icycoral
I glue animals to rocks
"nuke the entire site from orbit, its the only way to be sure."~Ripley
While my tank is and always was a mixed reef, back in the day when I first started up my tank I added all sorts of corals not really thinking in the long term. I added some really hardy, not so colorful, palys and some mushrooms. they were easy to keep and grew quickly.
As my skills in maintaining a stable reef grew my coral interests shifted to more rare, colorful, and harder to keep varieties. I love my colorful sticks (sps) and rare zoas. And if its one thing I've learned, some corals don't play well with others lol. As my tank matured and corals started to encroach on each other it seems the nicer the coral the easier it gets stung by it's neighbors. When a few mushrooms start getting unruly around my ora Hawkins it was time for them to leave the party.
So I started looking into ways to remove some of these no longer invited guests. At first I tried manual removal on some palys and shrooms. It worked but not very well. If there is any tissue left on the rock the palys would come back, also the same with the mushrooms. Sometimes a little piece of the mushroom would get away and sprout another, very counter productive.
I started exploring chemical means of removal, my first was "joes juice". I figured if it killed aptaisa it might kill brown palys. It did but was expensive and didn't always do the job. Then I found Mrs. Wages pickling lime. Mrs. wages was cheap and pretty effective but it has a couple drawbacks. It can be a little messy in the tank. It tends to scatter and drift around, sometimes landing on corals not targeted for removal and irritating them. There is also the fact that it can raise the ph and alk of a small tank if too much is used in a short time frame.
Recently I learned of a few folks using high powered handheld laser devices to remove unwanted fauna from their tanks. Aside from the "wow" factor I thought this would be a great way to target items that were in places that would be hard to use kalkwasser on. Also I wanted a way to manage corals that were very close to one another like some zoas I had growing onto my sps. I thought, "I would love to give this a try".
So I purchased my first handheld laser, some safety goggles, and gave it a try. My first laser was a 405nm violet laser pushing out about ~500mw of coherent light.
some rastas getting too close to my garf bonsai
It worked pretty well, but I wanted more power and longer run times. So I started doing some research, gathered up some parts, and built a couple of my own. I built myself a small laser capable of putting out 1.7w of blue coherent light at 455nm. This litte guy is pretty darn powerful, and not too shabby at removing unwanted corals and critters. so far I've tested it on mushrooms, zoas, palys, chalice, vermetid snails and went to a buddies to try on majano with pretty good success.
9v battery for size comparison
As you can see the beam is clearly visible with the lights on
A few notes about safety. This would be considered a class 4 laser device and should be treated with the care and respect of such a device. This laser can easily pierce paper if put in front of it, your retinas are no exception. Proper eye protection is mandatory for anybody in the viewing vicinity!
When taking pictures you should use a proper beam stop, not the wood trim next to your door.
When using such a device to manage overgrowing corals in your tank you will need to do so in a manner which will not harm the other inhabitants in your tank like your fish. Nobody wants a blind mystery wrasse. A few solutions I have found are, do your lasing at night when most fish have bedded down for the night. Also a shooting down the bore of a small piece of opaque tubing will minimize chances of a fish swimming through the beam or seeing beam scatter. Note pvc is not toxic however when heated it can release toxic compounds, aim well. I have not had any problems.
Also these are not toys, they do not compare to regular low power laser pointers commonly available, be safe! I have a little one in the house. I do not use my lasers when my son is home and I keep it locked up and separate from the batteries when not in use.
But man are these things cool! And yes, I am one of the wild ones.
While my tank is and always was a mixed reef, back in the day when I first started up my tank I added all sorts of corals not really thinking in the long term. I added some really hardy, not so colorful, palys and some mushrooms. they were easy to keep and grew quickly.
As my skills in maintaining a stable reef grew my coral interests shifted to more rare, colorful, and harder to keep varieties. I love my colorful sticks (sps) and rare zoas. And if its one thing I've learned, some corals don't play well with others lol. As my tank matured and corals started to encroach on each other it seems the nicer the coral the easier it gets stung by it's neighbors. When a few mushrooms start getting unruly around my ora Hawkins it was time for them to leave the party.
So I started looking into ways to remove some of these no longer invited guests. At first I tried manual removal on some palys and shrooms. It worked but not very well. If there is any tissue left on the rock the palys would come back, also the same with the mushrooms. Sometimes a little piece of the mushroom would get away and sprout another, very counter productive.
I started exploring chemical means of removal, my first was "joes juice". I figured if it killed aptaisa it might kill brown palys. It did but was expensive and didn't always do the job. Then I found Mrs. Wages pickling lime. Mrs. wages was cheap and pretty effective but it has a couple drawbacks. It can be a little messy in the tank. It tends to scatter and drift around, sometimes landing on corals not targeted for removal and irritating them. There is also the fact that it can raise the ph and alk of a small tank if too much is used in a short time frame.
Recently I learned of a few folks using high powered handheld laser devices to remove unwanted fauna from their tanks. Aside from the "wow" factor I thought this would be a great way to target items that were in places that would be hard to use kalkwasser on. Also I wanted a way to manage corals that were very close to one another like some zoas I had growing onto my sps. I thought, "I would love to give this a try".
So I purchased my first handheld laser, some safety goggles, and gave it a try. My first laser was a 405nm violet laser pushing out about ~500mw of coherent light.
some rastas getting too close to my garf bonsai
It worked pretty well, but I wanted more power and longer run times. So I started doing some research, gathered up some parts, and built a couple of my own. I built myself a small laser capable of putting out 1.7w of blue coherent light at 455nm. This litte guy is pretty darn powerful, and not too shabby at removing unwanted corals and critters. so far I've tested it on mushrooms, zoas, palys, chalice, vermetid snails and went to a buddies to try on majano with pretty good success.
9v battery for size comparison
As you can see the beam is clearly visible with the lights on
A few notes about safety. This would be considered a class 4 laser device and should be treated with the care and respect of such a device. This laser can easily pierce paper if put in front of it, your retinas are no exception. Proper eye protection is mandatory for anybody in the viewing vicinity!
When taking pictures you should use a proper beam stop, not the wood trim next to your door.
When using such a device to manage overgrowing corals in your tank you will need to do so in a manner which will not harm the other inhabitants in your tank like your fish. Nobody wants a blind mystery wrasse. A few solutions I have found are, do your lasing at night when most fish have bedded down for the night. Also a shooting down the bore of a small piece of opaque tubing will minimize chances of a fish swimming through the beam or seeing beam scatter. Note pvc is not toxic however when heated it can release toxic compounds, aim well. I have not had any problems.
Also these are not toys, they do not compare to regular low power laser pointers commonly available, be safe! I have a little one in the house. I do not use my lasers when my son is home and I keep it locked up and separate from the batteries when not in use.
But man are these things cool! And yes, I am one of the wild ones.
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