cupramine made an ammonia spike?

Seanb1 · Sep 3, 2020

hi
i put half the dose of cupramine on first day in a quarantine tank and almost immediately noticed a sailfin tang acting like it was going to die, laying on bottom and being lethargic.
i immediatly removed it into a bucket of display tank water with an airstone and rechecket my calculations on the amount i used which was correct.
the tank has a penguin 350 running on it which sat on my display tank for a month getting cycled.
ive had other fish in it and monitored ammonia nitrate nitrite and everything was fine.
after this happened i tested the water and ammonia was at 1.5 ppm when it was fine before the addition of cupramine.
the sailfin was in the tank for 2 days looked and acted fine, this happened almost immediately.

what the heck happened ?

40g Nano · Sep 3, 2020

Did you use seacham prime
That is a mistake I made

Seanb1 · Sep 3, 2020

i did not.
the only time ive used any dechlorinator is when i make new salt water and i use fritz complete.
all ive done as far as water goes with this tank is top it off with a 6 stage ro di unit, sediment,2 carbon block and 2 di cannisters and of course the ro membrane.

but the original water in this tank had fritz complete used on it 6-8 weeks ago.

lagatbezan · Sep 3, 2020

I know some ammonia kits show a positive ammonia reading when used in conjunction with copper. Maybe that could be why your readings are reading high? Just throwing it out there and that maybe the sailfin reaction was due to the copper?

Jay Hemdal · Sep 4, 2020

Cupramine is copper bonded with an amine. Amines are nitrogen compounds, so will show up on some ammonia tests. The trouble is, while the amine interference on the test isn't bad for the fish you could ALSO have true ammonia at the same time and then not know it. You might want to post over on the water quality section to see if they know which ammonia test kits are not affected by this interference. As also was said - don't use Prime or any other ammonia reducing chemical in the tank - that will free up all of the copper and release it into the water, killing the fish.
A half dose of Cupramine should not cause a sailfin tang to immediately lay on the bottom like that, I suspect something else caused that.

Jay