• Looking to buy a cephalopod? Check out Tomh's Cephs Forum, and this post in particular shares important info about our policies as it relates to responsible ceph-keeping.

emergency? i dont know.

Joined
Mar 13, 2010
Messages
263
Location
Northern NJ
i bought a fish yesterday for my "fish" tank. i allowed the water from the bag into the tank. fish seemed fine and all was well in fishy world. that tank is part of the same sump system as my tank for cuttle eggs. its about 100 gallons total.
stupid mistake, i know. my worry is that there was a small amount of copper in the fish bag. if there was, and it was a standard dose, would two pints of that water contaminate my system enough to harm the eggs?
 
I would contact the store and try to get a straight answer as to whether there is copper in the water. If so, the eggs may be O.K. for awhile, but I would worry about the young as soon as they hatch.

Roy
 
From what I have read You should start looking for a new system if you are going to continue keeping Cephs.The copper bonds to the Silicone in the Tank, and according to what I have read it means the tank is no longer acceptable for cephalopods.
 
rryyddeerr, I have to agree with you.
I have some professional experience with Silicones. Typically, any substance that can "bond" - (which is unlikely) or be absorbed by Silicone will leach out or outgas over a very short period of time. I would say it is very unlikely that Silicone can absorb any copper in solution. I know it's hard to fathom, but Silicone is a crystaline structure, just like glass.
I truly believe this to be a myth. I am willing to bet that if I took a tank out of a fish store and that tank's water had been treated with a copper med., after a cleaning and wipe down with an acetic acid (vinegar) solution and refilled, I would be unable to find even a trace amount of copper in the water.
I would be interested in others comments regarding this. Has anyone actually done any real scientific testing? Is there even a shred of non-anecdotal evidence about reusing tanks that have been used with copper treatments being toxic to fish or inverts? Copper sulfate is found in some of the foods we feed our fish...
 
I'm positive it's no myth.

esquid;116985 said:
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.

ob;142243 said:
This fully depends on exposure, (concentration vs duration). In general terms it has been shown that the 96-hour LC50 for mollusks and crustaceans is 28–39 µg/l, with sublethal effects occurring at 1–10 µg/l. Is there a specific worry w.r.t. your cuttle?

PS: LC50 is the concentration at which 50% of a given population of (aquatic) species dies, in this case after 96 hours of exposure.



Jean;142265 said:
one of our large octopus died in his tank (3000L) with only a small piece of copper wire in it (electrician had been working over the tank) took about 5-6 days and it was awful. He lost his appetite got more and more lethargic , developed blisters/lesions, seemed to lose his ability to coordinate his arms ....it was just nasty.


After this we relined the tank (rhinolinings ---expensive!) and pulled out all the silicon and replaced it, redid all the plumbing, it was a big job.

J

cthulhu77;142251 said:
Any tank that has been exposed to copper should not be used for a mollusk of any type.

Why would you want to condemn an animal to a slow death? I don't understand the reasoning behind this question.
 
i added 1 liter of water containing .1ppm copper. I trust the concentration quote from the store 100%.
that should bring my, conservatively estimated, 90gal. system to .000292ppm copper before it hits the carbon in my sump.
from what i have read in the above links, that is not a detrimental ammount.. PLEASE correct me if I am wrong. I really really appreciate the responses.

thank you very much.
 
A quick Google Scholar search typing in "Copper toxicity cephalopod" turned up dozens of papers on the toxicity of copper including several large review papers.

Over the years I've had several cases of copper poisoning in aquaria and in the end I abandoned each and every system including one where I did exactly what you did pouring shipping water containing copper into a 100 gallon tank. The most extreme example occurred several years ago when we built a new biology building equipped with a running seawater system. I specified no copper, but the contractor installed a small mixing pump that had a bronze bushing. We didn't know it and spent a year with dead urchins, stomatopods and octopus trying to find the cause. We eventually found the elevated copper levels, changed out the pump and still lost animals. We tried flushing the system with acid washes, but it never returned to normal levels and in the end abandoned the system.

Roy
 
thanks roy. the problem i encounter when i delve into the review papers and journals in searches is that i honestly dont know what half of it means. they are typically not written to be understood by the layman. also, thanks for relaying your experience. I will try to find homes for the eggs, i guess. they look very close to bursting. so much for being in the ceph keepers club. too much invested in this system to go out and start completely new. pretty damn frustrated, actually.
 
I have been thinking about your problem a lot over the last few days... I cant shake the feeling that what you were told about getting rid of your system is SO super extreme. I never even thought about water coming from pet stores having copper in it. People on this site have all (well not all but a lot) have turned a used system into an octo tank. I feel it would be a very bad assumtion to think that all of those systems have been cared for as we do our octo tanks. Given that, I would think most people wouldnt think that a little water from the fish store would be a problem and would then pour it in anyway, at least a little bit. If those people just got lucky then great. But I think that maybe... not with these eggs mind you... but maybe you could try and save your system. Test the water for copper. Test it over and over and over again. Then let it sit all over again. See if that would help.

You may have to start all over again, I dont know, but I think its worth a try.

Now I am not a scientist or an expert on cephs for that matter. But I would at the very least try testing and see. Thats just my personal thoughts on the matter.
 

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