i added coppersafe to my 60 gallon tank to treat my coral beauty.the tank contains afew snails,5 h crabs,2 chromis,some polyps,zoas, ricordiasxenia and some kenya tree.the trees look good.the zoas are closed all the way some h crab are dead and i think the brittle stars are dead(there arms are down).has anyone used this and what was the outcome.oh and by the way the beauty has not one spot of ick on him.
coppersafe
- Thread starter yashua
- Start date
sundancer
New member
Holy smokes! Who the heck told you to dose copper in a reef tank?? Sigh, at this ponit you can pretty much kiss you tank goodbye. Everything will die within the next couple hours if they aren't dead already except your fish. What you have to do now is get everything out of your tank until it is BARE including all rocks,sand and all inverts. Keep the fish in it because what you will have is a quarantine tank. What is this tank size? Please describe the system best as you can. You've got a mess on your hands, my friend.
well its a 60g,been going for about 3 months.i have 3 fish.2 chromis and 1 beauty.the beauty got ick.i do not have a qt tank set up.from reading the coppersafe i figured if i lost a snail or a hermit crab i would take the hit because i dont have a qt tank.i didnt do enough research about copper and corals.still new and obviously learning a hard lesson.how do i rid my rocks and sand of the copper?the tank also has zoas,xenia,ricordia,and some kenya all very small new frags.thanks for any advice.
sundancer
New member
You need to remove EVERYTHING from you tank(they are no good anymore anyway) except fish and do like 25% water changes for a couple/few days. Do you have an ammonia test kit? All the inverts are now dying and its by-product(ammonia)will poison you fish if you don't keep the water clean.
sundancer
New member
Don't worry about getting copper out of your rock and sand at this point. First thing you want to do is keep your fish alive. It's about the only thing that can be salvaged and to do that you need to seperate fish from the rest of the dying organisms. What kind of filtration do you have?
paulamrein
New member
At least now you have that QT. Hard lesson my friend. Sorry to hear it. It's a shame because the manufactures of those products have no accountability the can put anything they want on the label, it's not really regulated. Hard lesson, but at least it's when you were just starting out,
Unfortunately, some of the copper will be absorbed into the rock and substrate. In addition to issues of dying organisms inside the rock which can contribute to a potential ammonia spike you have the problem of rock and sand with copper in it that will leech back later. This makes the rock unsuitable for use in a reef tank. Ok for a fish only tank.
so if even if i boil my rocks they will not be ok.im tring to get away with not having top scrap my sand.i actually only have about 10lbs of live rock.like i said just starting out.the ricordia and the kenya look no worse for the wear .i tear it down and start over could i add back the rics and kenyas??
ok so i did this last night so its been about 20 hours or so.i need to add i did dose the full dose.im not saying that i didnt trash it,there are alot of dead things.but the snails and crabs actually look fine.the most impact looks like the polyps.the brittle stars are toast.im still set on a reef,not a fowler.so if the inverts or at least most of them are not dead,could the copper levels be low enough that i could water change it out??
sundancer
New member
You could it as an experiment. Take out all the dead orgainisms. do a lot of daily water changes. In the meantime keep burying the dead or dying. After a while slowly add more inverts back in and see what happens. But your fish will still have ich. Get a QT tank. Wait aminute..you already have a QT tank! Sorry.
