Copper.....safe? Or not?

[tony]

Is this a dangerous product? I was told it was and discontinued use of it. I was just wondering how and why its bad, and what safe alternatives there are to treat and prevent the dreaded ICH.

[Loman]

Tony,
Copper like most meds has good and bad effects. In almost all cases medication is best done in quarantine tank and outside of the main display tank. In the case of copper one of the biggest side effects is that it kills almost all invertebrates including snails etc. IMO opinion it should NEVER (as soon as say this I will find an exception but basically never) be used in the display tank. It should be used carefully in a QT tank. One area that I tend to stay on the soap box is that people need to understand the full effects of whatever they dump into the tanks. In many cases people have unknowingly turned the fish tank into a giant chemistry experiment. If you have already used I would not plan to keep any invertebrates fro a very long time (maybe ever) and intro them very slowly to see if the effects have diminished sufficiently that they can live. For treating ich, I would suggest the salt treatment described in the sticky article.

[Tommy Gun]

Not that he needs my support per say, but I completely agree with Loman on the use of Copper. It is toxic...even to fish...so the idea is to keep levels low enough to keep fish from dying (even if they are still stressed from the exposure), but high enough that the parasites are harmed/killed. It would definitely be a tough preventative measure to handle since you have to monitor and test for copper levels almost constantly. It is also toxic to benificial bacteria apparently.

The reason that the product Coppersafe can put the word 'safe' in their name is becuase it uses a chelated form of copper. This means that during the treatment, the copper is still in the tank and as harmful as any other copper product, but you have a better chance of being able to remove most, or perhaps all, of it; which implies that you can still keep inverts (who are more sensitive to copper than fish) in the tank later...after you are done treating. So, think of it this way....they couldn't name their product Copper-always-safe

[tony]

So copper is toxic to beneficial bacteria...............man that explains EVERYTHING. No wonder it took so long for my tank to cycle i added it from the start. So its definately not something to use in a display tank only quarantine tanks. Thanks you all are awesome.