Paul,
It's entirely possible for new copper piping to have poisoned your fish, depending on the extent of the replacement. As Dawn suggest, you'll need to get a copper testing kit to determine if the level of copper is toxic to fish. You may need to use a water conditioner which neutralizes heavy metals, as Donna mentions, although most of the advertising I see associated with these water conditioner properties (including on their labels) state that they neutralize heavy metals and chelated copper, which is telling me that it neutralizes copper having already been chelated. If this is the meaning of their terminology (as I read it), and as the copper being dissolved in these pipes is still quite active and far from being inert, so it is not subjected to the process of the heavy metal water conditioner additive as already in a chelated state, and as such may not be neutralized by the conditioner as I understand their advertising to say.
The safest approach would be to allow your tap to run for several minutes before using the water for the aquarium, especially if this copper pipe replacement is on the outlet side of your water heater where the water becomes quite hot. Hot water will dissolve more copper than will cold water. This is not to say that the cold water tap should not be run for a while also, before using it for the aquarium, as copper can still build up in there.
Not being totally convinced that your problem is copper though, without seeing test results for it, I would suggest here that perhaps you are using the wrong type of water conditioner (or may not be using a water conditioner at all), which will result in your fish deaths if you have chloramine added to your water by your water supplier, if you are using a conditioner having only a chlorine remover or have neglected to use a conditioner.
If test results do determine that your copper is elevated in your water as a result of the new pipes, you can expect it to take several years before the copper stops leaching from this new piping.
Ray
--- In tropicalfishclub@yahoogroups.com, "Paul" <Plwg000@...> wrote:
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> I put a breeding pair of angelfish in a new 20 gallon aquarium, left for an hour and a half and came back to find both fish dead. A couple of days earlier my landlord replaced the old plumbing with new copper pipes.
>
> Did the new pipes kill the fish? Was it the most likely the copper? How long before I can use the water?
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> Paul
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