Copper and Inverts

[spitz006]

I had some sick fish, so I removed all my live rock and all of my hermit crabs and placed them in a 55 gallon bucket with an air stone, then treated the tank with copper. The fish didn't make it, so now I'm ready to put the live rock and crabs back in the tank. I added carbon and thought I was good to go. However, I read that the copper soaks into the sand and the filter media from the canister filter, and so it's still not safe to put the inverts back in.


So, do I buy all new sand, new filter media, 100% water change, then put the live rock and crabs back in?

 

[Deadeye]

Yes
Replace all of that (and manually clean the tank out) and you should be good to go.
For future reference, quarantining fish beforehand will help to avoid a lot of headaches.

 

[phreeflow]

That sucks…yeah, you’ll have to replace all that. Copper is pretty toxic to inverts like corals, shrimp, crab, etc.

You can also run some Seachem Cuprisorb to help remove as much as you can but I’d also replace all the water along with sand and media

 

[fishdance]

There are lots of factors influencing copper solubility. I would be very surprised if the residual copper becomes a problem unless you have a lot of live rock/sand in a small volume tank.

Suggest you add one of your more copper sensitive shrimp to see how it goes for a week.

It's easy to reduce soluble copper levels quickly if you need. Chlorine neutraliser will chealate (bind), increase in water hardness, salinity or pH etc. Whichever is easiest for you. Water change is the most obvious.