Barium and/or Aiptasia-X prblem

[boobookitty]

I have a relatively new 400G reeftank (about a year), and recently I've been experiencing some coral loss issues, including 2 nice birdsnest colonies. In an effort to figure out what's going wrong I sent away for an ICP evaluation

For the record, I run zeovit, no GFO, no phosphate removers. The only things I dose aside from zeo are lugols (0.8ml a week) and coral power amino acids. I do also add some yeast a couple times a week. I use Instant Ocean salt mix, and run a dastaco calcium reactor.

The only negatives from the ICP panel were elevated lithium and barium. Barium was 177 micrograms/liter, which I know is high. Any ideas where that might be coming from? I've read other "high barium" threads, but the culprit usually turns out to be an aluminum phosphate remover or something like that which I don't use.

The int thing I'll add is that in the last month or so I've been using Aiptasia-X to knock down a virulent and out of control aiptasia problem. Like, a lot of it. For a 4 day period I dosed probaly two of the smaller bottles a day. I've tried everything bio for the aiptasia - peppermint shrimp, file fish, a klein's butterfly...even tried building a berghia colony for 3 months. Nothing helped, so I've been knocking it down with Aiptasia-X. As far as I can tell from the web and the patent, though, it shouldn't affect the corals like this, and certainly shouldn't be raising barium.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[bertoni]

The barium level from ICP includes anything bound up in organisms, as well as dissolved barium. In addition, barium isn't easy to measure in saltwater due to interference issues, as I recall. Who did the ICP analysis?

The elevated lithium might be from salt mixes. That seems to be fairly common, but it's not clear what actually is happening. Doing accurate saltwater testing is expensive.

 

[boobookitty]

Yah, the barium bothers me more than the lithium. Triton did the testing; all indications are that they're pretty accurate.

 

[bertoni]

There is at least one article that details issues with Triton's testing. I should be able to find a link, if you're interested, or Google will locate it. I would ignore the barium reading, personally.

 

[boobookitty]

Aside from Li and B, all other parameters were good. No heavy metal issues, etc. so why the die off? I know, I know, always hard to tell. But still...

What about the flip side of the question? Any known issues with that much Aiptasia-X?

 

[bertoni]

We see a lot of problems that are hard to diagnose. Aiptasia-X should be safe if the dose is small enough. That sounds like a lot, but the decay of the Aiptasia likely would be the main issue. Did the problem coincide with the start of the Aiptasia-X dosing?

 

[2smokes]

You can use construction kalk paste instead of aiptasia X with same results in killing aiptasia.Coral aminoacids is just food not a chemical;And the barium you have i think its high because of the zeolites you use.Birds nest (the pink ones_seriatopora histrix) usually die in aquarium if the water gets a litle too hot than normal.

 

[boobookitty]

The use of that much kalk has its own problems.

And I definitely had a more serious downturn in corals after those 4 days. But things were fading before that too.

 

[2smokes]

You use less kalk paste to kill aiptasia.You dont kill them all in one day and dont apply much kalk on them.Also you could put the kalk on aiptasia with the pumps off,wait half an hour then ,by using a turkey blaster you take the kalk out.With the last method you can kill all the aiptasia in one day,if you take out the kalk.

 

[boobookitty]

I have literally anywhere from hundreds to thousands of aiptasia. Whatever media I use to eradicate, I'm going to end up using A LOT of it.

 

[2smokes]

Id say,try the kalk paste.You dont know how its working until you use it.You can also mix vinegar with the kalk if your worryed about high ph.Also if you dont stir the kalk to mix with your water,you will see that it will form a hard crust in few hours and it will calcify in a day or 2 so it wont spread into the water.I used a lot of kalk on a regular basis .Once ive used a small table spoon and a half in a small 10 gallon tank-without adding vinnegar to it.Most important is to let it settle and calcify or to take it out if you dont want to interfere with your parameters .Aiptasia X and all the otther aiptasia removal substances are just plain kalk mixed with vinnegar.If you used aiptasia X means you allready used kalk paste .By using kalk you will eliminate the presumptive barium adition to the tank by aiptasia X.

 

[boobookitty]

I've used kalk in the past. At the amount I need it always screws with the tank chemistry: pH, alk, Ca. Its why I switched. Aiptasia-X does not, at least not in any measurable way.

 

[bertoni]

If the corals already were fading before the treatment, the basic problem might lie elsewhere, but I'd stop using the Aiptasia-X for the time being. I might try adding fresh carbon, in case the Aiptasia have released a lot of organics, possibly including toxins.

I've had good luck with Berghia knocking back Aiptasia populations. I don't know what happened with yours.

 

[ColoReefer970]

Sounds like the berghia need more time to work...I've watched them go 6 months before munching away an entire minor infestation...they're probably still all in there getting fat and happy...and one week the population will hit critical mass then the next the tank will be clean and you'll have 1000 starving berghia roaming around (at which point catch some and pass it to friends)

Berghia work, just way slower than anyone wants them to

 

[boobookitty]

No...I put them in there something like 8 months ago. They're gone.

 

[bertoni]

You could consider trying again, although if the tank has a lot of shrimps or other predators, it might not be worth the effort. I don't know what the cost is these days, either.

 

[boobookitty]

Yeah, they're not cheap, and establishing a colony takes months. I've tried filefish, peppermints, a Klein's, and berghia. Next (last?) step is an Australian copperbanded.

 

[bertoni]

Some true peppermint shrimp will eat Aiptasia. What we see in the trade aren't necessarily Lysmata wurdemanni.