10 week treatment cupramine = failure

[WuHT]

Basically by the middle of October i had removed all my LR and inverts, placed them in a seperate container and tank.
I have a 10 gallon QT and a 17 gallon rubbermaid container for the removed items i wished to keep away from cupramine.
Left my fish and sand (which i believe could be reseeded easily as I purchased it as regular sand) in my DT (150 gallon). I have a christmas wrasse so i pretty much left the sand just for him.

Now by christmas i still see scratching (rarely) and a couple of white spots on my largest fish.

I've severly overdosed cupramine to maintain a ~.5 concentration, which is probably the effects of the sand.

I left 4 hermit crabs as an "indicator"
------
Now my options is either to
1) keep dosing and waiting
2) Switcheroo , purchase a larger QT , since I have 10 fish (a couple of 4 inch, a couple of 3" fish), and dose them there with a tiny corner of sand just for the wrasse
3)scoop out all the sand and wait.


The thign is with all the sand dug up..how best do i go about extracting the absorbed cupramine ... with carbon ??
Do i put the sand in a container, run a powerhead with filterfloss + carbon ?


Thanks in advance, i hope i haven't left any details out.

 

[cerianthus]

I do not think silicate sand will absorb/adsorb any. May want to rinse thoroughly before reuse. If aragonite sand , tossed them out and get new substrate.

 

[cerianthus]

I do not think silicate sand will absorb/adsorb any. May want to rinse thoroughly before reuse (Do Cu test after rinsing). If aragonite sand , tossed them out and get new substrate.

 

[WuHT]

Hmm is there a certain amount of carbon i can run to absorb any copper that leechs out (assuming after treatment ends in success?)

 

[suta4242]

Do you mean how do you leach the Cu back out of the sand so the sand can be reused in your reef tank?

I wouldn't do that. The copper that gets bound up in the sand can be released later if your DT experiences a drop in pH. This could end in disaster for your inhabitants.:eek2:

Also I'm not sure how you could possibly maintain the right concentration of copper during treatment?

AFAIK although you've added extra cupramine doesn't mean the concentration will stay at the desired therapeutic value.

good luck

 

[John Dawe]

WuHT, did you ever use a seachem test to check the copper level? If you added copper and did not check with a test kit, you really have no idea if it was ever thereapeutic. That would explain the 'failure'. You have to add a lot of copper to get a 'thereapeutic' level with sand and need to test daily and redose when needed. You also need to use the correct test kit different copper products.

 

[FishTri]

WuHT, look away for a minute, 'cause I want to ask others (that know more about this than I do) for a quick sanity check. And if I'm wrong, then I don't mean to cause any unnecessary worrying over an uniformed question.

So here goes. Am I the only one thinking that this tank, and the plumbing, heaters, sump, skimmer, pumps, etc. are toast for future coral and invert use? I was always under the impression that once you use copper with equipment, it will continue to leach copper which is lethal for corals and inverts? Can someone set me straight?

 

[John Dawe]

Wash the equiptment off with bleach then viniger and it should be fine. The bleach to remove orgaincs and the viniger for the carbonates.