Ispods killing fish - nuking tank! Question about cleaning it.

[nycman]

I got the bad isopods on the tampa bay rock and will be nuking my 180 gallon tank. I don't have the time or patience to catch the things one by one, nor want to poison. Instead, I have learned a lesson that dry rock is the only safe way to go from now on. Here is my plan. Please let me know if this will work. THanks!

1) Set up new 20 gallon tank with fresh RO/DI saltwater and new cured and cycled LFS life rock. Run for 1 day.

2) Take out all life rock from display tank and refugium - discarding any ugly pieces and putting aside any attractive, useful pieces to bleach and convert to dry rock.

3) Grab all crabs, starfish, snails, shrimp (clean up crew) and drip acclimate to the new 20 gallon tank.

4) Get new dry rock (pukani) and soak it in diluted bleach water, along with the keepers from the display tank. Cure it as such for 2-3 days, rinsing it thoroughly.

5) Empty as much water as possible from display tank, fuge and sump, and then refill with tap water. Add a concentrated vinegar (need to figure ratio) and then turn on pumps and skimmer to have the acidic tap water flush the whole system. Empty and refill a few times with fresh tap water. Test PH to ensure acidity is equal to fresh tap water.

6) Place new dry rock in display tank and do aquascape.

7) Refill with salt water and start cycle process, either with a fish or bio booster kit, monitoring for Ammonia, Nitrite and Nitrate daily. No lights.

8) After a week or so, when numbers are reasonable, drip acclimate transfer cleanup crew in 20 gallon to display tank. No lights.

9) Move LFS live rock from 20 gallon tank to fuge, and light fuge only.

10) Continue monitoring into all parameters are zero, and then turn on lights and add fish.

While a loss of $2000 and a lot of time, at least I will have a tank whose inhabitants I can now trust and control. Does this plan make sense?

 

[jda]

20G plan sounds reasonable... it might take more than a day, but you are on it. Carefully inspect that crew - isopods can stowaway on stuff.

Freeze your rock. Put it in bags to keep the mess down. Unfreeze the rock after a week, or so, and let it cure/cycle outside the tank in a trash can with saltwater until the ammonia is at zero. Reuse it. You don't have to bleach or dry it out... maybe only bacteria can survive a deep freeze and nearly nothing can survive a true curing of live rock.

There are myriad of ways to clean your tank. Muratic acid in dilute might be better because it is harmless if you let a drop or two stick around.

Be aware that dry rock is no bargain either. Nearly all of it is full of bound organics and phosphates that can take a few years to fully be removed from your tank with lots of algae blooms, GFO, organic carbon dosing and water changes. I know that this probably sounds really good right now after fighting isopods, but it is no fun either and can drive people out of the hobby. ...just be ready for this.

 

[karimwassef]

I've never experienced isopods causing such an extreme action.

Aren't there wrasses and cleaner shrimp that feed on those?

Do you have pictures?

I make my own concrete rock but I'm also a fan of maricultured rock for biodiversity. They come with good and bad but there's natural defenses for most of the bad.

 

[der_wille_zur_macht]

A few thoughts:

1) Set up new 20 gallon tank with fresh RO/DI saltwater and new cured and cycled LFS life rock. Run for 1 day.

Might take more than 1 day for this to settle to the point that it is stable, depending on how clean your LFS's live rock is. Just monitor the typical nutrient levels and don't proceed until things are acceptable. You likely won't get a typical full long cycle but you don't want to be dumping cleanup crew into a system with ammonia present, for example.

4) Get new dry rock (pukani) and soak it in diluted bleach water, along with the keepers from the display tank. Cure it as such for 2-3 days, rinsing it thoroughly.

I'd consider treating the "keepers" and the new dry rock separately. There's no reason to gunk up the dry rock. Clean it well with a hose, let it soak for a few days in newly mixed saltwater, then check levels. If things are acceptable, proceed.

For the old live rock, do whatever you feel comfortable with to clean it. It's hard to prescribe a method without knowing how gunky or dirty it is. Rock with only a little die off can probably be dried (or frozen) and then blasted with a hose, then re-used. Rock covered in dead stuff and detritus obviously needs more effort.

5) Empty as much water as possible from display tank, fuge and sump, and then refill with tap water. Add a concentrated vinegar (need to figure ratio) and then turn on pumps and skimmer to have the acidic tap water flush the whole system. Empty and refill a few times with fresh tap water. Test PH to ensure acidity is equal to fresh tap water.

It's a novel idea to clean all the equipment in-place like that. Same comment as above though, it's hard to comment without knowing how dirty things are. I'd be willing to say that most people would probably take all the equipment out and clean things one piece at a time in the sink or something.

7) Refill with salt water and start cycle process, either with a fish or bio booster kit, monitoring for Ammonia, Nitrite and Nitrate daily. No lights.

I don't see the reason to restrict lights. If you're starting with relatively clean materials and have adequate filtration/skimming, there won't be a serious nutrient problem and hence no crazy algae blooms or anything.

The rest of the plan sounds great. I'm sure you've put a ton of effort into this already and you must be 150% sure you've identified the root cause of your problem. It's crazy to think about restarting a system to get rid of a pest.

 

[der_wille_zur_macht]

Be aware that dry rock is no bargain either. Nearly all of it is full of bound organics and phosphates that can take a few years to fully be removed from your tank with lots of algae blooms, GFO, organic carbon dosing and water changes. I know that this probably sounds really good right now after fighting isopods, but it is no fun either and can drive people out of the hobby. ...just be ready for this.

That hasn't been my experience at all. I'm sure there's some dirty dry rock out there, but I've started a number of systems with dry rock from various sources and have typically had far fewer nutrient issues compared to systems started with "real" live rock. It's been my preferred method for at least a decade.

With anything in this hobby, there are a lot of factors and it's easy to improperly attribute common issues to a specific cause (i.e. blaming "new tank syndrome" on the live rock, when in reality the hobbyist had poor quality source water, was feeding too much, didn't know the skimmer was set up wrong, etc.)

 

[jda]

This is probably right, but you are one of the very few. It is a very real issue for the vast majority of people. On the contrary, nearly nobody that has ever used pacific live rock has ever had nutrient issues since it came from the nutrient deprived ocean where there are no bound phosphates in the aragonite. You are around here a lot, so surely you have seen the magnitude of other posts on all of these issues from a lot of really solid reefers. Heck, if you start to type "dry rock l" into google "eeching phosphates" auto fills in and there are pages and pages of threads. I think that your experiences are probably real, but an outlier.

 

[der_wille_zur_macht]

Thanks for sharing. I'm not doing anything magical, and I've started enough tanks and been around the hobby long enough (as you pointed out) to know that I'm not an outlier in terms of success with a specific type of rock. I feel like you're painting a biased viewpoint. I bet I can point to just as many threads where people who start tanks with pacific live rock have had nutrient problems as you can people who have started with dry rock and have had nutrient problems.

The issue when looking at threads online is bias inherent in the way people talk about their systems. When a given method is default, people don't inherently mention it. No one says "Did my pacific live rock cause a nutrient problem?" They just say "I have a nutrient problem." Since the de facto standard method of starting a tank these days is with live rock, it's taken as a default assumption. Hence, if you wanted to compare a google search of "dry rock leeching phosphate" you'd need to compare to something generic, like "my tank has phosphates." I'd say it's pretty clear that there are tons of people out there with both dry rock AND pacific live rock who have nutrient issues - it's not as if phosphates issues are only happening in tanks started with dry rock. Regardless of if someone starts with dry rock or live rock, I don't think the rock choice is inherently wrong in either case - it's more a matter of knowing how to get quality rock (regardless of if it's dry or live), and knowing how to handle and treat it. Plus, the myriad other factors that go in to starting a new tank, which as I was trying to indicate above, are likely the true root causes of nutrient issues that are often improperly attributed to the type of rock used.

 

[jda]

I am only talking about rock starting out with phosphates. Of course any tank can get them as time goes on with bad maintenance, but the rock does not start out that way when it comes from the ocean. I don't think that most people understand that aragonite is powerful binder of phosphates in both rock and sand and will bind and unbind to equilibrium with the water around it. We can just agree to disagree and let the OP get back to his thread of dealing with his isopods, which are way worse than phosphates.

 

[nycman]

Thanks

Thanks

Thanks for the helpful comments. I suppose I will do a bit more research on whether I should go with dry or live rock. I do recall the problems I had with algae in FO tanks before I started doing live rock and reef tanks. But that was when I was more naive and did not have a 30 inch skimmer and high quality lights, among other things.

 

[der_wille_zur_macht]

Of course any tank can get them as time goes on with bad maintenance,

That's my point - people do a bad job of running a new tank and then look for a scapegoat, and the rock gets blamed. I know there are specific cases reported where people soak new dry rock in saltwater and show a measurable increase in phosphate, but that can easily happen with live rock, too. And, quite clearly, there are many cases (dry and alive) where rock meets saltwater and there ISN'T a measurable phosphate load.

but the rock does not start out that way when it comes from the ocean.

Perhaps not, but it DOES often come covered in dead or dying gunk, which acts as a huge nutrient dump in to a new tank.

Even if your point about rock binding phosphate until it's at equilibrium with surroundings is true, I still don't see how that implicates dry rock any more or less than live rock. ANY rock may come from a nutrient rich or poor environment, regardless of whether or not it happens to have life growing on it at the time and place of sale. The rock being dry or alive doesn't cause a specific amount of phosphate to be bound up. Hence my point above - learn how to purchase and handle rock and you're set, regardless of whether it's bought dry or alive. Then, choose dry or alive based on your overall approach and plans for the system. Both can cause problems, but both can also be successful.

To the OP - yes, do your own research, either way. If your ultimate goal is elimination of as many sources of pests as possible, dry rock is a great choice. Of course, as is probably obvious, if you're putting fish and coral and inverts in the tank, you're pretty much never going to have a 100% surefire way to always avoid all pests no matter what. Fish eating isopods, though, are pretty rare and probably among the easiest to avoid.

 

[LQT]

Hey NYCMAN, saw your want ad on another forum for rock...

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2645835

 

[jda]

Again, we can start a new thread on aragonite and binding phosphate, where it comes from and how to avoid it forever. It is VERY real and can be VERY powerful both for the good if done well and for the bad if done wrongly. This is different than dead surface organics which is different than bound organics. The ocean is always a nutrient poor environment - always... even in dirty tidal lagoons, phosphate is about .005 ppm. I get that most people do not understand this relationship and it has a ton of nuance, but it can be so powerful when it is understood.

 

[nycman]

Hey NYCMAN, saw your want ad on another forum for rock...

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2645835

yes, true, exactly...as any desperate man would do. LOL.

 

[nycman]

Whoa Pukani cureing period!!!

Whoa Pukani cureing period!!!

have now researched that pukani takes a lifetime to cure. So what I will do then is cure it forever in a barrel in my garage, carefully monitor/watch my display tank, and then consider the drain and dry start pukani only as an option 3-6 months from now only if isopods are a continuing and evident problem, and in interim, no more fish.

 

[LuizW13]

I have dry pukani in m system for about 11 days, roughly 5/6 lbs of it. I sort of cured it for one week in heated fresh water doing 100% water changes three times during the course of that week. As of Monday night my phosphate was at .147ppm -assuming my Hanna Phosphorous checker was accurate.

 

[JWClark]

Use lanthanum chloride during the cure and it will pull the phosphates out much faster. I used a capful a day during week 3 of my 5 week cure w/ 100% water changes once a week. Phosphates were over limit on my ULR Hanna (water actually turned blue) before using, but after a week of use was reading 26ppb. After that, GFO was able to pull it down to about 10ppb. Rock has been in tank for 3 months and I have had readings of 4ppb for the last 6 weeks or so.

I do not run GFO but have an ARID reactor that pulled all the phosphates out--had to dose nitrates during the 2nd month to keep the cheato growing. Now the cheato barely grows, I have no algae issues in the display, and nitrates are steady at 2.5.

I did go through the diatom, then green hair algae phase but each only lasted a week or two, then completely disappeared. Then had a brief outbreak of dinos but they disappeared also. I think seeding the tank with 20lbs of live rock (ARC in Miami) really sped up the cycling process. Now have a coralline outbreak all over the dry rock. No isopods from this rock that I am aware though not the same amount of life as TBS because it is shipped with wet towels. I do have orange and yellow encrusting sponges that survived.

 

[pauldrapeau]

I got the bad isopods on the tampa bay rock

I've been thinking about using tampa bay rock for my new system and this was something that was troubling me. I had read about and felt confident dealing with other potential hitchhikers but I would be moving a fish into the new tank.

I'm not trying to do the live/dry debate. I'm interested in some more technical details about what happened here.

Can you share more about the problem? How long had the rocks been there before you started seeing the isopods? Was the tank fishless for any period of time?

My thoughts were to run the tank fishless for a while as a way to deal with this and other risks...

Thanks

 

[karimwassef]

I consider the phosphate and nitrate that comes from either live or dry rock to be an excellent kick starter for the life engine of a tank. Whether primarily bacterial or algal based (or both), the inorganic biological filtration will benefit. The algae or macro scrubbers also become the foundation for the pod and plankton population.

If a tank's bio-filter is sized properly, a heavy cycle is really great.

I'm curious about the isopod issue as well. More details please.

 

[der_wille_zur_macht]

Again, we can start a new thread on aragonite and binding phosphate, where it comes from and how to avoid it forever. It is VERY real and can be VERY powerful both for the good if done well and for the bad if done wrongly. This is different than dead surface organics which is different than bound organics. The ocean is always a nutrient poor environment - always... even in dirty tidal lagoons, phosphate is about .005 ppm. I get that most people do not understand this relationship and it has a ton of nuance, but it can be so powerful when it is understood.

Just to (hopefully) wrap this up, I hope it's clear that I am not trying to debate whether or not rock can bind phosphate. That's just a fact, as you're stating.

What I AM trying to debate is your assessment that ALL dry rock is bad because of phosphate and ALL (Pacific) live rock is good and doesn't have phosphate problems.

If someone takes a boatload of your perfect Pacific live rock, cleans it, dries it, and sells it, it'll have basically the same amount of phosphate bound in it as if it was sold live. Similarly, if someone takes a load of rock out of phosphate-rich water (which does exist, even in the Pacific), it'll have problems regardless of whether it's sold live or dry.

Hence my comments above. Choose live or dry based on your preferences and approach, then learn how to choose and handle your selected product. Neither is inherently good or bad, they're just different. Neither automatically does or does not have phosphate issues.

 

[DDon]

Hey nycman
I had the parasitic isodpods when I set my tank up with TBS rock as well. I never had issues with them killing fish, though I only had a couple fish in the tank when I noticed them and held off on transferring other fish. If you are able to run the tank for a couple months with no fish you will be able to starve them out. Without a food source they won't reproduce and will die out. Waiting them out is a lot easier and less expensive then starting over.

I was able to catch and remove some but it is a pain to do that. In the end I believe it was my melanurus wrasse that wiped them out.