HELP!! Copper leached from Brass Check Valve

dedecv3

dedecv3

Member
I just set up my new 75 gallon tank this past weekend. Within 24 hours I had lost most of my inverts and several of my corals I did some research and found that copper leach from my brass check valve into my tank. I went to the LFS and bought a seachem test kit and it reads between 0 & .1. I have removed the check valve and added carbon to my filter. My question is: is this level of copper enough to leach into my silicone, rocks & sand in a 4 day period?? I just spent over $1000 on my rock, tank & sand and I cant afford to replace them & will be out of this hobby after only a 2 months...
 
deejeff442

deejeff442

Active Member
i wouldnt worry about it.i have used rock in a tank and coppered for ich up to .5 then soaked the rock for a month and put it in a tank of inverts with no problem.silicone will take a while to absorb copper certainly longer than a few days at such a low level.just keep running the carbon.
 
dedecv3

dedecv3

Member
I hope I am ok...
I've done a 10% water change and will be going to get a new PVC check valve tomorrow, some poly filers & more salt so I can do more water changes.
 
deejeff442

deejeff442

Active Member
when you are at your lfs ask for a product that takes out heavy metals.it comes in a bean bag and works alot better than carbon .i have one in my overflow but hell if i can remember what the name was.its around $10.
when the stuff inside turns from white to yellow it is exaused .it also says you can clean it and reuse but for ten bucks i just buy a new one.
most lfs will have it .not pet-co or smart but a salt store.
 
dedecv3

dedecv3

Member
Originally Posted by deejeff442
http:///forum/post/3164013
when you are at your lfs ask for a product that takes out heavy metals.it comes in a bean bag and works alot better than carbon .i have one in my overflow but hell if i can remember what the name was.its around $10.
when the stuff inside turns from white to yellow it is exaused .it also says you can clean it and reuse but for ten bucks i just buy a new one.
most lfs will have it .not pet-co or smart but a salt store.
Thanks. I am on my way to That Fish Place tomorrow night so I will grab that and some Poly Filters as well.
 
dedecv3

dedecv3

Member
Thanks for your help guys. I"ve got several HOB filters laying around so I am going utilize carbon, Cuprisorb, Poly filters & lots of water changes to hoperfully resolve this problem. I guess I will need to use all of these for several months to be sure I get it all out of the system. What an expensive & time consuming mistake...
I've lost
1 Brittle Star
1 Pink tip Haitian Anemone
10 Red Tip Hermits
5 Peppermints Shrimp
5 Scarlet hermits
8 Bumble Bee Snails
3 Mexican Turbo Snails
5 Turbo/Astrea Snails
1 Toadstool
My Zoo's and other leather corals are also looking bad so i may lose them as well. The only inverts I have left are 2 Peppermints & 1 Fire Shrimp.
 
scsinet

scsinet

Active Member
While I don't disagree that you've quite possibly got a metals problem, how can a brass valve leech copper?
 
fitbmxdude989

fitbmxdude989

Member
im going to answer a question with a question:
why did you apply a copper check valve to a salt water aquarium knowing that the salt is going to dissolve it?
 
dedecv3

dedecv3

Member
Originally Posted by fitbmxdude989
http:///forum/post/3164126
im going to answer a question with a question:
why did you apply a copper check valve to a salt water aquarium knowing that the salt is going to dissolve it?
Where did I say I knew this was going to happen??????????????????
When my inverts and corals started to die I started researching and that is when I was able to figure out what was causing the problem. My local Home Depot only had Brass Check valves so that is what I bought and at the time never thought twice about using it...
 
9supratt4

9supratt4

Active Member
So wait a second...are you saying that copper can leach into the water from the pipes in our homes?? I have copper pipes that run the water through my house and my RO Unit is connected directly to a copper pipe.....is everyone here saying that the copper can leach from the pipe into my water??
 
ophiura

ophiura

Active Member
yes, it can come out of copper pipes but if you have an RO/DI this is usually not an issue.
It is one of the reasons not to use plain tap water.
To clarify - though a brass fitting is IMO a really big problem in an invert system - what else happened here? A new tank, or upgrade, moving the existing inverts or new? There are lots and lots of things that can go wrong...and I am not positive that copper alone is to blame. It simply does not often kill that quickly, IME, unless levels are very high. I just wonder if there isn't something else.
 
dedecv3

dedecv3

Member
I did upgrade from a 55 to a 75 last Sunday. The new tank was going in the same spot as the old one so I moved everything into a 20 gallon for about 10-12 hours while I did the switch out. Inverts & corals started dying within 24 hours of the change. At day 4 I figured out what the problem with the brass fitting and tested to find a copper reading between 0 & .1. All other readings were good. Stress was a factor im sure but I acclimated everythign and half of the water in the new tank was from the old tank and so was the LR & LS.
 
spanko

spanko

Active Member
Copper (Cu++)
Natural Seawater Value: 0.030 mg/L
Acceptable Range: 0.000 to 0.030 mg/L
Copper is fatal to marine invertebrates at levels as
low as 0.05 mg/L for many species.
However with the rest of the story here about moving and using some of the old sand, I will agree with ophiura that there could have been some other problem. Perhaps an ammonia spike from the old sand if not rinsed prior to putting it in the new tank?
 
ophiura

ophiura

Active Member
Many hobbyist test kits are not accurate enough to detect levels of copper in a tank apart from those used for medicinal levels. With copper, a range between 0 and .1 is a huge gap. Within that gap is "perfectly normal" to fatal.
I do not personally believe a single new brass valve would leach enough that quickly to cause death in 24 hours.
What symptoms did you see in the inverts...apart from death. Heavy metal toxicity, especially in snails, results in "paralysis" and not immediate death. The snails fall on their back, alive, but unable to right themselves.
I worked with a system that had a chronic copper problem leaching in over months and months. The biggest sign was in a failure to thrive (esp with corals), and snails would not reproduce or survive long term.
Are you sure all tank parameters were matching when you added the new water? Salinity issues, even pH or alk etc are some things that can cause rapid death and would easily be problematic in a tank switch.
 
dedecv3

dedecv3

Member
The only difference in the 2 tanks was the temperature in the 75 got a little warm (81) and the 20 gallon I had been temporarily keeping everything in was only at 79. I drip acclimited for 30 minutes though.
The water was a bit cloudy from the sand being stirred up but other than that all othe water parameters were normal and matched the old tank. On the 3rd day I did see a trace amount of ammonia but I was using Prime in the tank.
I did go get some Poly Filter's and a product called Chemi-Pure Elite last night.
Is there somewhere I can send a sample of my water to get a more accurate measurement of the copper??
 
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