your thoughts please...

[gopens]

well as some may know i had a tiny copper problem. well i decided i would completey break my tank down and completely scrub it down. i was going to buy all new sand and live rock. so yesterday i went and bought all my sand. i was going to order my live rock on monday. well today i needed to drop my "hobby money" to fix my truck. so i was going to just keep my tank broken down until i came across another 400-500 dollars to spend on rock. well i was talking with a local reefer today (also a very close friend), and he told me a story. a few years ago when he first started a reef tank he knew nothing about the hobby. well he added some fish and they got ich. his neighbor came over and told him that he use to have a reef tank and said to dose the tank with copper. so my buddy just went down to a lfs and bought some copper to treat ich. well he added the complete bottle. than another and another. three bottles of copper later, everything died in his tank. so he went to the lfs and asked what he should do. the man working told him that if he wanted to do a reef tank, he would need to get new sand and new live rock. but he also said that with many water changes, he could keep the sand and live rock that was in the tank with the copper if he was going to do a FOWLR. so he decided to just do some water changes and keep fish only with the old live rock and old sand. well a few months later he had some fish and they were doing awesome. well for christmas his friend bot him a coral. so he figured why not try it. the worst that could happen is the coral dies. well 4 years later that same coral is doing great and is huge (its a leather of some sort). osince that one coral did ok, he figured he would try more. well he has over 40 different corals now and it is an amazing tank. and its all the same rock and sand that was dossed in copper. he has even told me that there are a few more people in out local reef club that has done the same thing and had live rock come from a tank that had copper and used it for reef. well today i took my live rock out and put them in fresh saltwater buckets. than i rinsed them with fresh water and put them back in buckets with fresh saltwater. i have cleaned my tank and added fresh sand and fresh saltwater. whats your thoughts about this. could i add my live rock back in after i cleaned it as good as i could. or just wait a few months and see if i can get some cash to complet this project. sorry if this is long and confusing. thanks

[ACBlinky]

I don't know much about copper, but I've seen products that are designed to remove it after treatment. I'd buy a copper test kit, and something like CupraSorb (SeaChem product I think). Use the resin until the it stops showing colour (indicating that the tank is Cu free) and the test kit shows a level of 0, and then continue to use the resin for a while to make sure all the copper is gone for good.

You might want to ask about this in the chemistry forum as well -- it's possible that copper could be released in certain situations, such as lowered pH for example. If that's the case, you could subject your rock to those conditions to bring out as much copper as possible before reusing it.