265 gallon and 14 gallon reef tanks

fish are good

fish are good

Member
Hello Everyone!!! long time since i have posted on here... glad to be back.
lets start from the beginning. My twin brother and i have been in the saltwater aquarium hobby for almost 7 years now, we are now 17 years old. our first tank was a 30 gallon reef then we upgraded to a 125 reef tank and now we have a 265 gallon tank that was a reef up until about 5 months ago..... we decided to add a little more rock so be bought roughly 100lbs from someone on craigslist.com i will never do that again. little did we know we were about to introduce a boatload of copper to our tank. Some of our most prized corals were lost including a Pagoda cup that was over a foot wide and a brain coral that was the size of a cantilope. It wiped out all or our corals we lost about $1500.00 worth of coral.
and sadly we didn't know what was doing it. Three months after adding the rock our tank was brown but all of our fish were happy and healthy. thats what was so puzzling to us, we couldn't find anything really wrong with our water. after several trips to the pet store for information and many hours of internet research we purchased a poly-pad. when this turned blue we had our answer...copper. aha! we had a "lead" so to speak. since then all 700 lbs of live rock have been remover twice and scrubbed. (some people may frown upon this but you dont understand how hard it is to come home to a brown tank, and you cant just put some snails or crabs in their to clean it up... copper killed them too.) the tank got an all-around good cleaning and is on the way to recovery.still cant have anything but fish in the tank but we are constantly running carbon,cuprisorb and polypads.
Now on to tank Specs:
265 Gallon Tank: 7ft/2ft/30in.
55 gallon sump: wet/dry system/ ASM G3 skimmer/ fuge with live rock and Mangroves.
Lights:
2 400 watt radium metal halides
2 6ft VHO's one blue one white
Circulation:
return pump: 3000 gph
Closed Loop: 1140 gph
2 Koralia 4's
1 Koralia 3
Livestock:
Roughly 700 lbs Live rock
120 lbs fiji pink sugar fine sand
-Blue Hippo Tang
-Yellow Tang
-Yellow Eye Kole Tang
-Pair of clowns
-LMB
-Coral Beauty
-Six Line Wrasse
-2 hermit crabs (not sure how they survived)
Now for the 14 Gallon BioCube
Very simple system
15-20 lbs of live rock
10-15 lbs live sand
one clown fish
Watchman Goby
Cleaner Shimp
Decorator urchin
Tons of soft and LPS corals
8 hermit crabs
1 asteria snail
PICTURES OF EVERYTHING WILL BE COMING SOON!!!! SRY I JUST HAD A LOT TO SAY. I HOPE YOU ENJOY.
 
fish are good

fish are good

Member
yea im really hoping things really take off and grow well after i can start putting corals in... im thinking of a few hard corals aswell as soft corals i really like the Bali green slimmer but i have never had sps so got any advice???
 
fish are good

fish are good

Member
i think i have good lighting... maybe not what do you think??? i have never had SPS so you just have to say i dont have enough light or not lol and water is always good (not to sound boastful) accept for copper but i was doing some research and most people who have hard corals have calcium reactors do i need those???
 
meowzer

meowzer

Moderator
I have corals, soft, lps, sps etc.....and do not run a calcium reactor
YUP re-reading the first post your lighting is good
IDK about the copper though
are you saying you have copper in your tank??
 
fish are good

fish are good

Member
yea but its on its way out. i wont put any coral in until its completely gone. but all info you have on sps and green slimmer is appreciated! :)
 
btldreef

btldreef

Moderator
Quote:
Originally Posted by fish are good http:///forum/thread/382766/265-gallon-and-14-gallon-reef-tanks#post_3343084
yea but its on its way out. i wont put any coral in until its completely gone. but all info you have on sps and green slimmer is appreciated! :)
Um, once copper is in a tank, it's there....
Some people get lucky after copper is introduced to their tank, but most do not. You might always have an issue with inverts and more sensitive corals such as SPS.
 
fish are good

fish are good

Member
yea we have heard that alot but that is so depressing lol.... im trying to stay on the optomistic (sp) side of things lol we took a water sample to our pet store and they tested it and it came to less than one ppm in that sample then they explainedd to us that it is close to accurate but for such a large tank...... moral of the story their is hope the store manager had a 125 with a very similar situation and after removing copper several different ways we has back to reef keeping. but we do understand that we will be dealing with copper forever so we are going to constantly run poly-filters they are designed to collect heavy metals and copper!!! :) also we are currently running a canister filter with only cuprisorb in it. so cross your fingers!!! lol
 
acrylic51

acrylic51

Active Member
Welcome back....When you broke the tank down or took the rock out and scrubbed did you try cooking the rock? Personally on resetting the tank I'd ditch some of the rock.....700lbs is a lot of rock even for a 265....
 
fish are good

fish are good

Member
oh yea thats something i didnt mention we took a bunch of rock out and r letting it dry. and we didnt break down the tank when we took out the rock we just scrubber ir all really good and put it back in we also did 3 really large water changes. in the pictures above some rock was removed.
 
acrylic51

acrylic51

Active Member
I would try cooking the rock and during the cooking process you could check copper levels and see what is leaching back.....Nothings 100% sure though....
 
fish are good

fish are good

Member
as stated above i am constantly running copper removing products but thanks for the thought cooking the rock seems like more pain than its worth
 
btldreef

btldreef

Moderator
Quote:
Originally Posted by fish are good http:///forum/thread/382766/265-gallon-and-14-gallon-reef-tanks#post_3343210
as stated above i am constantly running copper removing products but thanks for the thought cooking the rock seems like more pain than its worth
I have been told that constantly running copper removing products is really only good for small amounts that MIGHT come if your RO/DI is going bad, or similar cases and really doesn't do much if copper is in the tank itself. I do wish you the best of luck though.
 
fish are good

fish are good

Member
im going to give the removal products one more month (January) if im not able to keep a clean up crew then i guess its time to make some live rock soup!!!
 
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