Can someone in laymens terms tell me where copper goes?

[csmfish]

Say I have a 5 gallon QT tank. I have nothing in it and add copper. I let it absorb into its surroundings for......meh..... 3 days. I read you have to keep checking for copper? Where does it go? I dont know chemistry much, but, copper is a metal, it should not go anywhere!? Am I missing something and not reading enough about copper, or???

[disc1]

Copper is a metal. The copper in your tank has been ionized so it is now a salt. It has lost two electrons and it is now Cu²⁺.

Now this copper salt really likes to be bound by organic molecules or even the silicone on the corners of your tank. The technical term is chelation. Basically it means that not all of the copper is going to be free in the water, some will always be bound up somewhere. It's always going to try to achieve a balance where a certain percentage is free and a certain percentage is bound. Once you replace the water, you have removed all of the free copper, so some of the bound copper goes back into the water until it achieves that balance again. You never really get rid of every last atom of it, but through repeating this process over and over, the amount that is released each time goes down.

When you are cleaning up a tank that has had copper in it, something like vinegar that is both acidic and has the ability to chelate copper and stay soluble will help to pull more of the copper into solution that water alone.


HTH