octos keep dying

**jimmy 22** · May 03, '08, 2:46pm

hi i have a 55 gal. i put a briareus in the fully cycled tank. he was doing great for about 1 month and stoped eating. then he started to breath very heavy and died 3 weeks later.last month i got a macropus. he ate like a pig and looked very healthy. last night i put food in his tank and he would not eat first time ever. this morning he was on the glass breathing heavy just like the briarius.all water test are fine. nitrate was high 2 weeks ago but they are about 20 ppm now. i bought the tank used. i rinsed it out very good when i bought it. is it possible there is traces of copper in the tank even though i rinsed it out? i just checked on him and he moved to a different spot but still on the glass w/bad cork screwed arms. i put alot of carbon in 10 mins. ago. does anyone know why i lost 2 octos. is it the tank? i have a diff. 55 gal. w/a bimac. i have had him for over a year. and as far as the one that lookes like he is not going to make it i did get as much info. i could on him . he is a baby macropus.any help please. thankyou jimmy.

**AquaForce** · May 03, '08, 3:02pm

Where did you get the aquarium from? If you can track down the previous owner, then you should ask what meds they used in it. If they had used copper before, then most likely yes.

Also, how long was the tank set up before you added the briareus? Just asking because a cycled tank and a "mature" tank are two totally different things.

BTW, welcome to TONMO! How long have you been keeping cephs?

**monty** · May 03, '08, 3:31pm

to TONMO!

From what Jean said the other day, it sounds like copper is more likely to cause rapid descent into convulsions and death. Since this is more drawn out, looking at water quality seems appropriate. 20ppm shouldn't be fatal, but doing more water changes seems like the best course of action, assuming you can't move the octo to another tank. Where did you get a macropus? Is it the one ReefScavengers had recently? I believe there are copper tests available, too.

**jimmy 22** · May 03, '08, 4:27pm

yes he is from reefscavengers. i did test for copper it shows none. but like i said i did rinse it out good but for 2 octos to die and look the same way when starting to die i just dont know what i could be. unless even though copper does not show on test maybe even minute traces of copper is doing this? could that be?

**jimmy 22** · May 03, '08, 4:29pm

i forgot to mention it was a turtle tank before i got it. it has been running for about 1 year now. and it was running for 6 months before the briarius.

**esquid** · May 03, '08, 4:35pm

what type of turtles? also rinsing a tank would not remove copper that has bound to the silicon.

**jimmy 22** · May 03, '08, 4:47pm

they were red ear sliders he had 2 of them. but i was thinking i dont think you would use copper for turtles? but i just realized i got a tide pool wet-dry used from a pet shop they probobly used copper at one time. but rinsing it out would not get the copper out? i thought it would. should i put him in a large container and put him in the bimac tank slowly?

**esquid** · May 03, '08, 5:15pm

Rinsing is not going to remove the copper because copper is a small positively charged ion that can work its way into what we call "silicon". The sealant is actually a silicone. Silicones are chains of silicon atoms, organic and inorganic compounds that are cross-linked together. The small copper ions can form non-covalent bonds with polar function groups of the silicone polymers and stay inside the tank sealant until it is energetically favorable to break that bond and move out of the sealant, such as when there are negatively charged ions or molecules available to bond with.

**AquaForce** · May 03, '08, 5:48pm

This is why i strip and re-seal EVERY used tank that is given to me.... even if the previous owner swears that they never used copper, id rather not take my chances and have it leach at some point into the water..... not to mention the chance of a leak...

**jimmy 22** · May 03, '08, 6:46pm

can the copper be in the silicone and not show on a test kit? and i have a tidepool used. i know they used copper but scrobed it. is it still in the plastic of the wet dry?and what if i just put the silicon over the original silicon will that work?

**esquid** · May 03, '08, 7:19pm

Plastic is also a polymer and is porous, as in it has little holes that things like copper ions can sit inside of. Even if you soaked the plastic in a solution that could strip the copper ions out of the plastic (which would probably destroy the plastic or taint it with a different compound) you could never guarantee that you got all of the ions out.

The reason a copper test might give a negative result when there is copper in the sealant is that the test only detects copper present in the water sample.

Resealing with more silicone would probably be a waste of time and money as the copper ions would be able to work through the new silicone just as easily as the old. It may just take longer. The best way to think about it is that polymers are very slow moving liquids, like glass, and anything that can get in to them can get back out.

**cuttlegirl** · May 03, '08, 9:16pm

For information on copper toxicity in animals, see this link.

http://www.pwrc.usgs.gov/infobase/ei..._33_copper.pdf

Page 81 has information specific to mollusks...

**jimmy 22** · May 03, '08, 9:53pm

if there is minute traces of copper . enough to kill a octo why is the calupra growing just fine? by the way he is dead. im very upset he was my favorite one.but just talking to you it makes me feel a little better. at least he was not someones dinner.can anyone answer this question? thankyou so much jimmy

**esquid** · May 03, '08, 10:48pm

We don't know that copper was the problem in this instance, just that is a problem that ceph owners should be aware of in relation to used tanks. The other thing to think about is that the tank had previously been used for aquatic turtles, which have been found to be carriers of salmonella. I just googled octopus and salmonella and came up with a journal article in Letters in Applied Microbiology this year about salmonella detection assays in cephlopods and shellfish. So that is another possibility.

As for caulerpa, it is possible that some strains of it may have copper resistance. The only thing we do know is that if two octos have died in the same tank both in under a month, that tank should probably not be used in future for octos.

**DWhatley** · May 04, '08, 12:45am

esquid,
Do you know if acrylic also retains copper?

**esquid** · May 04, '08, 10:17am

I've never read anything that specifically talks about copper and acrylic tanks. But just looking a the chemical structure of the acrylic, Poly(methyl methacrylate) or PMMA, there is an oxygen double bonded to carbon, a carbonyl group, on the side chain of the monomer. The oxygen of a carbonyl group is slightly negative because it pulls the bonded electrons closer to itself and electrons have a negative charge. A Cu2+, copper ion, would be attracted to this and could move around in the material by popping from one oxygen to another. I may have to ask my o-chem professor what he thinks about it.

interresting thing in the wiki entry on PMMA:
"PMMA has poor resistance to solvents, as it swells and dissolves easily. It also has poor resistance to many other chemicals on account of its easily hydrolyzed ester groups."

**Bigpapa** · May 04, '08, 12:31pm

Originally Posted by esquid

I've never read anything that specifically talks about copper and acrylic tanks. But just looking a the chemical structure of the acrylic, Poly(methyl methacrylate) or PMMA, there is an oxygen double bonded to carbon, a carbonyl group, on the side chain of the monomer. The oxygen of a carbonyl group is slightly negative because it pulls the bonded electrons closer to itself and electrons have a negative charge. A Cu2+, copper ion, would be attracted to this and could move around in the material by popping from one oxygen to another. I may have to ask my o-chem professor what he thinks about it.

interresting thing in the wiki entry on PMMA:
"PMMA has poor resistance to solvents, as it swells and dissolves easily. It also has poor resistance to many other chemicals on account of its easily hydrolyzed ester groups."

Well, I was interested in the acrylic question too but um I feel like I just had the space between my ears cleaned out trying to understand that.

lol. I guess I will wait for a more lamens term for that one..

**esquid** · May 04, '08, 12:48pm

I was trying to explain it in a way that didn't require two semesters of chemistry to understand, but well it is chemistry and that was the simple version. To give you short answer: i don't know for certain about copper and acrylic, but because silicone and acrylic are fairly similar substances i expect copper would behave in one the way it behaves in the other. My o-chem/bio-chem prof has office hours this week so i'll run it by him, he likes questions like this.

**jimmy 22** · May 04, '08, 1:51pm

hi is there anyway to save the glass 55 gal. and the plastic tidepool wet-dry? to get any copper out if thats the problem? what else could it be? does anyone know? like i said the water tested perfect. but why would 2 octos die with in 1-2 months of being in that tank. come to think of it i used that tide pool wet-dry on the tank w/the bimac for a while and he is doing fine. i have had him for about 1 year now. anyone have any thoughts? thankyou. i used the tide pool on the bimac tank for about 4 months.