cupramine?? ammonia??

[cuz]

just curious on everyons thoughts.. I noticed after day three of cupramine treatment my ammonia levels spiked through the roof!! Its only a 29 gal qt tank and i've already changed out 10 gal of water to try and drop the numbers with not much sucess. i've gone from 0.8, 0.7, to 0.6. I've got 10 more gallons mixed and ready to go pending wich way everyone answers. I picked up "ammolock" at the lfs tonight at their recomondation,after a bit of on-line research i found that it can effect the use of copper turning it lethal?? Now is this only with copper and not cupramine? Should i avoid it and keep changing water to lower ammonia to nothing?

p.s. I have not re-plenished the cupramine levels yet for each water change till the peram's level out. so i may need to start the treatment over for another 14 days after tonights headaches are solved!!
thanks in advance!!

[cuz]

anybody heard of cupramine throwing off ammonia test kits??

[marie]

I haven't heard anything about throwing off test kits but I do know copper is hell on the bacteria needed in the nitrogen cycle.
When I use cupramine, I don't bother with trying to cycle the tank before I add fish. I just do 50% water changes daily and if necessary twice daily ...having a small hospital tank helps :lol:

Oh and everytime I do a water change I add enough cupramine to bring the copper concentration back to proper levels

[cchomistek]

I would keep up with the water change. Its kind of a catch 22 because you may get the ammonia down but then once you start dosing the copper again the denitrifying bacteria will be killed off by the copper treatment and the ammonia will spike again, in theory.

[Ryan]

Its only a matter of time though before there is no more bacteria and the fish waste is what is causing the spike. It will be less of a spike but there will be some.

[cuz]

copied this from Seachem's website under the FAQ section:

Q: I'm using Cupramine™ and my ammonia test kit is showing ammonia off the scale. What is going on?

A: Ammonia test kits can not distinguish ammonia from the amine based complex present in Cupramine™ and will therefore give a false high reading for ammonia while using Cupramine™. Our Ammonia Alert™ and MultiTest: Free & Total Ammonia™ test kit do not suffer from this problem as they utilize a gas exchange technology that can distinguish ammonia from amines.

[cuz]

basically another question... was i supposed to remove all live rock prior to treatment? I just used a few disposable peices out of my display to help with biological filtration. Is the bacteria in my rocks dying off causing spikes? If so how do fowlr tanks treat copper without risking dy-off??

[NuraNori]

Using copper with live rock or live sand does not work. I don't think people treat their main tank with copper or at least they shouldn't. The copper not only kills your live rock but it also binds to it. So definitely do not re-use that rock in your DT!

How are the fish doing by the way?

[cuz]

fish are hit and miss right now!! between the initial cupramine dosing causing the ammonia to skyrocket, my wc's to drop amonnia diluting the cupramine alowing the ich to come back, not being able to find an ammonia test thats not effected by the cupramine, crappy lfs advice.on and on and on!!lol
right now i'm doing a large water change on my dt, taking that water into the qt and basically gonna start over with pvc tubes for the fish and no live rock.then because the fish will be in qt for 8 weeks i'm gonna re-start the cupramine mildly, increasing as i go, monitoring everything alot closer as i go!!

[Lance]

I treated a large number of fish with cupramine. Luckily, I had access to a 180g tank and a skimmer. Even so, it was difficult to keep ammonia at a safe level. I found that I had to change about 10g of water daily. It was a royal PITA but successful.

[cuz]

10gal a day out of a 180 doesn't seem bad!! I'm close to 10gal a day in a standard 29!!!