herbbie
Member
I think I have come to the conclusion that I have a serious copper problem. I will take you back in time for about the last year to describe what has happened up to today, so you can get a clearer picture of the history. I have a 2oo gal reef system, all parts bought new. I use RO water for water changes and top offs. My LFS guy sold and set me up with pretty much the best equipment around. I know that I have the proper set up. Lots of LR, an ecosystem filteration in my sump MH lights, etc. It is a glass tank. My LFS guy set me up and he maintains the tank for me once a week. Everything was going along just fine. In order to make life easier for me, my husband made me a "Willy Wonka" feeding tube, so I could feed the fish easier. Although everything he used that went into the tank was safe, he had used a copper band to help hold the tube in place. The copper band was not in the water. A few months after that, my Hard corals started to die. My LFS said that's the way it goes sometimes. That if you take a tree out of the woods, and transplant it into your backyard, it won't always grow. Then my crabs started to die. At first the LFS guy thought I had Mantis shrimp. But, that didn't make complete sense to me, because I was losing everything, including the copepods and the caulerpa. I started getting suspicious that it had something to do with the feeding tube, because the problems started showing up a few months after the feeding tube was installed, and upon closer inspection I saw that the copper was corroding, and I'm sure copper had gotten into the tank. My LFS started beefing up the poly filters. At this stage of the game, hair algae started creeping in, and within a couple of months, our tank starting growing hair algae like you wouldn't believe. My LFS guy, started scrubbing the rocks, and tinkering a little bit here and there, but not really making any headway. He didn't feel the copper was an issue any more, and the real issue was that the Caulerpa was not growing. He doesn't seem to believe in test kits much, as he never tested for copper, and doesn't ever do much testing of the water parameters. Every week he would bring in a bunch of caulerpa, and every week it would die. Then he brought some sea cucumbers into the sump to try and get the cucumbers to sift through the sand and stir things up. Well, one of the cucumbers ended up getting into the pump intake, and basically every fish I had died within hours. Right about then he thought that my sand bed in the ecosystem had gone anaerobic, and that is why the caulerpa wouldn't take hold. So, he ordered a new sandbed from ecosystem for $340. He put that in, along with some caulerpa and left. The caulerpa died, and the sump got an outbreak of cyanide (?) bacteria (The red algae that's not algae). So, he treated that with eurythromyacin, which of course cleared up that symptom. Anyway, he really believed that the anaerobic sand bed was the reason my caulerpa wouldn't grow, and if we could get the caulerap to grow, the hair algae would be gone. I do agree that the caulerpa is part of the big problem, however, my belief is that the caulerpa is not growing for a reason. So every week for the last 2 months, he brings in a new bunch of caulerpa, to replace the bunch that didn't grow and died. He really believes every week that the caulerpa is going to take hold. He decided to use tap water the last water change, and that increased the algae bloom. He thinks it's time to replace the bulbs in my MH and my sump, which I agree is probably time, but I don't really believe that is at the heart of my algae problem. At this stage of the game, I'm getting upset. The crustaceans are living longer, and I've got copepods, but I'm still losing crustaceans. I finally added fish after about 3 months of no fish from the cucumber meltown, and I lost 3 immediateley. No ick, they just died. I started to push my LFS into why do I have so much hair algae, why are things still dying, why doesn't the caulerpa grow. I said, I don't know that much, but if hair algae is excessive nutirents, where are they coming from. I haven't had any fish, or fed anything for 3 months? Again, he goes back to getting the caulerpa to grow. And I agree. However, I've been doing some research on the net over the last week or so, and I feel all of this goes back to the copper problem, as this is when things started to go south. My question for you experts is this.....How do i get rid of the copper?
