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octos keep dying

I've never read anything that specifically talks about copper and acrylic tanks. But just looking a the chemical structure of the acrylic, Poly(methyl methacrylate) or PMMA, there is an oxygen double bonded to carbon, a carbonyl group, on the side chain of the monomer. The oxygen of a carbonyl group is slightly negative because it pulls the bonded electrons closer to itself and electrons have a negative charge. A Cu2+, copper ion, would be attracted to this and could move around in the material by popping from one oxygen to another. I may have to ask my o-chem professor what he thinks about it.

interresting thing in the wiki entry on PMMA:
"PMMA has poor resistance to solvents, as it swells and dissolves easily. It also has poor resistance to many other chemicals on account of its easily hydrolyzed ester groups."

100px-PMMA-repeat.png
 
esquid;117062 said:
I've never read anything that specifically talks about copper and acrylic tanks. But just looking a the chemical structure of the acrylic, Poly(methyl methacrylate) or PMMA, there is an oxygen double bonded to carbon, a carbonyl group, on the side chain of the monomer. The oxygen of a carbonyl group is slightly negative because it pulls the bonded electrons closer to itself and electrons have a negative charge. A Cu2+, copper ion, would be attracted to this and could move around in the material by popping from one oxygen to another. I may have to ask my o-chem professor what he thinks about it.

interresting thing in the wiki entry on PMMA:
"PMMA has poor resistance to solvents, as it swells and dissolves easily. It also has poor resistance to many other chemicals on account of its easily hydrolyzed ester groups."

100px-PMMA-repeat.png



Well, I was interested in the acrylic question too but um I feel like I just had the space between my ears cleaned out trying to understand that. :banghead: lol. I guess I will wait for a more lamens term for that one.. :roflmao:
 
I was trying to explain it in a way that didn't require two semesters of chemistry to understand, but well it is chemistry and that was the simple version. To give you short answer: i don't know for certain about copper and acrylic, but because silicone and acrylic are fairly similar substances i expect copper would behave in one the way it behaves in the other. My o-chem/bio-chem prof has office hours this week so i'll run it by him, he likes questions like this.
 
copper

hi is there anyway to save the glass 55 gal. and the plastic tidepool wet-dry? to get any copper out if thats the problem? what else could it be? does anyone know? like i said the water tested perfect. but why would 2 octos die with in 1-2 months of being in that tank. come to think of it i used that tide pool wet-dry on the tank w/the bimac for a while and he is doing fine. i have had him for about 1 year now. anyone have any thoughts? thankyou. i used the tide pool on the bimac tank for about 4 months.
 
Unfortunately a small amount of copper won't affect your plants much but will kill an octopus. It's near impossible to get rid of copper from plastics we had to re-plumb the entire system after our copper episode (and as an added precaution we relined all the tanks on the effected side) I would suggest that copper may be the culprit (although the Nitrates were a bit higher than I like) we had a fairly hefty dose which led to convulsions and death we ended up with about 0.5mg/L which is absolutely HUGE (LC50 values are usually less![ that is the concentration required to kill half of the test subjects]). I would suspect that lower doses may not be so.......dramatic.....

J
 
I was scrolling back in this thread and I coudn't find the level of nitrates. What do you think about the level of nitrates for octopuses, Jean?

Nancy
 
Nancy;117092 said:
I was scrolling back in this thread and I coudn't find the level of nitrates. What do you think about the level of nitrates for octopuses, Jean?

Nancy

We like 10ppm or less Nancy, of course it does help that we have a flow through system :biggrin2:

It just helps keep algal blooms, illness etc at bay.

J
 
I'd like to collect the info here and that a few folks like Jean & Cuttlegirl posted recently in other threads into a "copper mini-faq"-- is everyone OK if I lift some of these explanations verbatim (with credit, of course)?

Sometimes I think having a TONMO wiki sort of thing for stuff that can have an easier-to-search community store for stuff there's a lot of lore on, but that no one is quite confident enough to declare themselves to be the "single authority" on... Although maybe Nancy & Colin will obviate the need for that with their new book!
 
Monty,
The wiki concept would be terrific. The search engine just doesn't get it for this kind of search. Hopefully, we would get direct contributions and some of the staff could make special requests of our specialists for often asked questions that all have multiple answers buried in the dialogs ... somewhere. I have taken to digging up most of the threads I reference because it is so difficult for someone who has not read the thread to find it. A wiki on technical issues would be a terrific start, then it might be possible to link back to threads where the topics are discussed. THEN if Tony could come up with a button that any member could click to suggest a post be added to the wiki, maintenance might be less of a nightmare.
 
dwhatley;117118 said:
Monty,
The wiki concept would be terrific. The search engine just doesn't get it for this kind of search. Hopefully, we would get direct contributions and some of the staff could make special requests of our specialists for often asked questions that all have multiple answers buried in the dialogs ... somewhere. I have taken to digging up most of the threads I reference because it is so difficult for someone who has not read the thread to find it. A wiki on technical issues would be a terrific start, then it might be possible to link back to threads where the topics are discussed. THEN if Tony could come up with a button that any member could click to suggest a post be added to the wiki, maintenance might be less of a nightmare.

Yeah, I'm in a "something like that ought to work" frame of mind. Wikis often work better than I expect, so if we paid attention to make sure no bad edits were there, I think we'd be OK. Maybe having some rule that only allows people who have posted X times, or who have been approved by staff, or something, would keep spammers & vandals out. I've got a pending request with Tony about the forum search, I've been finding it difficult to get good search results for a few months... perhaps I should ping him again. I've been using the "search TONMO.com with google" thing on the front page sometimes, although that doesn't index supporters or exotics.

I think a few prime candidates for some sort of organized reference are: copper, cycling, how to raise large-egged octos, and how to try and raise small-egged octos even though you're going to fail. Something about tank size, octo species, and why smaller tanks/octos aren't good for beginners would probably be good too, even though that's covered in the articles pretty well.

Anyway, I was inspired to try to start with a mini-FAQ about copper, since there's been a flurry of good information, but in a format that's going to be hard to search for later...
 
Monty,
The articles should also be in the wiki XREF since I don't believe they are in the search base at all. A wiki would extend the use of the articles, not replace it. IMO, the original entries should only be by staff or by special request but links to forum entries should be available to all members. This keeps down the content and reviews to important concepts but allows crossreferencing by anyone who finds (or originates a diatribe) helpful posts. Sound good on paper anyway.
 
monty;117101 said:
I'd like to collect the info here and that a few folks like Jean & Cuttlegirl posted recently in other threads into a "copper mini-faq"-- is everyone OK if I lift some of these explanations verbatim (with credit, of course)?

Sometimes I think having a TONMO wiki sort of thing for stuff that can have an easier-to-search community store for stuff there's a lot of lore on, but that no one is quite confident enough to declare themselves to be the "single authority" on... Although maybe Nancy & Colin will obviate the need for that with their new book!

It's ok with me, but I think I just searched for an appropriate article...
 

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