NOT to EVER add copper to the main tank again under ANY circumstances since copper additions to display tanks have NASTY consequences.