Fishel
Community Member
The checker says accuracy is plus/minus .05 ppm.
I’ve been trying to determine when it will be safe to add inverts to my 10 gallon invert quarantine tank. Somehow my first attempt failed and I lost a skunk shrimp during acclimation and a tiger pistol shrimp a week later. At the time the checker was reading 0.05 ppm copper.
I’m not entirely sure how copper got in the invert QT. It was probably cross contamination from equipment that was running previously on the fish only QT. I noticed the copper readings before I got the inverts so I did massive water changes to the invert QT but could never get copper to 0.00.
So now after more massive water changes and running CupriSorb and Polyfilter for a month my readings are still 0.05 ppm. During that time I had readings above 0.05 ppm but it’s settled back down to 0.05 ppm.
Would 0.05 ppm copper kill a skunk and tiger shrimp? Must I wait for 0.00 readings from the Hanna Checker for 2 weeks? The local fish store thinks it probably wasn’t the copper that killed the inverts. They were ordered from liveaquaria and arrived alive and looked fine. I drip acclimated both of them at the time.
On a side note my 20 gallon display tank now reads 0.13 ppm copper as well. I suspect maybe that was due to when I transferred the 2 clowns from quarantine. I did not empty QT water into the display tank. I netted both clowns. I have CupriSorb and Polyfilter and Carbon running on the DT now and am doing more frequent water changes to try and get rid of the copper.
Copper removal has kind of been a pain in the butt. There appears to be a lot of cross contamination. I really would like to ultimately get inverts in the display tank.
Any advice would be appreciated.
I’ve been trying to determine when it will be safe to add inverts to my 10 gallon invert quarantine tank. Somehow my first attempt failed and I lost a skunk shrimp during acclimation and a tiger pistol shrimp a week later. At the time the checker was reading 0.05 ppm copper.
I’m not entirely sure how copper got in the invert QT. It was probably cross contamination from equipment that was running previously on the fish only QT. I noticed the copper readings before I got the inverts so I did massive water changes to the invert QT but could never get copper to 0.00.
So now after more massive water changes and running CupriSorb and Polyfilter for a month my readings are still 0.05 ppm. During that time I had readings above 0.05 ppm but it’s settled back down to 0.05 ppm.
Would 0.05 ppm copper kill a skunk and tiger shrimp? Must I wait for 0.00 readings from the Hanna Checker for 2 weeks? The local fish store thinks it probably wasn’t the copper that killed the inverts. They were ordered from liveaquaria and arrived alive and looked fine. I drip acclimated both of them at the time.
On a side note my 20 gallon display tank now reads 0.13 ppm copper as well. I suspect maybe that was due to when I transferred the 2 clowns from quarantine. I did not empty QT water into the display tank. I netted both clowns. I have CupriSorb and Polyfilter and Carbon running on the DT now and am doing more frequent water changes to try and get rid of the copper.
Copper removal has kind of been a pain in the butt. There appears to be a lot of cross contamination. I really would like to ultimately get inverts in the display tank.
Any advice would be appreciated.
