Copper treatment in a DT, Documented

Nasabeau

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Hello everyone. I have Ich in my DT. I tried using ich-x which worked well when it was in use, but the day I stopped dosing it, the ich showed back up. because my tank is very new, I have no corals yet, and very few inverts at all. I decided after reading the thread by @Marc88 , I would make my own thread documenting my experience with dosing copper, since I agree with the initial assessment that there seem to be a lot of people who think copper will ruin the tank for corals forever, but there seem to be no documented cases of this happening, at least that I can find. I have decided this is what I have to do, so today I am pulling my snails and my hermit crab, and tomorrow I will begin dosing copper in my display tank. lets see what happens. attached is the thread I am coming from, I think its a nice read, but obviously, the most important part of science is repeatability. interested in everyone's thoughts and experiences as well.

Dosing copper to your DT...the documented journey. | REEF2REEF Saltwater and Reef Aquarium Forum
 
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Nasabeau

Nasabeau

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so, day one I have run into an issue... how do you guys get Nassarius snails out of your tanks? I have two in there, I see them come out occasionally when I feed, but they aren't coming out right now... its as if they know XD
 
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Nasabeau

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some more info for you all, I have 6/9 inverts out, will find the other three before dosing. I will be using cupramine by seachem, which lists the target concentration at 0.5mg/l, and I have a seachem multitest copper test as per the recommendations of cupramine.
 

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Hello everyone. I have Ich in my DT. I tried using ich-x which worked well when it was in use, but the day I stopped dosing it, the ich showed back up. because my tank is very new, I have no corals yet, and very few inverts at all. I decided after reading the thread by @Marc88 , I would make my own thread documenting my experience with dosing copper, since I agree with the initial assessment that there seem to be a lot of people who think copper will ruin the tank for corals forever, but there seem to be no documented cases of this happening, at least that I can find. I have decided this is what I have to do, so today I am pulling my snails and my hermit crab, and tomorrow I will begin dosing copper in my display tank. lets see what happens. attached is the thread I am coming from, I think its a nice read, but obviously, the most important part of science is repeatability. interested in everyone's thoughts and experiences as well.

Dosing copper to your DT...the documented journey. | REEF2REEF Saltwater and Reef Aquarium Forum
Good luck to you! The copper will absolutely leach into your rock and sand. Make sure you test and dose daily until the rocks/sand no longer leach. This is to ensure your leveles remain consistent. I would go past the 30 day mark to be safe, closer to 45 if you have the patience. I had quite a bit of success and grew coriline and lps corals (never reintroduced SPS)...that is until I saw the BRS NSA video. They made it look so simple so I broke everything down and rebuilt. It's the scape I always wanted.

When you remove the copper polyfilter pad is the truth....as well as metasorb. If your using cupramine, then cuprisorb may work as well.
 
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Nasabeau

Nasabeau

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Good luck to you! The copper will absolutely leach into your rock and sand. Make sure you test and dose daily until the rocks/sand no longer leach. This is to ensure your leveles remain consistent. I would go past the 30 day mark to be safe, closer to 45 if you have the patience. I had quite a bit of success and grew coriline and lps corals (never reintroduced SPS)...that is until I saw the BRS NSA video. They made it look so simple so I broke everything down and rebuilt. It's the scape I always wanted.

When you remove the copper polyfilter pad is the truth....as well as metasorb. If your using cupramine, then cuprisorb may work as well.
my plan was cuprisorb, but I was aware of the other products as well, which was my plan if the cuprisorb didn't work. basically I figured since I'm trying something mildly dangerous I should follow the directions to the letter unless it wasn't working (why I am also using seachem's test kit). what I like about cuprisorb is I can throw it in my canister filter indefinitely when I am done in case I get a rock that decides its going to randomly spit some extra out a month down the line. in the end, if it doesn't work out and I never get all the copper out, I will be okay, I like fish the most anyway, I won't be terribly heartbroken if I never get corals in there, but its also not feasible with my current stock to run fallow for 70+ days. I planned on maintaining the copper for at least 40 days, I had been thinking of pushing it out to the full 76 days just to be absolutely sure it's gone, but I am concerned that might get a little cumbersome, especially when taking it back out, having had that much time to get into my rocks, sand, and filter. I am being incredibly patient with my inverts because I actually want to start with anemones so I may end up having run the tank for a year before non-fish go in

Edit: holy crap, you're the op of the post I read! that went right over my head! I am so happy you posted your thread. it was super inspirational for this experiment
 
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Spieg

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Let me get this straight... you intend to treat your DT with copper and then at some point in the future you will add coral and/or invertebrates into the DT and see if they die? This is absolutely ridiculous. The reason there may be no documented threads on this is because it has been common knowledge since well before the internet existed.

 
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Let me get this straight... you intend to treat your DT with copper and then at some point in the future you will add coral and/or invertebrates into the DT and see if they die? This is absolutely ridiculous. The reason there may be no documented threads on this is because it has been common knowledge since well before the internet existed. .
that is not what I intend to do at all... we can test for copper? in fact, have to do get the dosage right. and if copper is in the tank, I won't put invertebrates in. the theory behind copper making a tank FOWLR is that you'll never be able to get it out, at least that what the few things I've read have said, which means there will be detectable levels of copper in the water. the problem is not that I'm too lazy, its that everyone I've talked to has said YOUR assertion that I could keep my entire stock in a 40 gallon for 2 months is ludicrous and cruel with the exception of jay who said it could work maybe. I would essentially need to go spend hundreds if not thousands of dollars to set up another 55-75 gallon tank, and I don't have that kind of money just sitting around, nor the space for a tank that size.

Edit: also worth mentioning, I did find threads, from people who said there was no issue at all. I couldn't find anyone who had actually been unsuccessful in removing copper, but at least 3 who were.
 
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Marc88

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Let me get this straight... you intend to treat your DT with copper and then at some point in the future you will add coral and/or invertebrates into the DT and see if they die? This is absolutely ridiculous. The reason there may be no documented threads on this is because it has been common knowledge since well before the internet existed.
I will be very respectful with my comment...

1. That is not the purpose of what the OP is doing. Don't come to his thread and be abusive and rude. If you dont agree keep your trolling to yourself.

2. Plenty of people have treated their DT with copper successfully and added coral, I'm in this category. FYI someone tried and failed along the lines to provide the "guidance" that people follow as the way to QT fish/coral.

3. In this hobby people kill fish and coral constantly. Happens on a massive scale especially in the wholesale market. How dare you try to shame anyone for thinking outside the box and trying to do what's best for their situation.

Your not welcome here. You added nothing useful to the thread... Have a good day, I wish you the best.
 
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josephxsxn

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Following, seems very interesting even though I have dedicated QT tanks. Wondering what impact doing this may have to the long term biodiversity of the micro-fuana. Looking at your build thread you added alot of live sand and rock rather then dry so I imagine you have a supervisor diversity by comparison.
 
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Nasabeau

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Following, seems very interesting even though I have dedicated QT tanks. Wondering what impact doing this may have to the long term biodiversity of the micro-fuana. Looking at your build thread you added alot of live sand and rock rather then dry so I imagine you have a supervisor diversity by comparison.
I will say I used live sand and one live rock. most of my rock was carib sea liferock. I did seed the tank with multiple different brands of bacteria, in the hopes of upping the diversity.
 
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Nasabeau

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Update: last night I found my last snail, got him into the other tank, and began with the dosing of copper! added 120 drops (accounting for rocks and glass, I've estimated I have about 65 gallons of water so the bottle called for 131 drops, figured better to go under than over). pre treatment test showed no presence of copper. bottle calls for a test after 48 hours, so I will update tomorrow with my first copper reading
 

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Update: last night I found my last snail, got him into the other tank, and began with the dosing of copper! added 120 drops (accounting for rocks and glass, I've estimated I have about 65 gallons of water so the bottle called for 131 drops, figured better to go under than over). pre treatment test showed no presence of copper. bottle calls for a test after 48 hours, so I will update tomorrow with my first copper reading

How many ML does that come out too? I use the same product. I'd imagine you need 6ml for half dose.
 
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Nasabeau

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How many ML does that come out too? I use the same product. I'd imagine you need 6ml for half dose.
I'll be 100% honest, it told me drops per gallon, and I didn't think to measure what that came to, I dropped right into the tank because I figured that allowed me to go a little slower...
if I have to dose more, I will measure first and let you know
 

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googling looks like 16 drops per ml, so you did alittle more the 7ml. Personally I can't read the seachem test kit colors (and I am not color blind lol.) Ended up buying a HI702 to get a digital number for the copper ppm.
 
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Nasabeau

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googling looks like 16 drops per ml, so you did alittle more the 7ml. Personally I can't read the seachem test kit colors (and I am not color blind lol.) Ended up buying a HI702 to get a digital number for the copper ppm.
I've been thinking about doing that. I am going to see if I have difficulty with the manual test first and if its pretty difficult I planned to pick up a hannah checker. my main concern is the dosage given of cupramine is in mg/l which the seachem tests reads in. I'd need to find a conversion chart if I wanted to use the hannah checker because it reads in ppm.
 

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marine therapeutic dose of cupramine is 0.5ppm.. As your tank volume is pretty near mine I am assume your will find 1ml results in a rise around 0.03ppm maybe alittle more as you have slightly less volume estimated then I did (70-80gal for my QT)
 
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Nasabeau

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marine therapeutic dose of cupramine is 0.5ppm.. As your tank volume is pretty near mine I am assume your will find 1ml results in a rise around 0.03ppm maybe alittle more as you have slightly less volume estimated then I did (70-80gal for my QT)
so, as far as cupramine is concerned, mg/l is equal to ppm? good to know. that makes life easier XD
 

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Good to see someone documenting this! I hear the same thing with freshwater shrimp (if you've ever used copper you can never add them to the tank) and it always seemed a little implausible to me - if a finite amount is added, then even if some copper is taken into rocks/sand/silicone seams and leaches back out over time, the amount present must decrease. It's just a matter of how long it takes for the level to reach an acceptable value.
 
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