I post this to try to give others hope. All is not lost if copper accidentally gets in your system!
About 6 months ago I had my sump moved from under my tank to the back room. It’s a 225 gallon display and 75 gallon sump loaded with hundreds of pounds of live rock and deep sand bed. The tank has been running perfectly for 8 years and loaded with fish and corals . Over the last 6 month period things slowly started going badly. I started losing corals then snails. Then the crabs died and all the macro algae. All the coralline bleached out and the live rock turned black. I then started losing a few fish. All the while I was trying to figure out what had gone so wrong. All my water parameters were good for what I tested.
I finally got advice it could be copper but did not believe that could have been possible. I bought a copper test kit and it was off the charts for copper. I started digging around the sand thinking something fell in or equipment died. After finding nothing I looked behind the walls on a hunch. Low and behold they used shark bite brass fittings on my returns. I immediately cut them out and replaced with pvc but what I saw was unbelievable! The entire inside of the brass was eaten away. I could almost push my finger through the fitting with how much material was missing on the 4 fittings. Obviously copper is a major component of brass and my tank had been severely poisoned.
I read literally hundreds of articles telling me all was lost and I would have to start over costing thousands of dollars to replace tank, plumbing, rock, sand, etc (prob close to $10k on my built in system). As I was giving up hope and leaving the hobby I found an article here on this site that gave me a little hope.
I listened to the advice on their post and I did the following: I bought Cuprisorb, carbon, and poly-filters. The cuprisorb seemed to work slowly as it took a long time to change colors (a light blue) but I recharged it weekly for 8 weeks. Carbon I have no idea if it helped or not but I changed out several pounds weekly. The poly-filter is the bomb. I cut strips and placed in the baffles of the sump and it would turn deep blue and I would replace it. I have no idea how much I used over the 2 month period, probably a few hundred dollars and I kept Amazon busy sending me new supplies.
Every 2 days I would use a turkey baster to blast the live rock and disturb the sand. The skimmer went crazy pulling all the dead gunk out and had to be dumped daily for the first month. After 2 months of treatment I still was testing at .15 copper and was about to call it quits when I noticed movement on the live rock. I took a flashlight and saw little rock bugs had returned. I have no idea how they were able to return or where they came from but they were indeed there. They were everywhere on the rock. Over the treatment period there was nothing on the rock. It went from black to brown to white to green over the 2 months but never before had there been signs of life. I kept the fish in the tank with no ill effect but that was all that I ever saw alive prior to then.
I went to lfs and bought a hermit crab as a test. Acclimated him and tossed him in. Success! He lived. I bought 20 more and all thrived. A week later copper still tested at .15 and polyfilters still turned a light blue but much much slower I tried a few snails and they have survived and thrived. I now test at about .1 for copper and I just tried a few polyp corals and they opened up and look good. Some of the coralline has also started to return to rock and glass as well (where did that come from or how did it survive? Goes dormant?).
Individual results may vary obviously but in my case I dodged a bullet it seems. It took a while and cost me thousands in corals and cleanup crew with the initial mistake but I did not have to replace everything like I was told I would have to and only spent a few hundred in recovery material. I really credit the poly-filter for the majority of the success. I plan to keep them it use until they no longer turn blue over a 30 day period.
Sorry for long post but I wanted to share with others that may have a similar issue that all is not guaranteed lost no matter what some people will tell you. I will update when I finally show no copper and the poly-filter shows no blue to gauge how long it will take but given the amount of copper that was in my system I suspect it will keep leaching for another 6 months before I test 0 as a guess. Would I ever elect to introduce copper in my tank, no way. If I had a smaller system that was not built in I may have replaced it. But with over $10k sitting there I just could not start over and if your in a similar situation, all may not be lost. Hope this helps someone like me that was stressing out with few stories of hope to find.
About 6 months ago I had my sump moved from under my tank to the back room. It’s a 225 gallon display and 75 gallon sump loaded with hundreds of pounds of live rock and deep sand bed. The tank has been running perfectly for 8 years and loaded with fish and corals . Over the last 6 month period things slowly started going badly. I started losing corals then snails. Then the crabs died and all the macro algae. All the coralline bleached out and the live rock turned black. I then started losing a few fish. All the while I was trying to figure out what had gone so wrong. All my water parameters were good for what I tested.
I finally got advice it could be copper but did not believe that could have been possible. I bought a copper test kit and it was off the charts for copper. I started digging around the sand thinking something fell in or equipment died. After finding nothing I looked behind the walls on a hunch. Low and behold they used shark bite brass fittings on my returns. I immediately cut them out and replaced with pvc but what I saw was unbelievable! The entire inside of the brass was eaten away. I could almost push my finger through the fitting with how much material was missing on the 4 fittings. Obviously copper is a major component of brass and my tank had been severely poisoned.
I read literally hundreds of articles telling me all was lost and I would have to start over costing thousands of dollars to replace tank, plumbing, rock, sand, etc (prob close to $10k on my built in system). As I was giving up hope and leaving the hobby I found an article here on this site that gave me a little hope.
I listened to the advice on their post and I did the following: I bought Cuprisorb, carbon, and poly-filters. The cuprisorb seemed to work slowly as it took a long time to change colors (a light blue) but I recharged it weekly for 8 weeks. Carbon I have no idea if it helped or not but I changed out several pounds weekly. The poly-filter is the bomb. I cut strips and placed in the baffles of the sump and it would turn deep blue and I would replace it. I have no idea how much I used over the 2 month period, probably a few hundred dollars and I kept Amazon busy sending me new supplies.
Every 2 days I would use a turkey baster to blast the live rock and disturb the sand. The skimmer went crazy pulling all the dead gunk out and had to be dumped daily for the first month. After 2 months of treatment I still was testing at .15 copper and was about to call it quits when I noticed movement on the live rock. I took a flashlight and saw little rock bugs had returned. I have no idea how they were able to return or where they came from but they were indeed there. They were everywhere on the rock. Over the treatment period there was nothing on the rock. It went from black to brown to white to green over the 2 months but never before had there been signs of life. I kept the fish in the tank with no ill effect but that was all that I ever saw alive prior to then.
I went to lfs and bought a hermit crab as a test. Acclimated him and tossed him in. Success! He lived. I bought 20 more and all thrived. A week later copper still tested at .15 and polyfilters still turned a light blue but much much slower I tried a few snails and they have survived and thrived. I now test at about .1 for copper and I just tried a few polyp corals and they opened up and look good. Some of the coralline has also started to return to rock and glass as well (where did that come from or how did it survive? Goes dormant?).
Individual results may vary obviously but in my case I dodged a bullet it seems. It took a while and cost me thousands in corals and cleanup crew with the initial mistake but I did not have to replace everything like I was told I would have to and only spent a few hundred in recovery material. I really credit the poly-filter for the majority of the success. I plan to keep them it use until they no longer turn blue over a 30 day period.
Sorry for long post but I wanted to share with others that may have a similar issue that all is not guaranteed lost no matter what some people will tell you. I will update when I finally show no copper and the poly-filter shows no blue to gauge how long it will take but given the amount of copper that was in my system I suspect it will keep leaching for another 6 months before I test 0 as a guess. Would I ever elect to introduce copper in my tank, no way. If I had a smaller system that was not built in I may have replaced it. But with over $10k sitting there I just could not start over and if your in a similar situation, all may not be lost. Hope this helps someone like me that was stressing out with few stories of hope to find.
