Cupramine Overdose.

Bryce Peterson · Feb 2, 2017

My 3 year old dumped a full bottle of Cupramine in the hospital tank. The fish were exposed to 50x the recommended dosage for approximately 1 hour, as far as I can tell. Any ideas how this will effect the fish?

Reefahholic · Feb 3, 2017

I think anybody's guess is as good as yours, but it can't be good. Possible internal damage? May heal with time, but there's a 50/50 chance they will be fine. Hard to say. If they are swimming and acting normal, I would think they will most likely be OK.

Honestly though...I think 50X the normal dose would have killed them in less than 30 minutes unless you have a really big hospital tank.

Bryce Peterson · Feb 3, 2017

Reefahholic said:
I think anybody's guess is as good as yours, but it can't be good. Possible internal damage? May heal with time, but there's a 50/50 chance they will be fine. Hard to say. If they are swimming and acting normal, I would think they will most likely be OK.

Honestly though...I think 50X the normal dose would have killed them in less than 30 minutes unless you have a really big hospital tank.

Only a 20 gallon tank. The trigger just came out of a freshwater dip. Surprised he is still alive. Only have him and a clown left. Possible velvet outbreak.

stunreefer · Feb 3, 2017

100% water change a.s.a.p. Match temp (+/- 2°F), salinity (+/- 0.002 specific gravity), pH (+/- 0.2).

Any non-inert material (sand, rock, non-plastic material) should be removed.

Bryce Peterson · Feb 3, 2017

Took about 10 minutes to fill a 30 from the display. Just wondering if any damage was done. Fish are still alive, it's been 9 hours now.

Reefahholic · Feb 3, 2017

Sounds like they will be ok. I agree with stunreefer too. Remove any non-inert objects in that tank. You don't want those leeching copper back into the water column.

Brew12 · Feb 3, 2017

Bryce Peterson said:
My 3 year old dumped a full bottle of Cupramine in the hospital tank. The fish were exposed to 50x the recommended dosage for approximately 1 hour, as far as I can tell. Any ideas how this will effect the fish?

Fortunately, 50 times the recommended dose is still only 10ppm. There have been studies done that show fish living in these conditions for 3 to 5 days. The fact that yours were in the water for under 1.5 hours is a very positive sign.
Watch for rapid breathing and lateral line erosion. I don't expect you to have a problem with either, but those would be the first 2 signs of acute copper poisoning.

Humblefish · Feb 3, 2017

There have been studies linking neurological damage and even organ failure to toxic copper levels, but exposure time was days/weeks. So, I don't think there's any way to know how much damage was done in a matter of hours. I would just stabilize the copper level, soldier on and wait & see. Nothing else you can really do in this situation unfortunately expect to hope for the best.

Bryce Peterson · Feb 3, 2017

Thanks for the response. Nice to wa wake up to something positive.

Brew12 said:
Fortunately, 50 times the recommended dose is still only 10ppm. There have been studies done that show fish living in these conditions for 3 to 5 days. The fact that yours were in the water for under 1.5 hours is a very positive sign.
Watch for rapid breathing and lateral line erosion. I don't expect you to have a problem with either, but those would be the first 2 signs of acute copper poisoning.

Bryce Peterson · Feb 3, 2017

Humblefish said:
There have been studies linking neurological damage and even organ failure to toxic copper levels, but exposure time was days/weeks. So, I don't think there's any way to know how much damage was done in a matter of hours. I would just stabilize the copper level, soldier on and wait & see. Nothing else you can really do in this situation unfortunately expect to hope for the best.

That's somewhat of a relief. Now to see if they survive whatever is killing them. Yellow tang died the other day.