New and need help

[Chuy]

Hi everybody I'm new to the hobby and just started a 55 gallon aquarium, well it's been running for about 3 months. Before this it was a freshwater tank. I gave tried to introduce some turbo snails on different occasions but all have failed. I ran into a topic about copper in a forum and I had used copper sulfate ( to treat ich the brand was aquarisol) before converting to salt water. The snails that I put into the tank last no longer than 12 hours and only peak out of there shells. How real is my fear about the copper? Or is my tank just no ready yet?

 

[jservedio]

Well - if its been running for 3 months, you are certainly cycled - it looks like you had a diatom bloom as well. You should go get a copper test kit from your LFS to make sure you do not have any copper. They can typically be had for $10 or less. If you do have copper, you can buy a polyfilter that will soak up that copper for you - also you can run carbon. After that, you will be good to go (assuming you actually have copper).

When introducing snails, or any invertebrates for that matter, they are very sensitive to major changes. When you introduce them, you should be drip acclimating them over, at the very least, an hour.

PS - very nice aquascape! It can be very difficult to make a 55g look nice with the limited front to back space and you definitely succeeded.

 

[ReeferBob]

What are you water params? Copper can leach out of the aquarium for quite some time. You may need to deal with it for many months. You might never get rid of all of it.

 

[Chuy]

My parameters not known last time I checked they were ok. Everything was at zero except nitrate which was at 30 ppt. Also ph a little high like 8.6. Will be getting kit soon. So also now need a copper test as well but does my problem sound like it's copper does it kill that fast. And is it likely that I contaminated from use of medication? Had discus in that tank and would do 30% water changes weekly.

And thanks did work very hard on the aquascaping. None of those rocks touch the back of the tank.

 

[Chuy]

Also don't know but I haven't had any thing but diatom and green hair algae growth in this tank. When I reed about other people they get feather dusters, worms, stars in there cycle. Just giving more info about that tank don't know if that means anything.

 

[Zero Nitrates]

Nice rock work!
I would test for copper.