Quote:
Originally Posted by ReefKeeper64
Out of curiosity, how much did your CP testing equipment run ya?
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After researching a bunch on measuring CP the requirement that they all came up with was a Spectrophotometer that measures absorbance at 343nm. The only reference I could find regarding measuring in aquariums mentioned very expensive equipment like a Hach DR5000 but I don't think that is necessary. I bought a Milton Roy Spectronic 21D and a set of Quartz Cuvettes. Very old equipment but this one was in mint condition.
I talked with Humblefish after reaching out to Reeffever without any response and he showed me some interesting information regarding this. Apparently if the chloroquine contains metabolite the metabolite will also register at 343 so a different process is required to separate the two components to get an accurate measurement of the active component. So it's better than nothing and probably accurate enough for us but I'm going to investigate further.
Beyond that, something very interesting appears to be happening. I can't actually dose enough CP to get the display to 40mg/gal safely. It appears bacteria is breaking down the CP rapidly. The more I dose, the quicker it breaks down. So fast that I am likely to abort dosing the display, last night I dosed the tank up to 27mg/gal and this morning 12 hours later it was down to 17mg/gal. The 40mg/gal sample from new SW I made on Thursday is still testing out at 40mg/gal.
So while CP probably works well on a freshly started QT and certainly nuked my vermatids and flat worms, it's a stretch that this med can be used in a display tank to treat fish. Obviously every system is different but at least in my case the CP is metabolized and removed at a rate faster than I want to dose CP.