[magic_marty]

I have been doing alot of reading and came across this site where a guy said he has had great success treating parasites with copper products.The reason for the success he says is that copper kills any and ALL inverts including any living parasite such as flukes.

My question is will copper sulfate destroy the biological filtration in the tank?
And has anybody used it to treat parasites with positive results?

Also the site stated that it has no harmful affect on the fish like some meds do..By harmful i assume he meant side affects, stress, ect....

Also i read on a different site that copper can be removed over a period of time with water changes. Is that true? cause i read before that once copper is introduced to a tank that the tank can never inhabit inverts.

 

[musho3210]

copper is a very strong treatment that should only be used on diseases that only copper will treat. Yes once you introduce it to your tank it will be very hard if not impossible to remove. You can remove most of it by water changes and activated carbon but it will be on the ornaments and in the silicone that will leech out into your tank. Copper sulphate treatment is a big no no in reef tanks and shouldnt be used in freshwater tanks with invertebrate.

 

[Lupin]

Ryan has covered almost all questions. As for use to eliminate snails, this is highly inadvisable as you will have to deal with ammonia spikes caused by dead bodies of snails, some of which you may not be able to retrieve.:shake: The ammonia spike will eventually harm your whole fish population hence it is most preferable for most of us to simply avoid snails considered as pests, use fish as biological methods of control or do the manual picking up. I would prefer the first one.:lol: Heavens knows what my loaches had wrought when I introduced them to my planted tank along with the backstabbing pains on the back picking up the snails one by one.:sob:

 

[magic_marty]

Yeah thats why i was considering it to treat the tank to destroy all the inverts that inhabit the tank.I have no inverts in the tank such as snails,shrimp,crabs,ect... the only inverts that i believe are in the tank are the nasty ones (parasites) since copper kills all inverts it would destroy the parasites because they are also inverts.

But i am concerned about the biological filtration, will it destroy the bio-filtration??

 

[musho3210]

no, i dont think bacteria is a paracite

but do also note that once copper goes in its not comming out which means you will never be able to get inverts in that tank. If you are going to treat with copper use a quarantine tank as well. This is why most people prefer to stay away from copper treatments.