Silly Silly Friend

DansMarineTank

DansMarineTank

This ship is England!
Dec 13, 2004
352
0
0
43
Ipswich (UK)
Heres the story firend of mines comes over seas my tank and thinks to himself, i can do that. goes out buys himself a 10 G bio orb, drops in 2kg of live rock and the same day two clowns a firefish a peppermint shrimp 5 hermits and a turbo snail.

The first i hear of this is last night when he calls me up telling me he has one dead clown and two dead hermits! and he believes his clown fish are/were sick and has dosed the tank with copper! I immediatly tell him to bag up all his inverts and bring them over and do a couple of big water changes. His ammonia and nitrite are are 5ppm! which is understandable given the overstocking and lack of cycle.

Damage is done and i'm taking in as much of his livestock as i can unfortunatly i have a tank with clowns and one tank with a radiata lion so i dont think i can help his fish

is there and chance he can get rid of this copper and has anyone got any advice on saving the fish
 
wow, thats a mistake... it's to bad so many of us make dumb mistakes like that and then have to aks questions later.

I'd suggest do a complete new setup since the tank is small. It's not a big cost to replace the substrate and water. The rock might be a bit expensive, but you live you learn. Maybe you can help your freind out and give him some of your substrate and that will speed his cycle way faster. and maybe he can use a hospital tank or something for the fish for now. but I'd suggest using some of your water in that tank and not his... This is assuming you have a bigger tank (I can't remember) and you are willing to help him out.

Otherwise take out the water and wash the substrate rocks tank etc the best you can and put it back in... finish the cycle and put the fish etc.. back in. Copper is one of those things that not matter how hard you try to remove it, it will still be there. It may only be a trace but it will be there...

Sorry for the bad luck, and the extreme remedy I suggested. Maybe someone else will have a quick cure... I'd love to learn about one.

-LS
 
Yikes.
AFAIK, if he ever wants to keep coral/inverts, the rock and substrate are garbage if the tank has been dosed with copper. So is the tank if it has any silicone seals, they'll leach copper later.
If he wants to do FOWLR, the rock might be salvageable... but then again, everything in/on it might be nuked and it may leach nastiness and copper for a long time. Personally, I'd chuck it.
Might be a good idea to get your friend a decent beginner's SW book for Christmas :D
 
You can use plain old carbon to remove copper from the water, but Cuprisorb from Seachem is a much more powerful copper sponge.

I don't think I've ever come across any copper med studies that have proven that copper gets into the silicone seals of any aquarium rendering it useless for future invetebrate housing. Cured silicone is pretty much the opposite of live rock in that it is not porous and does not have absorbent properties. That's why pure silicone is "aquarium safe" in the first place, isn't it?

In any event, if the copper has only been in the system for a short period of time I doubt that very much (if any) could have leeched into the silicone. The same goes for the LR, but still I'd dump it just to be safe given that it's such a small amount. I'd use Cuprisorb to suck out the rest.
 
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Thanks for all your repplies, I've printed this out for him and pointed him to some How Too guides, as i said before he had mobile inverts in there but i have them now maybee i'll throw him a little cash and offer to keep them, i just hope he can salvage the fish. As the tank is only a 10G and a bowl shape he wont be able to get any lighting suitable for a coral tank anyways so i'll sugesst the cuprisorb and hint he should go for fowlr, i am bit annoyed with him really as i have a 5G qt tank kitted out sitting dormant so he could have used that if he thought the fish we sick, imo they were just kicked in the b@lls with the ammonia and nitrate
 
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