killing mushrooms

fishgate

fishgate

Active member
I have successfully removed most of the livestock from a tank with a gigantimungus aiptasia infestation. Probably 2000+ aiptasia in there. My plan is to break it down, cook the rock, clean the tank thoroughly, toss the sand and start over. Problem is I still have some very nice mushrooms in there that are thriving. I'd rather toss them in the trash than risk getting aiptasia in the new tank but I don't want to just kill them. What can I do? Also I think I have a couple of crabs that I hope to find when I break down the tank and maybe a shrimp or two. I had been giving the livestock a good rinse in the new tank's water (using what I take out for water changes) so I hope to find these guys when I break it down.
 
Jay, it seems to me that Rhygar666 isn't familiar with the term "cooking the rock" as simply that the process of curing the rock. HA after I've been away from the hobby for so many years it still hits me as yes really cooking the rock even though I know better.

I also have to agree with him there are many chemicals in lr that if you were to actually cook them would release toxic gasses, that could in fact put you in the hospital. So I don't think he was joking with his perception of "cooking rock" ;)
 
DK - I hope the OP is familiar with the term, it seems he is so shoudn't be any casualties on this thread other than some Aiptasia ;)

Fishgate - I have successfully used Peroxide on isolated Aiptasia before.. I have a small frag grow out tank, that has an Aiptasia issue, when / if they settle on a frag, i take it out, and give it a little squirt of peroxide 3%, watch the pest fizz a little then put the frag back in the tank.

Peppermint shrimp and file fish have an appetite for Aiptasia also.. Is this an option, maybe a handful of shrimp will do some damage? Seems breaking down the tank, and starting over is a drastic measure?
 
fishgate said:
I have successfully removed most of the livestock from a tank with a gigantimungus aiptasia infestation. Probably 2000+ aiptasia in there. My plan is to break it down, cook the rock, clean the tank thoroughly, toss the sand and start over. Problem is I still have some very nice mushrooms in there that are thriving. I'd rather toss them in the trash than risk getting aiptasia in the new tank but I don't want to just kill them. What can I do? Also I think I have a couple of crabs that I hope to find when I break down the tank and maybe a shrimp or two. I had been giving the livestock a good rinse in the new tank's water (using what I take out for water changes) so I hope to find these guys when I break it down.
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Sounds like a good scenario for a quarantine tank. Feed the crabs, which should provide enough nutrients for any aiptasia to pop up. If any aiptasia polyps do show up you can address them as necessary.

Or, if it's possible to frag off pieces of the rock with the shrooms on them, I'd do that. But again, quarantine them if you want to save them. It sounds like you do or else you'd just bleach the rocks and re-cure them.
 
Jay_R said:
Surely this is a joke right?
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He's speaking of Palytoxins from zooas or paly's. It can kill you if actually cooked the rocks with heat. He might be confusing cooking rocks with "cooking" rocks or just giving caution to those who do confuse the two. It's a bad term to use since actually cooking rocks can be fatal, but it's a term aquarists like to use so it's not going away any time soon. Hopefully a better term will come into popular use that will not conflict with something that is potentially fatal.
 
Jay_R said:
DK - I hope the OP is familiar with the term, it seems he is so shoudn't be any casualties on this thread other than some Aiptasia ;)

Fishgate - I have successfully used Peroxide on isolated Aiptasia before.. I have a small frag grow out tank, that has an Aiptasia issue, when / if they settle on a frag, i take it out, and give it a little squirt of peroxide 3%, watch the pest fizz a little then put the frag back in the tank.

Peppermint shrimp and file fish have an appetite for Aiptasia also.. Is this an option, maybe a handful of shrimp will do some damage? Seems breaking down the tank, and starting over is a drastic measure?
Click to expand...

Yes - I mean curing by "cooking"!

There is no hope there is literally 1000s of Aiptasia in the tank including in the overflows. Some are 2" across. All this started from a single example that came in on some Cheato. I am not waiting for any natural remedies. I've moved everything into my other 120g tank. This tank will be totally nuked and started from scratch (and by nuked I mean broken down and started over, not actually obtaining a nuclear bomb and lighting it off in the tank (and by "lighting off" I mean detonating) :lol2:).

There are other reasons too not just Aiptasia - like the stupid rock wall mistake I made and want to redo the plumbing into a bean setup.
 
Most mushrooms are really easy to frag, it's not much harder than snipping them off the aiptaisia rock and putting them on a new one in QT. If you'd rather jump start the new tank with a lot of them than preserve one or two beauties, some people have even put them in a blender and seeded their tanks with a smoothie.

The only rock you cook with fire is crack!
 
You could cut the mushrooms off the rocks and wrap the pieces onto rocks using netting. They should eventually 'take root'. If I were in your position I would then nuke the tank by causing a massive ammonia spike with a large dead fish/shrimps maybe. This way the ammonia kills the aiptaisia, your beneficial bacteria will process the ammonia and the resulting nitrites. You'll end up with a lot of nitrates and PO4 but you could get rid of it by doing a big water change and you wouldn't have to remove any rocks or sand. Your beneficial bacteria will survive and you wouldn't have to cycle the tank. The return pump should be kept on the whole time so the aiptaisia in the pipes will also be killed.
 
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Don't laugh about the cooking rock thing. Some people have literally boiled or baked liverock and ended up almost killing themselves.

I'm not sure if they were not understanding the "cooking" process or if it was an act of desperation.

Personally, I wish they would get away from the whole coined term of cooking rock. Pretty sure my neighbors already think I am a drug dealer with the glowing lights, scales and white powders. So now some fellow reefer comes over and starts asking me if I have my rock cooking yet? ;(
 
DSMpunk said:
Pretty sure my neighbors already think I am a drug dealer with the glowing lights, scales and white powders. So now some fellow reefer comes over and starts asking me if I have my rock cooking yet? ;(
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LOL. Not to mention referring to ourselves as "reefers". Just tell your neighbors it's just you and your fellow reefers chilling out. I'm sure they would understand. ;)

To the OP, yeah, you might as well just start over. But you could save just the mushrooms in a small isolation tank and treat it like a mini reef until you are sure that rock they are on are free of aiptasia.
 
This is a Great idea :thumbsup:

rt67ghy said:
You could cut the mushrooms off the rocks and wrap the pieces onto rocks using netting. They should eventually 'take root'. If I were in your position I would then nuke the tank by causing a massive ammonia spike with a large dead fish/shrimps maybe. This way the ammonia kills the aiptaisia, your beneficial bacteria will process the ammonia and the resulting nitrites. You'll end up with a lot of nitrates and PO4 but you could get rid of it by doing a big water change and you wouldn't have to remove any rocks or sand. Your beneficial bacteria will survive and you wouldn't have to cycle the tank. The return pump should be kept on the whole time so the aiptaisia in the pipes will also be killed.
Click to expand...
 
That's funny. But really you can wade through threads about certain hated pests, and you'll find people saying they eventually gave up and boiled their rock.
Every time I look at my awesome shaped live rock covered in hydroids that'll be curing in a closet for the rest of the summer at least, I still want to just boil the little monsters and be done with it.

But back to the topic: another option to get mushrooms off a rock, blast it with flow for a day or two. They'll detach themselves.
 
rt67ghy said:
If I were in your position I would then nuke the tank by causing a massive ammonia spike with a large dead fish/shrimps maybe. This way the ammonia kills the aiptaisia, your beneficial bacteria will process the ammonia and the resulting nitrites. You'll end up with a lot of nitrates and PO4 but you could get rid of it by doing a big water change and you wouldn't have to remove any rocks or sand. Your beneficial bacteria will survive and you wouldn't have to cycle the tank. The return pump should be kept on the whole time so the aiptaisia in the pipes will also be killed.
Click to expand...

What level would you need to get the ammonia up to to kill everything but the bacteria, leaving zero possibility of aiptasia or other pests of surviving?

Would you need to get it up near 10ppm or just over 2ppm?
 
Frag the mushrooms, and stock the frag tank you keep them in with some peppermint shrimp or those aptasia eating nudibranches?
 
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