ACBlinky
Premium Member
We will be changing from our current 150g to a new 180g tank in a few months when we move house. I had initially planned on trying to disturb things as little as possible; set up the new tank and get the water well-mixed, then put the rockwork in as close to the way it currently sits as possible.
Then nature threw a wrench in the works.
Staring into the tank one night at 2am, I saw a horrifically HUGE -- I mean gargantuan -- worm. This beast cannot be anything other than a eunicid; I didn't see its front end, only body segments streaking by as it moved between two rocks, but it was (without exaggeration) the width of a pencil. I saw a good 20" go by and I have no idea how much of the worm was already gone by the time I spotted it. The only good thing about seeing this thing is that we finally have an answer to the question "hey... where'd that coral go?!" We thought it was our rogue crab, but he seems to be a pretty peaceful little dude who mostly hangs out in one spot and eats fish food. I've actually never seen him bother a thing.
We have a two-foot worm in our tank, that's the best-case scenario. For all I know he could be longer, and he's got another five months to murder coral and grow before I get him out of the tank (I figure there's no sense stressing our fish doing a total tear-down to get the worm out now when we're going to do it very soon anyway).
So. Knowing that we have this monster worm, at least one pretty big crab who hitchhiked in and will be moved to our sump, and goodness knows what else hiding in our tank after all these years, what's the best way to make sure we get the bad guys out, without killing off our rock, when we move everything?
We thought about using soda water, I've read that bubbling CO2 fizzing in their hiding holes will flush out just about anything. If we have a catch bucket underneath the rock and flush each rock, this would be painstaking and I'm certain it would kill a lot of bacteria, but would it force worms, starfish (we have a thousand tiny brittle stars everywhere), and hiding crabs out? I don't want to kill our crabs -- we have two tiny emeralds along with our lace crab -- but I'd like to make sure they're out of the tank while we're aquascaping.
Is plain freshwater an option, or is there something you guys use that works well? Our rock is full of deep holes and crevasses, and many of the pieces weigh upwards of 10lbs. I don't want to smash any of them if I can avoid it, but I've lost a LOT of coral over the last year and until we found the worm, we were dumbfounded. Now we're pretty sure we know who the frag-muncher is, and we want him gone!
TL;DR - we have a biiig, coral-consuming worm and want to flush him out of the rockwork when we move our tank. Any ideas you have, but preferably those that don't kill off everything in and on the rock, to get it out would be appreciated!
Then nature threw a wrench in the works.
Staring into the tank one night at 2am, I saw a horrifically HUGE -- I mean gargantuan -- worm. This beast cannot be anything other than a eunicid; I didn't see its front end, only body segments streaking by as it moved between two rocks, but it was (without exaggeration) the width of a pencil. I saw a good 20" go by and I have no idea how much of the worm was already gone by the time I spotted it. The only good thing about seeing this thing is that we finally have an answer to the question "hey... where'd that coral go?!" We thought it was our rogue crab, but he seems to be a pretty peaceful little dude who mostly hangs out in one spot and eats fish food. I've actually never seen him bother a thing.
We have a two-foot worm in our tank, that's the best-case scenario. For all I know he could be longer, and he's got another five months to murder coral and grow before I get him out of the tank (I figure there's no sense stressing our fish doing a total tear-down to get the worm out now when we're going to do it very soon anyway).
So. Knowing that we have this monster worm, at least one pretty big crab who hitchhiked in and will be moved to our sump, and goodness knows what else hiding in our tank after all these years, what's the best way to make sure we get the bad guys out, without killing off our rock, when we move everything?
We thought about using soda water, I've read that bubbling CO2 fizzing in their hiding holes will flush out just about anything. If we have a catch bucket underneath the rock and flush each rock, this would be painstaking and I'm certain it would kill a lot of bacteria, but would it force worms, starfish (we have a thousand tiny brittle stars everywhere), and hiding crabs out? I don't want to kill our crabs -- we have two tiny emeralds along with our lace crab -- but I'd like to make sure they're out of the tank while we're aquascaping.
Is plain freshwater an option, or is there something you guys use that works well? Our rock is full of deep holes and crevasses, and many of the pieces weigh upwards of 10lbs. I don't want to smash any of them if I can avoid it, but I've lost a LOT of coral over the last year and until we found the worm, we were dumbfounded. Now we're pretty sure we know who the frag-muncher is, and we want him gone!
TL;DR - we have a biiig, coral-consuming worm and want to flush him out of the rockwork when we move our tank. Any ideas you have, but preferably those that don't kill off everything in and on the rock, to get it out would be appreciated!