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DI filter missed copper in water, massive tank die off...


reefbern

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Hey guys, so I have had an established 20 gallon reef with about 80lbs lr, a few monti, favia, a stylo, mushrooms,kenya, medium sized leather and various small polyps and gsp. Also in this tank is a ocellaris clown, yellow watchman and a surviving mandarin. As far as water chemistry, prior to all this happening, I knew my nitrates were high as in the 80's. I had a monti that was basically not extending. I decided to try my best to get the water cleaned up, so I went to purchase some water for the upcoming changes. My local source was out of distilled. So I went to the lfs and saw a DI unit. I thought, what the heck I might as well in case there ends up being an emergency. I made 5 gal initially, no problems. Two days go by, test my nitrates, got them around 40. So I decided to do another 4 gallons. I started having issues with the filter. The pressure was too intense to make it produce water at a reasonable rate so the cap on top kept popping off, spraying water everywhere. Finally managed to get the water and did the water change. Virtually overnight all my softies were shriveled up, sps bleached, almost all snails dead, my emerald crab dead, fish breathing very heavy and hiding, skimmer pulling lots of crap out (assuming this is from organic breakdown). I couldn't understand the problem. I had just installed a new light (ai prime) a few days before all this but it was on a ramp up, so acclimation shouldn't have been an issue with bleaching. All my reading brought me to the conclusion that my filtered water had high levels of copper still left in it. I went and grabbed a tds meter and tested the last unused gallon of water I made, read 44ppm. I knew instantly that copper was in my system. Basically at this point, I rushed out and picked up distilled water (back in stock) did a 8 gallon water change, new carbon filter, and headed out this morning to buy cuprisorb and a copper test kit.

 

After all this background info (tldr), my question is, my bleached sps and softies...is it possible they could recover from copper poisoning? I'm looking at a loss of less than $300 honestly, but it's the time invested. It's a shame I did this. I'm so upset with myself for trusting a DI filter to clean up the tap water. I don't even know if an RO/DI could be trusted. I discovered the initial reason behind the monti not extending was my use of a brass rod to hold an impeller for an old skimmer I replaced. It was a rio nano, the ceramic rod broke so I found a non magnetic brass rod and used that. Turns out brass is made of copper, and it was slowly leaching into the water. I since replaced the skimmer with a aquac nano remora.

 

What do you guys think? Anyone else ever go through this?

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Did you get a test kit and test for the copper? Sorry to see that happened to you. When you restart, make sure your live rock doesn't leach copper into the new setup

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You bought a water de-ionization (DI) filter from your local fish store? It was not a reverse-osmosis and de-ionization (ro/di) filter? If that is the case, then it may not be copper, but any number of things from your tap water...

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Sorry you are having issues. I would want to get some copper readings just to be sure. I would remove the corals and inverts to a QT tank (or bucket) and do massive (100%) water change ASAP and run a bunch of carbon. I would test until no copper present (if it was copper) and then restock slowly.

 

Lesson learned, test every batch of water going into the tank no matter the source. Also, you have found that DI alone is not adequate. The bulk of copper would be removed by a carbon block that is usually before the RO membrane in a full RODI unit. The DI is just to polish off the last bit of impurities from the water after it hits the sediment filter, carbon block, RO, not to remove the bulk of them. Get yourself a legit RODI unit and test every drop that goes into the tank. Curious as to what the tds reading is for your tap water.

 

A true RODI will give pure 0TDS water when properly set up and maintained. It it the one piece of equipment that every reefer should have IMO. Nothing should be blindly trusted, even your own RODI unit. Test every drop and do not trust any water from any source.

 

Take the unit back and get one of these: http://spectrapure.com/Refurbished-90-GPD-RODI-System

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AZDesertRat

It is the carbon block in a RO/DI that removes most of the copper. DI by itself probably won't do and would certainly have an extremely short resin life without the RO as pretreatment.

 

Sounds like you got sucked into an API Tap Water Filter which is a big mistake, even if it worked the average filter life is around 15 gallons at best so gets extremely expensive in a matter of days.

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Hey guys, quick update. So I determined what actually happened. The DI filter was copper free, in fact there was no copper found in the tank. Strange right? Luckily my LFS guys were on point. They tested the ammonia to see how high it had jumped, it was around 1ppm. Before doing the 50% change, it was likely 2ppm. That's obviously immensely high, which explains the massive die off, poisoning and etc. But there wasn't enough dead things to justify how high the ammonia got. Well we considered the lighting change might have pissed off the leather or some other corals, causing tissue to be expelled and this toxin might have killed the inverts. Still not enough reason. Then I remembered. Sugar. I was carbon dosing sugar to get my nitrates down, then stopped cold turkey when I got the di filter because my nitrates weren't really budging. Between the now constant water changes, which depleted the nitrates, and stopping the sugar, the large colony of bacteria I had amassed was rapidly dying off into the water column, and as such the ammonia spiked into the heavens. I'm lucky anything survived at all. But as of this morning, polyps began coming back out on my leather. Only a small few, but it's like a ray of sunshine to me. Quite biblical.

 

The moral of the story is, if you carbon dose, be forwarned: stopping the dose cold turkey could lead up to an ammonia spike so ungodly high that it crashes your tank.

 

It all depends on how big the bacteria bloom is when you were dosing. If you see cloudy water, it's too much. You then must taper off the food source slowly to allow your other bacteria time to process the ammonia. Basically, my tank couldn't support the massive die off. I have used ammolock to give my corals and fish a safety net while I transport the now ammonium out with upcoming water changes.

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HarryPotter

Hey guys, quick update. So I determined what actually happened. The DI filter was copper free, in fact there was no copper found in the tank. Strange right? Luckily my LFS guys were on point. They tested the ammonia to see how high it had jumped, it was around 1ppm. Before doing the 50% change, it was likely 2ppm. That's obviously immensely high, which explains the massive die off, poisoning and etc. But there wasn't enough dead things to justify how high the ammonia got. Well we considered the lighting change might have pissed off the leather or some other corals, causing tissue to be expelled and this toxin might have killed the inverts. Still not enough reason. Then I remembered. Sugar. I was carbon dosing sugar to get my nitrates down, then stopped cold turkey when I got the di filter because my nitrates weren't really budging. Between the now constant water changes, which depleted the nitrates, and stopping the sugar, the large colony of bacteria I had amassed was rapidly dying off into the water column, and as such the ammonia spiked into the heavens. I'm lucky anything survived at all. But as of this morning, polyps began coming back out on my leather. Only a small few, but it's like a ray of sunshine to me. Quite biblical.

 

The moral of the story is, if you carbon dose, be forwarned: stopping the dose cold turkey could lead up to an ammonia spike so ungodly high that it crashes your tank.

 

It all depends on how big the bacteria bloom is when you were dosing. If you see cloudy water, it's too much. You then must taper off the food source slowly to allow your other bacteria time to process the ammonia. Basically, my tank couldn't support the massive die off. I have used ammolock to give my corals and fish a safety net while I transport the now ammonium out with upcoming water changes.

 

How does one carbon dose sugar? Does that just mean putting some generic sugar into the tank every day?

 

Sorry about your losses :(

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Oh to answer questions from above, the TDS at tap was around 340ppm. I tested the ammonia in the tap and it was a big fat zero. We didn't test the copper in the tap, but I imagine is was very low, as I started my tank on tap as a 10gal, and have had the same LR and sand since the I upgraded to a 20H. That was over a year ago. If copper was in there, it is now in the parts per billion.

 

The DI filter has a carbon block in the filtration line, followed by the resin.

 

Copper in the DI water tested zero, ammonia in thr DI water tested zero. However the TDS of filtered water ranges from 15 to 44 ppm. It's higher than I'd like to allow, so I won't use the filter unless there is an emergency. I'm arranging to purchase an RO/DI unit.

 

I have an API test kit for all major chemicals except copper, but assumed ammonia was up a little, so I didn't even bother testing. It wasn't till we saw zero on copper that the ammonia suddenly had to be the culprit. The coloration was almost a puke green. Really high ammonia.

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How does one carbon dose sugar? Does that just mean putting some generic sugar into the tank every day?

 

Sorry about your losses :(

If you look up vodka dosing, it's virtually the same. Using a source of carbon (not the activated black stuff) like sugar helps to jump start denitrifying bacteria. The bacteria uses nitrate while processing the carbon source, or something like that. It's not clear on how the nitrate is removed. Some people say it's turning nitrate to nitrogen, some say it's the skimmer pulling out the bacteria that consume the nitrate. I'm not sure. I just know it's confirmed it works, but what's actually happening is...eh, magic. In my case, the bloom of bacteria was too great, and when I stopped feeding them sugar, and did large water changes, the nitrate abundance went down, and they literally ran out of food. Millions dead, like a mini cycle.

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