Alright, through a crappy turn of events i managed to get copper into my sps reef tank, needless to say all corals are dead. however i now have 110 or so lbs of beautiful coppered live rock to sell. Pretty much make me an offer, i need to get this rock out of the way before i can buy new rock and start over.
110 lbs of live rock for fish tank for sale..
- Thread starter jade2122
- Start date
hexedagain
New member
OMG all of those beautiful corals are gone?
So sorry to hear that.
So sorry to hear that.
saltwater2642
New member
Can't you clean the rock and still use it?
Anyone know ?
Anyone know ?
hexedagain
New member
Not with corals.
lifesworksataol
New member
are u sure that is what happened? i would check your copper level first. maybe you could sell it to a fish store that is looking to put it in there fish systems?
yes i am sure it was copper, went to sea in the city and marcye helped me out a ton today and my level of copper was definately up there. my dumbself put a brass gate valve in my plumbing..thus leaching copper.. it is unlikely to get all of the copper out of the rock so my wonderful hubby has offered to buy me all new rock, yay! i don't believe that silicone really holds much copper, nothing i can't deal with with some cuprsorb (sp?). thanks for all your sorrow, just hope anyone who got to see my tank enjoyed it cause it will be a loooooooooong time til it looks good again like that. so hopefully someone can use this rock...i really gotta get it outta my tank so i can work on rebuilding and moving forward again..
dugg
New member
It depends on the age and or quality of the silicone i think. I have a 20 gallon tank that i use as a fo/qt tank that was exposed to copper over 10 years ago. It has all new equipment and new rock and sand since then. It still to this day will grow almost no algae in the tank. If i really let it get super nasty before a do a change (it currently houses a 24" golden tail eel), it grows a black/brown dust type of algae, but never anything else. I have never tested the levels, because i know what it was exposed to, and it is fo/qt, so it doesn't matter the levels. I don't know if this is typical or not, but it's not worth the risk IMO. I would set it up with water only for a week or two, and test again before putting more rock in there. It don't take much copper to kill corals.
lifesworksataol
New member
isnt copper really bad for eels?
Cheekymonkey
Premium Member
Jessica I am so sorry... I don't have too much of your stuff, but when you get going I will frag any of the fragable stuff to get you some more of it...
dugg
New member
Doesn't seem to bother him much lol. He is a shrimp garbage disposal. I have a brittle star in there too, and he does fine, but i have put in snails and hermits that didn't last but a few days at best. This tank has been set up in it's current state for 4 years, and for some reason, it flat won't grow algae. I'm not complaining lol. The only thing i have to attribute it to is the copper from an ich outbreak several years ago that i used copper to treat for several weeks. Never had algae grow in the tank since. The tank was probably 10 years old or so at the point it was exposed to the copper, and it is a perfecto tank i believe from walmart, so not sure if it was old silicone or just a cheap tank.
Seachem makes a product called Cuprisorb that is the ultimate copper remover. Once i get water in the tank i will take a sample back to marcye to check for copper. the silicone is in great shape but putting new water in it and running for a little bit with the cuprisorb should take care of any chance of copper left in tank. eels are sensitive to copper but not super sensitive like coral.
sytanek
New member
the guys at ocean direct has a really awesome copper test too. One of the lab grade ones. On a previous tank we had, we thought we had the same problem, and after replacing all of the water and watching it, and testing continually, there was absolutely .0000000 copper in the system based on the lab grade test.
