coppersafe with liverock is it safe??

[naeemn]

I recently had a very bad outbrake of itch in my tank, i tried itch be gone used the whole bottle, but the itch was still there and i lost 2 fish in the process, the guy at the lfs came by after i called him telling him what had happened , he told me to use cooper safe. I put in the dose he recomended last thursday and the itch is dissapering but i think we killed the live rock i have 60lbs of it. I don't know what to do know i may have ruined my whole tank. Please if someone has some advice let me know cause i think I need all the help i can get.

 

[BadOleRoss]

Never trust your LFS. I recenty killed off 180lbs of LR using a copper based medication. Copper will kill the bacteria on your LR, watch for an ammonia spike. I suggest you get the LR out of you tank. Once the LR is out of the tank you might as well hypo the tank to get rid of the ich. Inverts and corals will not survive hypo. Read the attached article on Hypo. Sorry about your LR . Also, your tank now has copper in it so it will need to be drained and cleaned before you can add any new LR to the tank. You will need to clean the tank with citric (1lb per 75 gallons)or muratic acid (1 gallon to 100 gallons of water). IMO, you need a QT to treat your fishwhile you clean out your tank.

http://www.petsforum.com/personal/trevor-jones/hyposalinity.html

 

[Psionicdragon]

Copper shouldn't affect bacteria from what I have read. I use a sponge filter with live bacteria to be used as filtration for QT tank and I am sure others do the same.

The reason why you shouldn't use medications with live rocks or live sand is because calcium carbonate (sp?) absorbs them, which in two effects: 1) weakens the medication (i think) and 2) leeches back int he tank.

 

[LargeAngels]

Sounds like you got some really bad advice. Copper will kill any living thing on your live rock which is what causes the amonia spikes. Copper itself does not completely kill your bacteria. The Coppersafe will also be absorbed by the live rock lowering the copper dosage and thus not being affective unless you test daily, if not twice per day, and add more copper to keep the appropriate level. Coppersafe is absorbed by calcerous substances.

What I would have done is buy a quarentine tank, remove fish, medicate with copper in the bare quarentine tank and leave main tank fishless for at least 4 weeks, but preferably 6 weeks.

I would also go back to the LFS and tell the owner what type of bad advice one of his employess gave. Copper should NEVER be put into a tank with live rock. Even if you didn't care about the life on the rock everything will die and you will have an ammonia spike.

 

[kevin2000]

Using Copper within a show tank is considered a NO-NO by many aquarist. Most inverts are very sensitive to minor amts of copper and any inverts in your tank are probably dead by now .. to make matter worse Copper tend to bind to calcium carbonate (live rock, crushed coral, aragonite etc) making it difficult to maintain the proper amt. of copper concentration within the water column which is necessary to insure your ich problem goes away. Lastly .. any copper that has been chemically bound to calcium carbonate has an unfortunate ability to leach back into the water column at a later date placing any inverts in jeopardy.

Some would say that unless you toss the live rock and substrate you have converted your tank into a "fish only" system.

Good luck

 

[ladyfsu]

I'd like to ask something here too...

We have a 55 reef and a 30 gallon fowl. A fish that my son bought had ich and was only in the 30 gallon (he was the only fish in there). He got very sick and died. There are 2 peppermints and our pet mantis in there, along with a large piece of live rock we love.

Well, NOW we have a wrasse with ich in the 55 we think. Amazingly we caught him at first site of this possible ich. We put him the 30 but know he'd eat the peppermints. Can I put the peppermints and the live rock in my 55? The 30 gallon had an "ich" fish for 2 weeks. Can the live rock and inverts be "carriers" for the disease and contaminate the 55?

Thx.

 

[kevin2000]

Not sure I fully understood your post but here's my 02.

Ich has a strange life cycle .. in its tomont stage it can attach to just about anything (substrate, rock, tank walls, inverts, fish nets, etc) .. as such its generally considered a NO-NO to transfer anything from an ich infested tank to another tank. In your case I doubt that matters much because I get the impression that both tanks have been exposed and are potentially infected.

Your best bet may be to confine your sick fish to one of the tanks and consider treating with hyposalinity. Hypo is pretty easy to administer, easy on the fish, and the biggest drawbacks are that most inverts and live rock will die off during treatment ... however you can always move the inverts/live rock to the other tank. If you leave the one tank with inverts/liverock without fish for about six weeks that tank will "cure" itself since ich need fish to perpetuate their life cycle.

Another alternative is to setup a small Qt and use hypo or copper ... probably the best choice since it will help preserve any of the infauna within your substrate that would probably die off with use of a hypo. Better yet .. your small investment in a QT may prevent these problems in the future. If you go this route make sure you leave both of your ST's without fish for 5-6 weeks.

Here's a link which discusses the ich cycle and a separate link which discusses hyposalinity.

http://www.petsforum.com/personal/trevor-jones/marineich.html
http://www.petsforum.com/personal/trevor-jones/hyposalinity.html

Good luck

PS ... Next time your better off starting a separate post than piggybacking.

 

[ladyfsu]

piggy back ? sorry I thought it might be helpful to him too

ok thx...I understood the other stuff...thank you