Copper in reef tank - need help

[coolxborg]

Hi All,

I have a 25g reef tank in my office that has been setup for a few months. Everything was doing fine until I changed water a couple of days ago and corals all closed up and inverts started dying.

Checked my parameters and all seem to be fine.

Ammonia - 0
N03 - 10
Calcium - 420
Mg - 1300
Alk - 8.0
Salinity - 1.028 (a little high after i checked so change more water to get it down to 1.026)

The next day, the water was cloudy.

I decided to test for Copper and got a reading of almost 0.5ppm (salifert test kit).

Im in the process of removing all corals and inverts now from the office tank. and will be moving them to my tank at home.

Questions:

My tank at home has quite a bit of SPS and i want to avoid getting copper in the tank. Whats the best process for this?

Acclimate the corals to my tank water at home then perform a few transfers between buckets to ensure copper doesnt get in?

As for the office tank, I dont think i have a choice but to break the tank down and toss the sand and rock since they may leach copper later?

Would cuprisorb work at all?

Any help would be appreciated.

I have no idea how copper got in the tank.

 

[Sk8r]

Polyfilter will absorb copper. Possibly some brainless individual tossed a penny in.

 

[coolxborg]

Polyfilter will absorb copper. Possibly some brainless individual tossed a penny in.

Thanks Sk8r. Can I keep the rock and sand in the tank after using polyfilter?

Or should i just toss/bleach/acid?

 

[droog]

If you started using a new RO/DI system check the fittings. Some of those can be copper or copper alloy...

-droog

 

[pfan151]

I'd just add some cuprisorb. It works very well.

 

[coolxborg]

Thanks. I found the culprit as i was removing the corals.

I removed the corals and fish and placed them in a spare tank at home while I clean the office tank .

Can i re-use my rock and sand after this disaster?

 

[mcgyvr]

I would have just done a few large water changes and ran a polyfilter/cuprisorb and some carbon and watched to see how everything did from there..

 

[coolxborg]

Good point. However, the corals looked terrible and I just wanted to get them out of that contaminated water.

It still looks like I will lose a couple of corals, but some opened last night.

 

[pfan151]

Good point. However, the corals looked terrible and I just wanted to get them out of that contaminated water.

It still looks like I will lose a couple of corals, but some opened last night.

I think you'll be fine after doing some large wc and adding a poly filter and cuprisorb. Maybe try just adding one coral back at first to see how it looks.

 

[tkeracer619]

cuprisorb. You may need to run some for a while but you should be ok.

 

[pfan151]

And stick with ehiem jager heaters. They are still not perfect but I've never had one blow up. Any heater should still be hooked up to a ranco type thermostat as well IMO. Best $50 you could ever spend on your aquarium.

 

[tkeracer619]

^ +1

 

[Hal]

I'm not sure why, but apparently it's a well kept secret that normal carbon will absorb copper. It's probably cheaper than cuprisorb.

 

[pfan151]

I'm not sure why, but apparently it's a well kept secret that normal carbon will absorb copper. It's probably cheaper than cuprisorb.

As far as I know it will not absorb it nearly as efficiently.

 

[coolxborg]

Thanks for all the help. I'm already running carbon and cuprisorb.

Yea, I'll be using a better heater. I control the temp using an apex jr.

 

[Hal]

As far as I know it will not absorb it nearly as efficiently.

Perhaps not, I've never done the math. Carbon is cheap though, and it works. I've never thought that it did a poor job, nor that it was expensive for the quantity I used.

 

[Sk8r]

It may take a little time to cycle all the water through everything, but it will get it. I like PolyFilter, because it shows you THAT it picked up copper, and when it stays white and shows no blue, it's OUT of copper to pick up.