copper and its negative effects?

[persun87]

A lfs runs copper in thier fish display I was told by some people that this weakens thier imune system so that wehen you get them home and put them into your tank where you cant run copper that they usually will eventualy die becuase they cant fight diseaes is this true?

[idog]

Never heard this... but who knows. Typically a fish does not stay at the LFS for too long. I can't imagine that it would have too great an impact if it is exposed for a brief period.

 

The role of copper is to merely control parasitic inverts that tend to affect fish when shipping. I don't think it would affect the immune system directly. In a well maintained system, parasites should not be a factor.