is there a known Level of Copper that is toxic to inverts?

 

This is the only thing I can find that has been posted before.

LINK REMOVED

 

What about the copper contained in fertilizers?

 

Not sure, as I don't dose my tanks except my community tank with cull shrimp but lots of people seem to dose all kinds of ferts without any effect. I'll let someone else chime in with a better response on the amount of copper in most ferts or something and then I could add that to the main post.

 

I have an older home...approx early 1950's. All copper pipes and no problems. What I have read in the past is that the worst of the copper problem leaches out while the pipes are relatively new... doesn't make sense but I have no problems....but not acid water either.

Another article floating around states that copper becomes toxic to shrimps at approx .44 and up. Traces of copper in foods and plants are no where near .44

 

4PPM of copper is where things start to die

 

New copper pipes haven't had a chance to oxidize on the inside, its that layer of oxidation that protects the pipe and prevents copper from entering your water. Therefore, older homes would be better than a new home.

I think copper is overblown, ferts, foods, copper pipes, all safe, stay away from algaecides and medications.

 

New copper pipes haven't had a chance to oxidize on the inside, its that layer of oxidation that protects the pipe and prevents copper from entering your water. Therefore, older homes would be better than a new home.

I think copper is overblown, ferts, foods, copper pipes, all safe, stay away from algaecides and medications.

That's the main point of this thread I guess. lol. I just see every week something with dead shrimp thinking the copper in the food was the cause, so I thought maybe this would help those who find it.

 

Copper pipes isn't a problem until they're 100+ years old. They break up into large chunks. Usually, run your water 1 minute before you collect the water.

Copper in high concentration is used as an insecticide and algaecide.

 

With regards to copper piping, I remember the best thing to do is when you use tap water... allow the water to flow for about 30secs to ~1min just incase there is high traces of copper in water.

After that 30s-~1min, you can fill your bucket.

Right now in my tanks... All I use is tap water. I fill a bucket, put an airstone in it for a few days, and use that as my top offs..

I currently have 4 Berried Yellow, 1 Red Rili, 2 CRS.

 

There's just no correct answers to this kind of stuff. It's like smoking, it kills some but not all. Hard to quantify.

Best policy is to avoid it, for it being copper, CO2, ferts, ... etc. You'll likely be okay if you do it, and it doesn't mean your shrimps will always be happy and healthy if you don't do any of them.

For the copper issue however, I believe the trace amount for food is fine 99.9% of the time.

 

For the fert copper question.. I used osmocote plus ice cubes and WAY too much of it and it ended up clouding my tank and my shrimp are still alive and kickin. I also use purigen if that makes a difference.

Sent from my HTC Evo 4G

 

If everything has trace amounts of copper like Tap water, Spinach, Pellet Food, Flourish, plants etc etc...... wont that biuld up to a harmfull amount in a weeks time just before each WC ?

 

Granted I don't have high end shrimp, but my ghost shrimp are fine with the copper pipes in our house (about 12-13 years old) and I take no special measures when doing water changes. They live in a community tank that I dose with pfertz N+, rootmedics macros, flourish root tabs in the substrate. I just use tap water (well water) and don't heat, age, or anything - it just gets added in as quickly as I can put it in with a 50% WC weekly

I've had 4 (or more, they hide well) ghost shrimp in this tank for about 3 months now like this without any issue. The females are regularly berried

I'm not sure if my information will be too helpful for anyone as I obviously have a more basic shrimp but thought it worth posting regardless

 

I see a lot of ideas thrown around, but I still see no facts based on empirical studies. Until I see that, I will be weary but not terrified about copper. My apartment is over 100 years old. If I wasn't using RO/DI, I would be going out of my way to address potential copper issues.

I would also like to see some studies that prove that "no copper kills shrimp". Has anyone done the controls that resulted in dead shrimp secondary to an absence of copper?

Copper is to shrimp like whiskey is to humans. Sure, most of us can consume it in tiny amounts and be ok. Some of us take in a few drops and get deathly ill. Almost all of us will perish if we drink too much whiskey.

 

My house is almost a 100 years old and I use tap on most of my tanks and don't bother treating anything.

As for no copper kills shrimp, how would you control that study? Most foods on the planet contain copper. Hard to remove it and it's an essential element they need like we do.

At first you state there are no studies, then you come up with an analogy to whiskey saying even a few drops could kill, so what are you basing that on?

Spirulina contain 6.8mg of copper on average per dried cup as is the basis of most fish/shrimp foods, both commercial and specialty foods and has no effects and that is 175x the amount of copper in Spinach. Again, copper is everywhere. I'm sure anyone who uses any active substrates from natural peats/clay/etc, has natural copper in it as well as they active substrates are just mixed earths and clays baked into pellets.

 

My house is almost a 100 years old and I use tap on most of my tanks and don't bother treating anything.

Using a single example provides no proof.

As for no copper kills shrimp, how would you control that study? Most foods on the planet contain copper. Hard to remove it and it's an essential element they need like we do.

You have made my point exactly. You can't control that study. Therefore, it cannot be proved.

At first you state there are no studies, then you come up with an analogy to whiskey saying even a few drops could kill, so what are you basing that on?

My analogy to whiskey was a humorous anecdote and not meant to be held up to scrutiny. It's a metaphor. That said, single drops of whiskey do in fact kill some humans as they are allergic to the whiskey.

Spirulina contain 6.8mg of copper on average per dried cup as is the basis of most fish/shrimp foods, both commercial and specialty foods and has no effects and that is 175x the amount of copper in Spinach. Again, copper is everywhere. I'm sure anyone who uses any active substrates from natural peats/clay/etc, has natural copper in it as well as they active substrates are just mixed earths and clays baked into pellets.

I don't think that anyone has claimed that "a little bit of copper" (whatever that number may be - no one can say) will kill "all shrimps". I also don't think that anyone has claimed that copper is absent in the materials you list. So, there is no argument that you're getting from me on the point you're trying to make.

Is your contention that shrimp keepers need not worry about copper? If that is your final point, I will continue to argue to the contrary, that shrimp keepers should be weary but not freak out over copper.

 

Well, I remember a post that someone had played guitar and the copper from his hands killed his shrimp. Always rinse your hands with warm water!

 

I think it should also be mentioned that not all shrimp are identical in their tolerances. I high KH to one shrimp is deadly while a KH to another shrimp is actually not only tolerated but beneficial. Can we say categorically that all shrimp respond to copper in the same way? I would love to see the study on that one. Additionally, the controls are always different from aquarium to aquarium. Water volume would be a major factor, as would plant mass I would imagine. What about off-gassing secondary to water agitation? These are all reasonable questions, none of which I claim to know the answers to. I am claiming, however, that other people don't have these answers either.

 

The whole point of this thread was to try and dispel some of the myths than any amount of copper would kill shrimp. When people get dead shrimp, then check their fish food and see copper in it, they freak and blame the copper when the amount in foods is trace and is essential in trace amount to shrimp. Avoid putting your penny collection in your tank, don't use copper based fish meds in your tank and you should be fine. Didn't need to turn into a whole debate, just trace amounts won't kill shrimp or all the breeders of the world who feed seaweed and spinach would kill their shrimp.

 

I think we agree on most points. I can't debate anything you've said in this paragraph. I am a little suspicious, however, about anyone who is presenting "facts" about what copper will or won't do to shrimp, and in what way. I think we are all a little bit short on facts when it comes to copper and shrimp so a lot of this is going to be conjecture.

So, it's fair for you to post about copper, explaining that it doesn't have to be a death sentence for your shrimp. However, it's equally fair of me to post in the same thread with a "yeah, but still be careful" addendum.

 

The way I see it, keeping shrimp is not a science. It's all mostly hearsay that goes around the hobby and folks just catch onto what works for them and run with it. Yes there are websites dedicated to keeping shrimp but as we all know, these domesticated/wild shrimp do come from all parts of the world with varying degrees of water parameters. Excess amounts of bla bla bla will kill shrimp, indeed. Not enough amounts of bla bla bla will kill shrimp, indeed. The key is to realize what works for folks who have a history of being successful shrimp keepers/breeders and literally copy what they've been doing. Unless you're working on becoming the second coming Shrimp Guru Pioneer lol. Yes you can skew their equation to your likings and run your own experiments because that's the beauty of this hobby. In the end, "DO WHAT WORKS FOR YOU!"

For the record, I do use a product with trace amounts of copper to feed my shrimp. Most folks probably use/used it as well: Hikari Shrimp Cuisine

All my shrimp LOVE IT!

 

I agree completely. There are very few laws in this hobby and all kinds of theories. It's hard to ever talk in blacks and whites.

 

This is something I've wondered about ever since I started keeping shrimp a few years ago.

One of the first things I heard was to avoid all forms of copper. Copper from pipes, from medications, fertilizers, and even the trace amounts in food. A few people I knew said that wasn't really true about dietary copper, that all living things need copper to some extent. Yet still just about everywhere I continued to hear "Foods with copper will kill shrimp!" And then Hikari came out with its Hikari Shrimp Cuisine, containing copper. Lots of people are using it (including me) and we haven't heard of waves of shrimp deaths from this source of dietary copper.

I admit that I'm hardly a shrimp expert. I've only ever kept Amanos, red cherry, and yellow shrimp (and have just recently acquired some blue pearls). But my limited experience suggests to me that we don't to panic about foods with copper (at least not for the easy species I have kept). And that when discussing copper and shrimp, we need to differentiate between trace amounts of dietary copper, and the far larger amounts from medications and other sources.

I think it's also important to be careful about what "facts" we are repeating. Are we just repeating something we've heard? Not necessarily a bad thing, but perhaps it's worth admitting "I have no personal experience with this, but I've heard. . ." or "I don't know what the source of this is, but. . ." If we're just going by personal experience, it's worth mentioning that --especially if it goes against the conventional wisdom, or we're not certain our experience necessarily translates to a universal law. If we're repeating what we've heard from someone we consider a trusted source, then mention that.

 

The Whiskey analogy is actually fairly true for any dose response issues like copper.

Too little: no good happy drunk feeling
Too much: you kill the person drinking

Same with Copper: too little not enough plant nutrients and food content= poor health/growth

Too much: reduced fry yield, dead juvies, dead adults etc typically in that order from most sensitive to least.

Now a test for a hobbyists is not difficult. Shrimp folks cull a lot of fry, these can be used as subjects.

1 tank without copper(control)
1 Tank with 0.05ppm
1 tank with 0.1ppm
1 tank with 0.2ppm
1 tank with 0.5ppm

A mix of adults and juvies and fry are used, say 6-8 of each.
Since shrimp do not require large tanks,a small sponge filter and air pump can be used and small plastic trays for aquariums can be done without much space.

You can also use this set up for Excel toxicity etc.So it can be settled and measured by hobbyist. You do not need massive resources of have a giant egg head or anything of the sort.

But.....I think much of the issues and myths surrounding CRS and other shrimp types have a lot to do with poor genetics/weak genetics from excess Inbreeding.

As more independent lines have developed, and then crossed, the environmental tolerance curiously.... has gone way up. They have dog shows and prance them around and check certain traits just for this reason since many breeds are highly inbred for specific traits.

In a rush to get their type of shrimp to market, many breeders are okay within their own tanks of development, but many others have a very hard time keeping them alive.

Then the myths as to why start piling up.
When the real root issue was bad /weak genetics from too much interbreeding.

Same with Discus lines, some are different behavior or tolerances also, same for any overly inbred pets.

 

Great post Tom!

I think the controls sounds reasonable, but I would also worry about consistency post-controls. As we know that copper is found in so many of the variables, all it would seem to take is changing one or more of those variables in a person's tank, and theoretically, an imbalance could be created which would affect particularly delicate shrimp.

There is absolutely no doubt that weak genetics play a primary role in "mysterious shrimp death", I would say, but then it stands to reason that those shrimp are quite possibly more prone to be affected by smaller amounts of copper as well.

Archaea makes an "Algae Killer" (sorry Tom, I know you are experiencing discord in your ears with the mere mention of such a product), but in any case, about a year ago I dosed this stuff in my tank with the intent of just fighting back some hair algae until I got in under control. Of course, without solving the root cause, I'd be in trouble going forward. I dosed very high concentrations of copper, the active ingredient in this product, and my "bomb-proof" cherry population, not surprisingly, took a few hits - maybe half a dozen out of 120. Had I dosed the same amount in a CRS tank? That wouldn't have been pretty.

This is exactly why I brought up the fact that KH affects some shrimps mightily while others, even some cards like OEBT, have no problem with it. There are just so many variables in play from the trace amounts of copper being found in so many mediums to not only the different types of shrimps, but the overall health of the specific shrimp colonies themselves.

 

Stop confusing yourself about the variables.

This does no one any good, you can discuss that AFTER the test. You juts pick 1 species and test one thing.

This way it's rather simple.

You are not going to test EVERY variable for every possible cause potential for death. No one can do that. We will always overlooks something and thus nothing is certain, but we can get a good idea if there is a relationship with copper say at 0.05ppm to 0.1ppm.

Since most trace mixes and foods are an order or so of magnitude lower than this range, we are going to be pretty safe.

We also may not know the parental lines of the test shrimp. If a highly inbred line vs an outcrossed line are tested, this is another experiment and another question.

You do that after the 1st test on copper, this way you'll have a better method and already have some experience.

Folks(generally) will hee haw on line for hours and not bother to spend 1 hour testing something, boggles my mind sometimes.
They wanna yack, they do not really wanna test.

 

Ok, so who has done the tests? I have posted about it, and you have now posted a few times about it. Who has tested it this way, and what were the results? Which species were tested?

Let's say we test 50 different types of shrimp. That gives us some great clues yet still says nothing about the particular quality of the colony tested. Hence, back to my original point and why I responded to this thread in the first place. We all have a great idea that copper affects shrimp. In trace amounts for the positive, in high amounts for the negative. Pegging down the variables that would ever allow someone to advertise a specific number is impossible. Would love to see the ballpark either way for "shrimp" (whatever that means and however you choose to define it).

Admitting right now that I'm not going to test it myself, hence, this is the "he haw, yack, yack" post you talk about. I think just about everyone agrees that feeding shrimp shrimp-specific food is no worry.

 

I'm new to this copper debate - honestly, beyond pH, nitrites and nitrates, anything in the water is greek to me.

I just picked up a Bamboo Shrimp (aka Wood Shrimp / Singapore Shrimp / Blossom Shrimp/ Asian Fan Shrimp). I read somewhere that these shrimp are more susceptible to copper than, say, my Amanos, and now I'm paranoid.

My 30g tank is packed with plants. I use Flourish tabs once every 3 months, 3ml of Flourish Comprehensive liquid (.0001% copper) twice every three weeks, and 5ml Flourish Excel and potassium a couple of times a week. Just before I got the Bamboo Shrimp, I also started using 5ml Flourish Trace, which has .0032% copper (32X more than the regular Flourish Comprehensive). The dosage says twice a week.

Is this adding up to too much? I know it's called Flourish TRACE but is that adding to much for good shrimp health?

I would think that a company like Seachem would include a 'not for use with inverts' warning if it were an issue. Maybe, I dunno. I called them once on another matter and the salesguy I talked to was pretty clueless.

 

i feel like the excel is bad for shrimp? i'm not sure though, i'm no expert. but i do keep 3 bamboos in a 29gal with Flourish root tabs, Pfertz micro and Nitrogen dosages, and they do just fine.

how old is your tank?

 

16 months. I've had the same four Amanos for over a year, using Excel all the time.

 

I think with Excel and ferts, there is no standard dosage. They can say, use 5ml/20gal of water but for how many plants of what type. Plants that are carbon happy and lots of them and a low co2 level in the water because of little livestock is going to require different amounts of excel than a tank with 3 plants in it that don't need a lot of excel and with lots of fish that expiring co2 into the water. Same with ferts. Many people use Excel with shrimp and they are fine. Some use it and they die. Without knowing how many plants and the required carbon intake for those plants, it's hard to know how much excel is being used for plants and how much extra is staying in the water and could be affecting the shrimp in a bad way.

 

I thought I would join this conversation as I have spent about 40 hours this week researching trace minerals for use in aquatic diets.... I have specifically been researching the use of chelated vs. organic, vs. inorganic sources in diet, but I strayed off on a tangent when it came to copper toxicity and inverts.

I like to base my conclusions on published scientific studys and have been building a library of sorts this week as I do research.

One of the most importing things we need to do, is discern the difference between dietary levels of copper, and water concentrations of dissolved copper.

Secondly, it is important to note that many of the scientific papers that report on mortality due to dissolved mineral exposure, are only done for 96 hours........ using a value called the "LC50" (lethal concentration that will kill half the population in the studied amount of time..

For example, the LC50 in one study for copper solution was 1ppm for 4 days, but only .19ppm for 14 days.

http://decapoda.nhm.org/pdfs/27732/27732.pdf

http://www.springerlink.com/content/jmhpm616hauh06x7/fulltext.pdf

A study on freshwater Caridina species showed the 4 day LC50 to be 3-4 ppm (higher than the saltwater species studied)

So far, I can't find any LC50 info past 14 days, which obviously isn't long enough to even get through a molt. If a LC50 at 14 days is only .19ppm, at 90 days, it might be .019 ppm! We don't really know.

Dietary copper studies with this same species in the first study, showed optimal growth and survivability to be around 60 ppm (mg/kg dry diet), with only minor reductions in diets with over 100 ppm!

What IS important here, is that these shrimp are raised to harvest size using these levels, so the LD (lethal dose rather than lethal concentration) can be considered to be quite a long period.

http://www.aces.edu/users/davisda/p...da/publications/publication_files/p7_copper_requirement_of_penaeus_vannamei.pdf

Another publication shows the difference between inorganic dietary copper, and chelated copper...... and concludes that the dietary levels at over 350 ppm inorganic (same type in the first study) and 80ppm chelated, showed no toxicity, but no benefit over levels of 55, or 26 ppm respectively

http://www.novusint.com/DesktopModu...s/Bring2mind/DMX/Download.aspx?EntryId=995&PortalId=0&DownloadMethod=attachment

Thus far, both saltwater, and freshwater shrimp show high sensitivity to dissolved copper. Most of the publications are done on aquaculture species, which are primarily saltwater, but because the sample species I was looking at showed low tolerance for dissolved copper, but "normal" dietary requirements for copper, I think looking at these species will give us good insight to freshwater species as well. The one publication on freshwater species showed a bit more actual tolerance than the studied saltwater species.

I have a lot more research to do, but I thought I would at least share some interesting points and hope to clarify the importance difference between dietary copper and dissolved copper.

As a manufacturer of diets, I of course have a vested interest in figuring this out, so spending a hundred hours on one topic like this, is worth the effort, and something I consider a responsibility. I hope you guys find this interesting and I would love to hear some comments from those here who have the time, and ability to understand the publications I posted.

Cheers, Allen