best way to manage copper and amonia?

[Zacktosterone]

I want to start thourouggly treating every fish with copper before it goes in my tank instead of just doing 12 DAT tank transfer followed by observation.

I've never been good with copper. I have a quarantine tank right now with a piece of live rock in it (that will never enter the display as soon as I add copper) I have a bottle of cupramine. What's the best to test it with? And how do manage copper levels and amonia?

 

[Crayonbreaker]

Well you will manage your amo as you would any other tank but in something that small I would test more frequently.

There are also several copper test kits out there. Test frequently to maintain proper levels.

http://www.marinedepot.com/ps_viewi...sJrADhTpgx5km9FUpesbBHmVIxS6PVOLkchoCs9bw_wcB

 

[Kidd Reef]

Use an Ammonia alert badge if your going to QT With cupramine and ammonia is a concern. Cupramine will make alot of tests show ammonia because of some amine that's used in it or something like that.thats the reason you can't use stuff like ammo lock that binds ammonia while running cupramine

 

[Zacktosterone]

Is red sea easy to read?

 

[Deinonych]

I've never used the Red Sea kit, as it is inexplicably not available in the US. The Salifert and Seachem kits are not very easy to read, although Salifert is marginally better.

As far as ammonia management, I've used Bio-spira to seed the QT (using ceramic media in a HOB filter) with great success. Why did you opt for copper treatment instead of TTM?

 

[Zacktosterone]

I've never used the Red Sea kit, as it is inexplicably not available in the US. The Salifert and Seachem kits are not very easy to read, although Salifert is marginally better.

As far as ammonia management, I've used Bio-spira to seed the QT (using ceramic media in a HOB filter) with great success. Why did you opt for copper treatment instead of TTM?

Because it costs a lot more money to change that much water

 

[Dr Colliebreath]

I use the Salifert and Seachem test kits. They can be difficult to read. The good news is that Cupramine is pretty stable in solution and the dosage is pretty accurate. Carefully bring your dose to the proper level and then when you do water changes, make sure to replace the Cupramine you remove (i.e., if you do a 25% water change, you need to replace 25% of the Cupramine you put in and then removed with the water change).

I recommending dosing Cupramine more slowly than the directions provide. I put 1/3 of the total recommended dose in on day one, none on day two, 1/3 on day three, none on day 4, and 1/3 on day 5. You can do it more slowly in 1/4 dose increments also.

 

[Chris27]

Because it costs a lot more money to change that much water

And it's way easier....

BTW, if the rock has been in the QT for a while, and it's working as a bio-filter, you likely won't have to worry that much about the ammonia. It wouldn't hurt to check it daily with your copper though.

If you can get the red sea kit, it's easy to read provided you're not color blind, but it won't measure cupramine properly. When I used that kit in the past, it used to come with it's own little bottle of ionic copper which IMHO works better then cupramine.....but using that takes a little more practice and experience.