mardel coppersafe

[SaleenSc405]

I have a 300 gallon saltwater fishtank with 300lbs. of live rock...I have had ick for about 2 months now ~ there has been tremendous improvement. I have been using Kick Ick and because the ick wasnt fully going away the salesman at the petstore recommended that I use Mardel ~ Copper-safe. I had advised him 3 times that I have live rock and he confirmed that I can go ahead and use this product as long as I dont have any coral in the tank. I used the reccomended amount on the bottle and treated the tank.

I then called a friend of mine at a petstore and he told me that I shouldnt have used this product as it may kill my live rocks. He recommended that I do a 25% water change.

HAs anyone used this product Mardel? Will it kill my live rock? Should I do a water change?

Thanks!

[chadf]

Copper will kill pretty much every invertebre in the tank and you will never be able to keep one again because it leaches into everything and is pretty much there forever. It's probably too late to save the rock but a few large (maybe 50% water changes for a few days) and the use of carbon may help to remove some of the copper and who knows what might happen.

[Tommy3492]

yea, i would use it in a quartine tank, who knows you may get very lucky with rock

[SaleenSc405]

I just dont understand why this salesman told me it was safe to use as it wasnt as strong as copper even when I make it clear to him that I had live rock in there...has anyone ever used this solution?

in the meantime, i am doing a 50% water change and hopefully will be able to save the rock.

[Tommy3492]

probably just didn't know, or was dumb lol, my guy at the store told me i must not have anything alive in the tank beside fish, and strongly reccommend a quatine tank, what about tanking out the rock, and putting them in fresh saltwater immediatly? that might help

[SaleenSc405]

i really dont have any place to put 300 pounds of rock. hopefully this water change will save them

[Abbey]

simmilar thing happened to meabout a year ago in my 20gallon finally some life is just starting to vome back. i just hate salesmen who don'nt nowhat they are doing or care and just want to make a ssale.

[SaleenSc405]

i thought once the rock dies it done. is there any chemicals i could use for the rocks if they die?

[Tommy Gun]

Hey SaleenSc405 - welcome to the forum!!!

I definitely agree with any advice that includes the use of a quarantine tank....especially when the treatment involves copper of any type! That salesman or employee did you a great injustice by misleading you and to be honest, I would probably bring that up to a manager or complain about this in some fashion if for no other reason than to make sure that person doesn't keep misleading others. In fact, I am about 90% sure that there are warnings on the coppersafe packaging, bottle, or included instructions that clearly state that all inverts should be removed (or the fish removed to an invert-free aquarium) prior to treatment....including a warning which says it should only be used in a saltwater fish-only tank; which excludes your tank because it is FOWLR.

Wow, your situation has actually made me mad too! Here is the skinny on this product...

i am doing a 50% water change and hopefully will be able to save the rock

Regardless of what form it is in, copper is copper and the product name of "coppersafe" is NOT meant to imply that it can be used safely in any situation, nor to imply that copper is safe for every situation. The bottom line is that this product supposedly contains chelated copper, which simply means that it is supposed to be easy to remove the copper after a treatment is finished....or in other words, after you use it in an aquarium, it and everything inside it can be cleaned out - including a 100% water change - and then the tank can be set up again and livestock (fish included) are less likely to suffer from any residual copper that might otherwise be left behind when using other products. But like I said, the treatment is a copper based treatment so copper is involved, and copper is pretty deadly to everything inside an aquarium and the only reason it works well for treating fish is because it takes more copper to kill a fish than it does to kill inverts and/or the ailment you are treating for.

With that being said, I would strongly suggest doing a very large water change, if not 100% (a real tough call on that one though), start using a lot of carbon and replace it very often (although I am not sure if carbon will absorb copper or not, but I will see if I can find out for you)...which can be another tough call because the carbon would probably strip a lot of trace elements from the water as well....but I think that might not be your worst problem right now anyways.

In any event, I would definitely be prepared to do some massive water changes so that you can be ready if a lot of your live rock did die since that is going to translate into a lot of potential ammonia, then nitrites, and so on.

thought once the rock dies it done. is there any chemicals i could use for the rocks if they die?

No, live rock is not "done" if it should happen to die off....for example, when you transported your live rock from the store to your house, some die off occurred and obviously base rock is simply 'dead' live rock and people use that all of the time, myself included. Keep in mind that it is not really the rock itself that is alive but only the various forms of life that populate the rock's surface that led to the name 'live rock'. I am not aware of any thing you could use to help stop die off or reverse it other than a bacteria product like BioSpira (maybe) and probably a considerable amount of time. However, there is a good chance that this will not result in a complete disaster, so don't give up hope yet!

[chadf]

Originally Posted by Tommy Gun

start using a lot of carbon and replace it very often (although I am not sure if carbon will absorb copper or not, but I will see if I can find out for you)...which can be another tough call because the carbon would probably strip a lot of trace elements from the water as well....but I think that might not be your worst problem right now anyways.

The directions on the chelated copper treatment that I use say to use carbon to remove it from water and sure enough it did remove the copper from the water. Like Tommy gun said replace the carbon often as it will leach the copper back into the water if it becomes over saturated.

I wouldn't worry about removing trace elements by using carbon. Routine water changes replenish enough trace elements that it shouldn't cause a problem, especially since you do not have corals. Plus you will be doing some large water change to help remove the copper so you will be fine on that.