Hello all,
So I am currently taking online classes and one of those classes is a chemistry class. In the experiment I did yesterday I used a small amount of copper sulfate. The experiment requested that all test tubes and such be rinsed with purified or distilled bottle water. Since I do not drink bottled water, I used my RODI water. The way I would rinse the test tubes was to pull water from a container which held the RODI water with a baster, fill the test tube, and then pour the rinse water into another container. In this process some of the rinse water may have been exchanged from the rinse cup, to the RODI water filled cup. Half way through the experiment I had to refill my RODI cup, and I fear that a small amount of the copper sulfate in the RODI cup may have entered my RODI basin, and possibly contaminated it. I have several inverts in my tank, so naturally I'm quite concerned about using that water for a water change I was going to do today. I did a little math, and for the 20 gallons of water in my basin there would have to be around 2.27 mg of copper in the water for it to be potentially lethal to my inverts. While I did not directly drop copper sulfate into the basin, I am concerned that a small amount could have transferred while I was refilling the RODI cup. I know there is a lot of unknowns here, but do you think that during the refilling I transferred 2mg or more copper into my RODI basin? If I did obviously I would need to dump all 20 gallons of it, or use it in a hospital/quarantine tank that I have not set up yet, but would I also need to get rid of the basin because it too is now contaminated?
A little research says that anhydrous copper sulfate is about 25% copper, and 60% water, and I used about 0.4mL of the copper sulfate in the experiments. The rinse water contained about 250mL of water most of which was emptied from the RODI rinse and into the additional container. If the copper sulfate weighs similar to water then 1mL=1g then the maximum amount of copper that could have been transferred into the RODI basin for it to be lethal to my inverts would be 6.8mL. I'm still fairly new to chemistry so my numbers could be wrong by a little or a lot. I'm fairly confident that there was less than 10mL left in the RODI cup, and I'm also fairly confident that all of the water in the RODI cup did not transfer to the RODI basin.
What do y'all think?
So I am currently taking online classes and one of those classes is a chemistry class. In the experiment I did yesterday I used a small amount of copper sulfate. The experiment requested that all test tubes and such be rinsed with purified or distilled bottle water. Since I do not drink bottled water, I used my RODI water. The way I would rinse the test tubes was to pull water from a container which held the RODI water with a baster, fill the test tube, and then pour the rinse water into another container. In this process some of the rinse water may have been exchanged from the rinse cup, to the RODI water filled cup. Half way through the experiment I had to refill my RODI cup, and I fear that a small amount of the copper sulfate in the RODI cup may have entered my RODI basin, and possibly contaminated it. I have several inverts in my tank, so naturally I'm quite concerned about using that water for a water change I was going to do today. I did a little math, and for the 20 gallons of water in my basin there would have to be around 2.27 mg of copper in the water for it to be potentially lethal to my inverts. While I did not directly drop copper sulfate into the basin, I am concerned that a small amount could have transferred while I was refilling the RODI cup. I know there is a lot of unknowns here, but do you think that during the refilling I transferred 2mg or more copper into my RODI basin? If I did obviously I would need to dump all 20 gallons of it, or use it in a hospital/quarantine tank that I have not set up yet, but would I also need to get rid of the basin because it too is now contaminated?
A little research says that anhydrous copper sulfate is about 25% copper, and 60% water, and I used about 0.4mL of the copper sulfate in the experiments. The rinse water contained about 250mL of water most of which was emptied from the RODI rinse and into the additional container. If the copper sulfate weighs similar to water then 1mL=1g then the maximum amount of copper that could have been transferred into the RODI basin for it to be lethal to my inverts would be 6.8mL. I'm still fairly new to chemistry so my numbers could be wrong by a little or a lot. I'm fairly confident that there was less than 10mL left in the RODI cup, and I'm also fairly confident that all of the water in the RODI cup did not transfer to the RODI basin.
What do y'all think?