Aptasia anemonies

[superjohnny]

Quick background. I got a 72g bow with ~60lbs of LR. The tank was in real bad shape when I got it... lots of mulm, high nitrates and an aptasia problem. About 20 visible heads when I first looked the tank. I've been pulling out the LR and killing them with boiling water and scraping their remains off. Spoke with Woodie and he suggested drying out my LR completely to kill everything. So the rocks that had the most aptasia I removed and set in a bucket. Last night I found a little tiny red/brown thing on the glass. Could have been an aptasia, but I couldn't really tell so I removed it. It kinda worries me that I'm finding this stuff on my glass. It's possible that they've made their way to the sand.

 

I've got the nitrates down and the mulm cleaned up. It's not a terrible lookin' tank:

[oldbrownies]

get a peppermint shrimp, but take him out before you put any nice amenones or zoas in there

[B Foxy]

I am not sure I agree with taking out the live rock to "dry it out". I think that will do more harm than good. Aiptasia anemones are best dealt with using a kalkwasser solution or joes juice, and then kept in check using peppermint shrimp..

 

just my .02

[andy]

I don't see the sense in drying out the live rock, sounds like a good way to convert nice live rock into base rock to me. Woody has some nice stock, but I'm no fan of his advice.

[reefboy]

try the shrimp theyll do the job as long as you dont overfeed.

[nu2reef-n]

Put your rock back in your tank. Buy some peppermint shrimp or try some Joe's juice or pickling lime.

Just my $.02 worth.

[fly guy]

Agreed. Boiling your rock is no way to deal with aips. Get some Joes juice....when you use it turn off all flow and feed them as much as you can fit into their mouths. Nail 15 or so a day and you will beat them. Joes juice works if used as I state above, and it wont harm anything else including your water quality. Dotn scrimp when you use it.....feed them as much as you can.

[Ronjunior]

Heck, I'd take a lighter to the suckers before I boiled the rock. No point in starting over like me when my pond pump made the water temp rise to 97 degrees or so in a garbage can full of rock. Yes, I only had 1 anenome left, but much of the rock's life didn't fair as well. I couldn't imagine what boiling would do. I've only had 1 come back slowly and will picklelime it to death.

[superjohnny]

Ok, I'll go hook up some peppermint shrimp today and put the LR back in the tank. I didn't take out all the LR, just about 10-15 lbs of it. Found 2 dead stars in the bottom of the bucket this morning :(

 

I've been watching like a hawk and haven't seen any new ones in the last 2 days. I'll stack it up so the shrimp have easy access.

 

Thanks for the advice, I'll keep the thread up to date.

[robz]

Ya pretty much whatever Woody tells you to do just do the opposite and you'll be fine.

[oldbrownies]

just make sure you take the pepermints out before you put anything anemone-like in the tank... well anything you want to keep alive

[superjohnny]

The peppermint shrimp eat anemonies? How about other corals?

 

I'm really tempted to make my tank into a biotope for seahorses, but I need to do more reading and research first.

[WAVES]

Ive never had a problem with pepps eatting anything,,

 

Ive also been known to take a torch to aips if there are only a couple on a rock. You can fry the crap out of one small section without damaging the live stuff on the rest of the rock.

 

Seriously though, wear goggles or something, the rock will snap and pop and throw bits of rock all over the place....

[Tashier]

What about kalking them?

[T----]

Well with what im seeing in your pic above (very little) i would go with some Joes Juice, a while back i had a whole grip of rock i purchsed from a guy tearing his tank down, was litteraly coverd in aptaisa. The synthic type remedies (ie non pepermints or other creatures that eat em) can do dmg to other corals, or fickle fish, but with a near empty tank i would say give em all a good dose, then some more, and wait until the majority is gone. Since you have the luxery of not having much in your tank to deal with you can be more free to move your rocks around and fine the little guys, as well as dont have to worry about the juice hurting the frial acros or anything else you may have in your tank. Buy a grip of the stuff and nuke em out now while you can, rather then have them in submission and let them come out later when you tank is stocked.

 

As far as pepermint shrimp the only problems i ever had with them is when my carpent anemone would eat one. They very cool additions imo usually active and great will even hop on some large fish to clean em off if they need it, and are willing.

 

tim

[Ronjunior]

Well, I finally got around to killing my aiptasias today by using some kalkwasser Shawn gave me awhile back and they just melted away pretty much instantly! I mixed 1 tsp Kalk and 2 Tbsp of water, boiled for 1 minute in microwave, sucked into needleless syringe and shot them where it counts! I have way too much leftover; I only used about 3ml to kill about 8 or so, but the mixture rate seems to work; Thanks GARF!

[Nyles]

Perfect! now setup a nano tank for some extra aptasia to live since you got so attached to them. LOL

[WAVES]

Well' date=' I finally got around to killing my aiptasias today by using some kalkwasser Shawn gave me awhile back and they just melted away pretty much instantly! I mixed 1 tsp Kalk and 2 Tbsp of water, boiled for 1 minute in microwave, sucked into needleless syringe and shot them where it counts! I have way too much leftover; I only used about 3ml to kill about 8 or so, but the mixture rate seems to work; Thanks GARF![/quote']

 

I hate to say it, but the thing about aiptasia is they are not difficult to kill, not difficult at all, now to kill them and not have them return is another story.... The true test will be if you dont see anymore ever (assuming you dont add any rock or coral) then you will know you have a winner. If you see 3 more next month,,, then 6 the month after that, then you will know the kalkwasser doesnt work any better than lemon juice, boilling water, joes juice or any other product. Unfortunatly, I think you will find you will see them again.

 

on a side note, I bought 50 peppermint shrimp, you should see them when I drop a new rock in the tank that has an aip on it, its like army ants on a giant beattle.

[reefboy]

yep get peppermints to be sure there gone or they will come back.

[pledosophy]

I can't believe he told you to remove your rock.

[cyenna]

If it's just one small rock and you don't want to go around guessing where it went to hide off in or if it's completely overtaken the rock, I don't see what the big deal is. To get rid of aptasia I pulled the rock and blasted the thing with hot water - not really boiling but enough to make it wilt and I scraped it out - while i didn't totally kill the "live-ness" of it, i'm sure it set back my cycle a bit but so what! Personally, I'd rather have one base rock than put exactly the right amount of kalk mix in the right place. Also, what if you don't want a peppermint shrimp?! ah ha! (whistle) (laugh) Whatever works out in the end is the right way and it looks like kalk worked out for you so good! the end. (laugh)

[siskiou]

I have to agree the pepps do a great job, but after they ate the aptaisia, they went on to eat every single one of my stomatella snails (with their half shells, they were totally defenseless, and their speed did them no good, either).

And the tank got fed plenty, so they weren't starving.I finally gave the pepps away.

 

 

Now I have two aptaisia on a new coral, and the boiling water didn't get rid of them permanently. They came right back after a few weeks.

[WAVES]

If the rock can be removed,, I still say the propain torch from HD for a few bucks is your best bet. COook the CRRAAAAPPP out of that section (thus everything else will be fine) and return it to your tank.

 

If a rock can be removed it hardly qualifies to be an issue.. Chisel, torch, epoxy, tickle torcher whatever, thats a none issue, its the rock barried in the sea scape that is the bugger.

[Ronjunior]

You know, I couldn't have done this without a friend! I thought about starting a thread somewhere about housetank hints you can steal from your spouse.

 

I found it challenging to rockscape a 2 sided reef keeping both sides aesthetically pleasing. Place rock, walk around tank, table and couch, nope, back to moving, placing, replacing, walking, tripping on wet towels; repeat. I didn’t have a second pair of eyes and it took awhile to realize a mirror would do the trick!

 

Using the wife's full length mirror lets me get to the impossible places in the backside of my reef without shooting Kalk at the wrong spot, placing that certain rock in a crevice to hide the PH in the rocks and seeing what the heck I'm doing, etc. etc.

 

I’ll give it back someday, right along with that turkey baster. Then again, the aiptasia will be back, and so will the mirror.

 

 

 

[Queen Angel]

Great idea!!

 

I think this should be a thread on its on. I'm sure there alot of good ideas out there that we havent heard about yet. Every time I come up with what I think is a great new idea, I hear someone has already done it.

 

I thought I came up with the blue rope lights for moonlights a couple of years ago.. but no.. I must of seen it somewhere before. Couldnt find the right shade of blue for my background, so I went to upholstery shop and found some cool vinyl. The turkey baster..... nah, just kidding.