I have a 22 gallon fish tank with a homemade AIO. It was cycled in November. It's been running since the beginning of December. It has two clownfish, two pipefish (they're expecting!), a randall's assessor basslet, and a court jester goby.
Recently my corals have been having issues. It started mid-March. I chalked it up to it being the salt since the Red Sea levels I've been getting were utter crap. I sent in samples of salt to them and they tested them and found out it was also off by a lot. Like to the point where they're sending my samples to Israel for additional testing.
I've been consistently checking the levels in my tank. I started checking copper the other day and noticed a residual (.07 - hanna copper tester) so I've been trying to address the issue with cuprisorb and polyfilter. I have never dosed copper in this tank. I also ran through the sand with my filters to see if I dropped any metal in, nothing.
I tested the RODI unit I have and that came back positive for copper as well as a level of 61 TDS so I swapped out everything in the RODI unit, which now has a level TDS of 0 and a copper level of 0. I work at a LFS part time so in the meantime I did a water change with their 0 tds/0 copper rodi water and my new brand of salt Nyos (since I didn't trust red sea anymore). Yesterday I tested the tank and it was .13 and today I tested the tank and it had a .37 residual so it went up since adding the cuprisorb, poly filter, and water change overnight which makes zero sense.
I went to do another water change today to bring down the copper level. I tested the saltwater batch with Nyos salt and that came back .27. I did a small batch with red sea salt and that came back .42.
I'm sort of at a loss here. I don't know how to deal with the copper. I don't know why my salt mixes are coming back positive for copper. Can anyone help?
Recently my corals have been having issues. It started mid-March. I chalked it up to it being the salt since the Red Sea levels I've been getting were utter crap. I sent in samples of salt to them and they tested them and found out it was also off by a lot. Like to the point where they're sending my samples to Israel for additional testing.
I've been consistently checking the levels in my tank. I started checking copper the other day and noticed a residual (.07 - hanna copper tester) so I've been trying to address the issue with cuprisorb and polyfilter. I have never dosed copper in this tank. I also ran through the sand with my filters to see if I dropped any metal in, nothing.
I tested the RODI unit I have and that came back positive for copper as well as a level of 61 TDS so I swapped out everything in the RODI unit, which now has a level TDS of 0 and a copper level of 0. I work at a LFS part time so in the meantime I did a water change with their 0 tds/0 copper rodi water and my new brand of salt Nyos (since I didn't trust red sea anymore). Yesterday I tested the tank and it was .13 and today I tested the tank and it had a .37 residual so it went up since adding the cuprisorb, poly filter, and water change overnight which makes zero sense.
I went to do another water change today to bring down the copper level. I tested the saltwater batch with Nyos salt and that came back .27. I did a small batch with red sea salt and that came back .42.
I'm sort of at a loss here. I don't know how to deal with the copper. I don't know why my salt mixes are coming back positive for copper. Can anyone help?
