Dosing with copper

[masterswimmer]

Quick question.....a friend of mine has a FO tank. He had ich. Dosed with copper. He's now thinking of going FOWLR, possibly some coral in the future. Can he do this? His tank is a 150 AGA.

TIA,
Russ

[Franks Reef]

He should run cuprisorb in the tank to absorb any of the free floating copper and also remove anthing porous from the tank that was in it at the time of the treatment. I believe he should be OK.

[skearse]

I would also agree with Frank. Some species (angels, for example), can be extremely sensitive to copper. Also, I think you'd want to monitor the tank for a while afterwards to make sure that the fish in the tank are OK before introducing anything else into the tank. The Cu, because it is the main anti-disease agent, can degrade the fish's immune system and make them very susceptible to disease, particularly stress-related diseases (ick, etc.) IMO, this is probably a major factor in fish dying when first introduced into a tank-they were treated with copper at the wholesaler/distributor/LFS, and then brought home to a tank where there is no copper, and they have to rely on a weakened immune system, and can not handle the stress of the move.

[ADS]

The tank will need to be broken down including rock and substrate. Running cuprisorb ususally takes 3 weeks to remove Cu. Also use polyfilter to assess dissipation of Cu. It turns color when Cu is removed.
Adam

[masterswimmer]

Thanx everyone, I knew I could count on you.
He decorates with bleached corals. I'm saying he should remove them based on your input. They would seem somewhat porous to me.

Thanx again,
Russ

[Reelfish]

I feel the best FO tanks have LR in them. I understand using bleached coral in case you need to treat the tank because the treatment would kill the LR. The corals absorb the treatment and have to be replaced. This is not cheap and sometimes more costly then LR.
FOWLR tanks are great but you have to be real careful of the fish you choose if you want corals.
Bob