Need advice copper intrusion!

[FishinBob]

Well everything that can go wrong seemingly did... in the process of moving and and setup a 55 Gallon temp tank while I overhauled the 90. Setup in garage due to space with half my rock and most of my LPS colonies. Long story short high Temps in the garage forced me to place a small ac fan over the tank to help cool it and well... it fell in the water, on of course.... don't know how long it was in but got a jolt removing it. Instantly lost most chalice and scroll and sps colonies. Fish looked bad snails looked horrible and corals horrible as well. Did a large water change added carbon and polyfilter, polyfilter showed blue... copper. Continued and did 100 water change over the past 2 days. More carbon and polyfilter fish are eating snails are crawling and frogspawn are opening slightly and 3 chalice's seemingly made it. Problem is have the 90 gallon about ready.... 90% of my rock is in th 55 the got coppered, delimme is I have a 40 breeder setup with maybe 30lbs of rock with remaining fish and corals, what are the chances of contaminating either the 40 or 90 with corals, pumps heaters or rocks from the 55? Any advice is appreciated! Already getting new sand due to my lack of motivation to clean it while my tanks were crashing! Sorry for the long winded speil!

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[saintsreturn]

Wow. I wish I could help but I am sure someone can. Good luck and let us know how it all turns out


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[DaveK]

It looks like you handled everything fairly well. Yes, live rock can absorb copper from the water. That's why your shouldn't use live rock in a tank where your using copper to treat a disease.

However, I don't think that you exposed the live rock more than a day. There could also have been a lot of other stuff released, but you changed the water.

Get yourself a copper test kit, and test the water. If the reading is now 0, and there it a good chance it will be. Go ahead and use the live rock. Then continue to test the water.

Only if you have a long term problem and can't keep corals alive in the system should you consider replacing all the live rock. It would be expensive, and you don't want to lightly discard seasoned rock.

 

[PSU4ME]

As Dave said, you've done a good job trying to fix it. I would run cuprisorb until your test (kit or poly filter) no longer show it.

It's likely you didn't expose it to much copper, the deaths likely came from the current.

 

[FishinBob]

Thanks for the quick responses guys, dave I did a 25 gallon water change within a few hours with carbon and polyfilter within an hour. 20 gallon following morning and then 20 gallons again on suday also replaced carbon and polyfilter at waterchange. I added 1 bag of cuprisorb for 60 gllons today. Tank contains roughly 50 gallons of water maybe 40-45 excluding rock. Snails are crawling and no more tissue receding. I'm going to run the cuprisorb fora week and contemplate it a bit more... I can acid wash the rocks no issue actually setting up the bleach soak now for the other rocks I wanted to purge. I need some rock for the temp tank... guess I should just start cycling the 90 gallon now hoped to use the rock in the 55 lol.

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