I'm unbelievably stupid--Copper

[Kimber]

About a month ago, I put a wrasse in my hospital tank so I could treat it with CopperSafe for ich. I also put a piece of live rock from my main tank into the hospital tank, knowing that it would kill most of the stuff on it, but wanting to use it for biological filtration. Well, the fish recovered so I put it AND THE LIVE ROCK back into the tank. What was I thinking??!! Not too long after that my feather duster died. Probably not a coincidence. There are still worms living in my sand, though.

I'm upgrading to a larger tank and had planned to use the sand, rocks, etc. from the current tank in the larger one. Have I destroyed the usefulness of my current sand and all the rock forever?

 

[Steven]

Possibly not. Remove the rock if you haven't already and put in a polyfilter and carbon to remove any traces pf copper that may have leached out from the rock. Test your water. Have any of your other inverts (corals, starfish) died? They would die pretty fast if copper got into the system. HTH.

 

[LFS42]

I would test for how much copper is in the main tank.
I've seen hardier inverts survive trace copper in systems.
If your going to a bigger tank you have 2 options from what I see.
Start doing massive water changes to bring the copper level down,
(remember salt mixes and copper removers cost money)
Start over, which means buying new rocks and sand.


It would all depends on how much the rock and sand is worth, and how much your peace of mind is worth once the new set-up is going.